Literary Translation from Catalan within the Framework of the Iberian and Global Gravitational Systems

Abstract

Translation between Iberian languages is excellent ground for testing both the gravitational model of Abram De Swaan (1995; 2001) and centre–periphery tension, with Spanish hypothetically occupying the role of supercentral language and all the other Iberian languages – except for Portuguese – serving as satellites. The gravitational model also predicts a very small direct interrelation among the satellites of a system. Accordingly, Spain’s peripheral languages would not be related to one another directly, but rather through the intermediation of Spanish; that is to say, the majority of translations from Catalan into Galician, or into Basque and other peripheral languages, would imply a previous translation into the central language. By studying a comprehensive corpus from Catalan literature translated into other Iberian languages (1900–2015), this chapter seeks to verify the hypothesis of the gravitational model. The analysis carried out allows us to conclude that, following the model, literary works do indeed gain access to the international literary market when they have first been translated into Spanish.