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Target
Vol. 35:2 (2023) ► pp.262–284

Translation and diaspora

The role of English literary translations in Slovene émigré periodicals in the US

ORCID logo | University of Ljubljana

This article revisits Gideon Toury’s (1995, 2012) definition of translation as a fact of the target culture by highlighting the transfer of cultural images through literary translation in the periodicals of a US diaspora in the interwar period between the US Immigration Act of 1924 and the beginning of World War II in 1939. I argue that literary translations in diaspora periodicals fulfilled different roles and were used for strengthening not only intercultural but also intracultural links. The analysis of 4897 interwar issues of two periodical publications of the Slovene Americans shows that these periodicals continuously published literary translations: not only from different languages into Slovene, but also from Slovene into English. By means of the latter, Slovene immigrant diaspora attempted to construct their own representation of Slovene culture, and communicate this image to other immigrant communities, mainstream US culture, and the new generations who no longer spoke Slovene. The immigrant community thus became the promoter, creator, and receiver of these translations and simultaneously represented the source and target cultures, blurring clearly circumscribed borders of a distinct cultural unity.

Keywords: diaspora, directionality, literary translation, periodicals, US émigré communities, Gideon Toury
Article outline
  • 1.Translation as a fact of which culture?
  • 2.Translation in periodicals and translation in and by diaspora
  • 3.Corpus and methodology
    • 3.1 Prosveta and Nova Doba
    • 3.2Methodology
  • 4.Instruction and entertainment
    • 4.1Entertainment
    • 4.2Education
    • 4.3Translations into English
  • 5.The role of translations into English: New generations and cultural representation
  • 6.Conclusions: Translation as an intracultural act
  • Notes
  • References
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at [email protected].

Published online: 10 January 2023
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https://doi.org/10.1075/target.21088.pok
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