“IN AND OUT OF SIGHT” TRANSLATORS, VISIBILITY AND THE NETWORKS OF THE LITERARY TRANSLATION FIELD: THE CASE OF THE LITERARY TRANSLATION PRIZE AT THE LEIPZIG BOOK FAIR
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1344/transfer.2019.14.24-48Keywords:
Translator visibility, book fairs, consecration, visual metaphors, Leipzig Book Fair Prize.Abstract
Fairs, festivals and competitive events are becoming increasingly
central to research exploring the complex cultural phenomena that
inflect economic practices and vice-versa. The following article is
driven by the idea that systematic qualitative visual metaphor
analysis offers a fresh way of thinking through how translation
situates itself in the literary field and engages the public. Drawing
on archival online research, I will present a reading of images that
were published between 2012 and 2017, and that are still available
to be viewed online (02.02.20 18), in connection with the Leipzig
Book Fair Prize. My analysis in this article will show the following:
1) book fairs are open network systems that both aim at
reinforcing and renegotiating value systems; 2) translators take on
different roles in this system, as agents, producers and advertisers
of cultural goods; and 3) cognitive metaphor analysis is a suitable
tool to expose the uneven power-relations between translation and
literature. It also argues that, to surmount the challenges of
archival online ethnography, metaphorical analysis needs to
include other than verbal modes of representation.
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Image Sources
Image 1. The royal eye reads, source: Leipzig Bookfair Homepage.
<<http://www.leipziger-buchmesse.com/>>
Image 2. Translation is a holy book, source: Wikimedia Commons, upload by Amrei-
Marie
Image 3. Books are the wings of an owl, source: Wikimedia Commons, upload by
Smalltown Boy
Image 4. Nominated books are in court, source: lesekreis.org, upload by dolcevita
Image 5. The Kiss, source A. Kölling
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