Transnationalism Undermining the Canon: A Close and Distant Reading of Several Transatlantic Literary Networks in Translation

Abstract

This essay argues that random acts of poetry translation in transnational context play a significant role in turning any apparently homogenous literary system into a network with many access points. In doing so, they overtly or covertly undermine the idea of a literary canon, since they position, more or less explicitly, such canon against their own literary taste and network of acquaintances. In addition, the lack of financial conditioning makes this kind of translation barters reach literary audiences more easily. Since these exchanges are more commonly initiated by translators working in lesser-known languages, it follows that transnational translation barters level out cultural imbalances by having the translator-poets’ work translated into languages of wider circulation. This contribution presents four kinds of transnational exchanges in Romanian context and argues that more complex translation mechanisms result into a more open, more diverse, and a more dynamic literary scene, in which translators play a prominent role. From a methodological point of view, this essay combines the traditional close reading of the texts and paratexts with quantitative analysis and network visualization to lay out the blueprint of Romanian translations of US and Canadian poetry in periodicals between 2007 and 2017 and quantify the number of random exchanges against a transnational backdrop.