Importeurs en exporteurs van literatuur: de Nederlandse letteren in Frankrijk

Abstract

French is an important target language in the translation of Dutch literary texts. This article offers a short qualitative and quantitative historical survey of Dutch language literary publications in French translation from 1900 to 2010. Throughout the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first century, the quantity of translations has been increasing. Promotional activities by institutions such as the Nederlands Letterenfonds, formerly the NLPVF, contribute to making a peripheral literature known outside the boundaries of its linguistic area. The article then goes on to investigate the essential, yet not very well-known, parts that various kinds of mediators play in the translation process, especially in transferring a given text from one national literary field to another. The theory of components as elaborated by Andringa, Levie & Sanders is used to categorise the particularly intricate web of relations between the literary fields of source language and target language in which these mediators, both individuals and institutions, intervene. As actors behind the scenes, their role is difficult to grasp in reception studies, but they are decisive in their contextualisation, or ‘literarization’ (Casanova 1999), of Dutch literature aimed at a French audience.