Abstract
This paper examines the role of traditional physical archives within Translation Studies research, investigating the contribution that such resources can add, providing information that otherwise would not be available in existing scholarly volumes, academic journals and digital material. The question is illustrated with the specific case of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby (1925) and its first two translations into Italian, carried out respectively in 1936 by Cesare Giardini and 1950 by Fernanda Pivano. Both translations were published by Mondadori, Italy’s largest publishing company, as part of two different series, I romanzi della palma and the later Medusa collection.Adopting a microhistory approach, the study of these translations, through the resource-rich archives of the Fondazione Arnoldo e Alberto Mondadori in Milan, can shed light on a number of issues that the text alone cannot provide: documentation, including the other books published in the same series, highlights the target audience that Mondadori were seeking to address; the paratextual elements of the books themselves are revealing of the prominence (or otherwise) of American literature in general and Fitzgerald in particular within the Italian literary polysystem at the time of their publication; in the case of the first translation, readers’ reports on the novel indicate how the censors of the Fascist regime might receive the somewhat racy themes contained in the book, while, in the case of the 1950 translation, correspondence between the publisher, literary agents and the translator herself highlight the many issues surrounding the ultimate publication of the volume.
Highlights
As Anthony Pym reminds us, the output of translators ‘varies according to their cultural and historical position’ (Pym 2014, 87) and within a broader framework of historical research, translation studies is becoming increasingly interested in the lives and works of individual authors and translators, the socio-historical context surrounding both source and target text as well as the paratextual elements accompanying the words themselves
Scholars are focusing on the role that can be played in these investigations by archives: a recent example of this was the conference held at the British Library in London ‘The Translator Made Corporeal: Translation History in the Archive’ in May 2017 as well as a number of publications on the subject (Munday 2013 and 2014; Raine 2014; Paloposki 2016)
The variegated material to be found in archives–the hard copy published translations, examples of other novels from the same series, reader’s reports, correspondence, sales data, contracts–can serve to illustrate the precarious balancing act behind the publication of any giventranslation
Summary
As Anthony Pym reminds us, the output of translators ‘varies according to their cultural and historical position’ (Pym 2014, 87) and within a broader framework of historical research, translation studies is becoming increasingly interested in the lives and works of individual authors and translators, the socio-historical context surrounding both source and target text as well as the paratextual elements accompanying the words themselves. Before recounting this episode, King had already published the findings of this investigation in a paper entitled “Replicating the colonial expert: the problem of translation in the late nineteenth-century Straits Settlements” (2009): the paper, tellingly, appears in the journal Social History, and, there is frequent mention of the role of interpreters and translators within the colonial context, there are no bibliographical references to any sources within Translation Studies With this example in mind, it is as well to remember the opening to Christopher Rundle’s article “History through a Translation Perspective”, in which he outlines the choice facing the scholar who embarks on research on translation history: Are we going to attempt to extrapolate the translation features we uncover in the historical context we are examining in order to contribute to a wider, general or more global history of translation [...] or are we going to address those scholars who share our historical subject and introduce them to the insights which the study of translation can offer? The Foundation organises exhibitions, conferences and publications based around their collections
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