Translating and literary agenting: Anna Holmwood’s Legends of the Condor Heroes

Abstract

ABSTRACT The role of literary agents in translation is intriguing yet under-researched. The mechanism of literary agenting vis-à-vis the initiation and promotion of translated literature is unexplored. This essay attempts to fill the gap by analyzing how Anna Holmwood, the principal translator and co-literary agent of Legends of the Condor Heroes, has initiated and promoted the translation. It first lays out how Holmwood’s professional habitus as a literary agent was prototyped and developed. Drawing on firsthand materials such as email exchanges, speech transcriptions, interview records, and agent reports, it then examines how Holmwood’s professional habitus empowered her to act as the initiator (selecting the book to be translated, signing the agenting contract, pitching, recommending co-translators, and titling the volumes) and sales promoter (coining the tagline ‘A Chinese Lord of the Rings’ and promoting the book on BBC) of the translation project, and recounts the process by which this translation came into being. This essay endeavors to refresh our understanding of literary agenting of translation and to foster the conjunction of translation studies and publishing research.