Francesc Galera
Translating Spanish literature into Catalan: state of the art of a seemingly unnecessary task
In bilingual Catalonia, Catalan and Spanish are now official languages and they are both widely known and spoken, with Spanish, a world-wide language, taking over many spaces of relevance and relegating Catalan to a situation of diglossia. The history of Catalan culture, brutalized by a dictatorship that forbid Catalan language for a half of the 20th century, recalls a situation that can be analysed from a postcolonial point of view.
Since Catalan speakers are also Spanish speakers, all of them can read any piece of literature directly from Spanish, and it could appear that there is no need for translations in this combination of languages. Thus, literary translation from Spanish into Catalan has been quite unusual in the publishing scene.
However, translation into Catalan of Spanish greatest literary works has experienced a fairly good health in the 20th and 21st centuries, because the translators involved have found extra motivations and excuses to carry out their Catalan versions other than publishing interests or sales prospects. Many translators that confess what made them undergo such an unnecessary project talk about fascination for an author or a novel, the ideal of working to pair up Catalan culture to all other great European cultures through translation or even translations made as a gift for the Spanish author.
In this oral presentation all this special cases of translation will be presented, so we can have a good picture of the interesting outcomes of this task which, indeed, can be seemingly unnecessary but are extremely valuable for a minoritized language.
References
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Branchadell, Albert; West, Lovell Margareth (eds.) (2004). Less translated languages. Amsterdam; Filadèlfia: John Benjamins.
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Biodata
Francesc Galera is a lecturer in the Department of Translation, Interpreting and East Asian Studies of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) since 2012. In addition, he works as translator, proofreader and language advisor. He owns a degree in Translation and Interpreting (UAB), a master’s degree in Terminology and Professional Needs (Pompeu Fabra University), and a PhD in Translation and Cultural Studies in the UAB. He works on literary translation into Catalan in the 20th century, especially on the topics of translation and exile, otherness and postcolonialism in the Catalan culture.