1.Translation as a fact of which culture?

Gideon Toury, one of the founders of Translation Studies who profoundly influenced the development of the field, defined translation, the central concept of any translatological investigation, in his early and later work (e.g., Toury 1978Toury, Gideon 1978 “The Nature and Role of Norms in Literary Translation.” In Literature and Translation: New Perspectives in Literary Studies, edited by James S. Holmes, Jose Lambert, and Raymond van den Broeck, 83–100. Leuven: Acco., 83–100; 2012Toury, Gideon 2012 Descriptive Translation Studies – and Beyond. Revised ed. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , 17–34). In his seminal monograph, Descriptive Translation Studies – and Beyond (Toury 1995Toury, Gideon 1995 Descriptive Translation Studies – and Beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , 2012Toury, Gideon 2012 Descriptive Translation Studies – and Beyond. Revised ed. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ), he dedicates a chapter to this issue and defines translation as a fact of the target culture (Toury 1995Toury, Gideon 1995 Descriptive Translation Studies – and Beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , 29), arguing that the position and function of every translation is defined by the culture that hosts it. He insists that a translation cannot “share the same systemic space with its original” (26) since it “is necessarily part of the existing (target!) system” (28), and concludes that “translations are facts of target cultures; on occasion facts of a special status, sometimes even constituting identifiable (sub)systems of their own, but of the target culture in any event” (29).

Similarly, in an earlier position paper published as the introduction to the first issue of the journal Target, he and José Lambert explain that translation is the result of what the target culture is willing or allowed to accept (Toury and Lambert 1989Toury, Gideon, and José Lambert 1989 “On Target’s Targets.” Target 1 (1): 1–7. , 1–7). They add that “under normal conditions” the act of translation is initiated by the recipient culture and is performed with the intention to introduce into the target culture “something which is not [yet] there” (2). The target culture, which Toury understands in the broadest sense as “a structured repertoire of options which organizes social interaction and lends each move the significance it has in and for the group that entertains that culture” (2002Toury, Gideon 2002 “Translation as a Means of Planning and the Planning of Translation: A Theoretical Framework and an Exemplary Case.” In Translations: (Re)Shaping of Literature and Culture, edited by Saliha Paker, 148–165. Istanbul: Boğaziçi University Press., 150), resorts to translating as one possible way of filling in its own gaps. By insisting on the fact that every translation is part of the target system, Toury urges Translation Studies scholars to abandon their frequent exclusive focus on the dictates of the source text and the search for equivalence between the original and its translation.

The connectedness of culture and translation was further elaborated in the later development of the discipline: although most scholars dealt with translation practices where the binary between source and target cultures was not difficult to uphold, others challenged it. For example, in Method in Translation History, Pym (1998Pym, Anthony 1998 Method in Translation History. Manchester: St. Jerome., 177) argues that certain translators inhabit the space of interculture, “found in intersections or overlaps of cultures.” Similarly, Paker (2002)Paker, Saliha 2002 “Translation as Terceme and Nazire: Culture-Bound Concepts and Their Implications for a Conceptual Framework for Research on Ottoman Translation History.” In Crosscultural Transgressions, edited by Theo Hermans, 120–143. Manchester: St. Jerome. researched translation practices in Ottoman interculture, while Meylaerts (2004)Meylaerts, Reine 2004 “La traduction dans la culture multilingue: À la recherche des sources, des cibles et des territoires [Translation in a multilingual culture: In search of the sources, targets and teritories.]” Target 16 (2): 289–317. identified intercultural elements in translations of Flemish novels into French in interwar Belgium. More recently, cultural hybridity (e.g., Asscher 2020Asscher, Omri 2020 Reading Israel, Reading America: The Politics of Translation between Jews. Stanford: Stanford University Press. ) and Bhabha’s (2004)Bhabha, Homi K. 2004 The Location of Culture. Abingdon: Routledge. theories of the third space and in-betweenness have been applied to the study of translations (e.g., Weissbrod and Kohn 2020Weissbrod, Rachel, and Ayelet Kohn 2020 “Cultural (Re)Translation: The Case of Yohanan Simon.” In Retranslation, Multidisciplinarity and Multimodality, edited by Özlem Berk Albachten and Şehnaz Tahir Gürçağlar, special issue of The Translator 26 (1): 25–42. ). Despite these alternative approaches, the distinction between source and target cultures and languages has remained deeply rooted in Translation Studies research and has not lost its conceptual pertinence – largely due to the central position of these concepts in the works by founders of the discipline, like Toury.

Toury and Lambert (1989Toury, Gideon, and José Lambert 1989 “On Target’s Targets.” Target 1 (1): 1–7. , 2) thus argue that, under normal conditions, translation is “carried out ‘into—from’ rather than ‘from—into’.” This article revisits this definition through the study of the role and positioning of translation within a diaspora in a multicultural state, and addresses the following questions:

1. What constitutes ‘from’ and what ‘into’ in the case of diasporic translators translating for members of the same diaspora or for members of other language communities in their common multicultural state?

2. Is it clear which culture (the culture of origin, the host culture, or the hybrid culture of in-betweenness) is the source and which is the target culture, and which one is responsible for the transfer?

3. Which culture represents the site of translation?

4. Is it possible to follow Toury’s conceptualisations and envisage the separateness of the source and target cultures in such a case, and moreover, of a unity of a single, clearly circumscribed and univocally defined culture?

5. How do the members of diasporas position themselves in multicultural states, such as the US in the interwar period?

The understanding of US culture as essentially multicultural and mosaic is not a contemporary conceptualization imposed on the past – the study of the self-definition and self-understanding of one of the smaller US diasporas, Slovene Americans, as reflected in their periodicals in the interwar period, reveals a similar perception of their new homeland.

The Slovene11.The Slovenes, one of the smallest and western-most Slavic nations in Europe, speak a language called Slovene. The first written documents in Slovene date from the tenth century, the first printed book, the Protestant Catechismus, was published in 1550, while secular literature written in Slovene started to appear in the late eighteenth century. émigré community in the US was formed in the late nineteenth century. The first wave of Slovene migrants to the US started in the 1870s and lasted up to 1924 when the xenophobic Immigration Act, mainly directed against Eastern and Southern Europeans, limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the US through a national origins quota. In this period, more than 240 000 Slovenes – one sixth of the entire Slovene nation (Klemenčič 2013Klemenčič, Matjaž 2013 “Slovenes and Slovene Americans: 1817–1940.” In Immigrants in American History: Arrival, Adaptation, and Integration, edited by Elliott Robert Barkan, 613–622. Santa Barbara (CA), Denver (CO), Oxford (UK): ABC-CLIO., 614–615) – immigrated to the US. While it is estimated that almost half returned home, a good number stayed in the US. Living mainly in the industrialized, developed regions of the Middle Atlantic and North Central areas of the US, they established their own parishes, cultural societies, benefit societies (i.e., insurance companies), publishing houses, and newspapers.

The study of Slovene-American periodicals from the interwar period shows that the diaspora, regardless of their ideological or political orientation, did not see the US as a homogenous foreign country, but, similarly to numerous other US diasporas, as a country consisting of a mixture of different cultural, social, and racial communities. For example, in 1938 the progressive daily newspaper Prosveta published an English essay by Louis Adamic, a Slovene-American author and the most prolific translator of Slovene literature into English of the time, entitled “Appeal from Louis Adamic to the Slovenian Immigrants in the US, and their American-born Children and Grandchildren,” in which he argued that the US was “racially, socially and culturally – an extension not only of the British Isles and the Netherlands but, more or less, of all Europe and, to an extent, of Asia and Africa” (Adamic 1938Adamic, Louis 1938 “Appeal from Louis Adamic to the Slovenian Immigrants in the US, and their American-Born Children and Grandchildren.” Prosveta 30 (220): 7., 7). He insisted that the immigrant citizens and their American-born children belonged to the US “as much as the old-stock Americans because this is their America as much as anybody else’s” (ibid.), and argued that US citizens needed to accept that the immigrants’ contributions had been enormous, since “in this upbuilding of the country in the last century more immigrants from various European countries died than early American colonists were killed in subduing the wilderness and in the War for Independence” (ibid.).

Similar to other influential US intellectuals of the time, like Kallen (1915Kallen, Horace M. 1915 “Democracy versus the Melting Pot: A Study of American Nationality.” The Nation 25: 217–220., 1956Kallen, Horace M. 1956 Cultural Pluralism and the American Idea: An Essay in Social Philosophy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. ), whose reaction to the mainstream rejection of immigration had led to the development of the idea of cultural pluralism, Adamic considered the Slovene diaspora a constituent part of the US. He made the point explicit in his response to a brutal attack on Eastern and Southern European immigrants published in a leading editorial of the Saturday Evening Post, one of the most influential magazines in the US at the time (with a circulation of over three million copies a year). In 1934, in one of its editorials, the editor, George Horace Lorimer, allowed the publication of the text in which “the hordes from southern and eastern Europe” were described as evil, lawless people of “unassimilable blood strains,” who made it necessary for “virtuous 100-percent Americans of the old stock” to maintain large police organizations and numerous jails. They were accused of procreating at a terrific rate, resulting in higher taxes for schools in which the Americans had to “feed, wash and disinfect” the immigrants’ children in order to avoid a possible contamination of their own children (quoted in Adamic 1934Adamic, Louis 1934 “Who Built America?” Nova Doba 10 (19): 6., 6). In reply to this, in an article entitled “Who Built America?”, Adamic (1934Adamic, Louis 1934 “Who Built America?” Nova Doba 10 (19): 6., 6) insisted that diasporas and immigrants not only helped to modernize the country, but that they also had “a profound influence upon the future culture and civilization on this continent” and may “contribute to America’s future greatness – not only industrially, but politically, culturally, and spiritually.” The members of the Slovene-American diaspora thus saw their émigré community, together with other immigrant groups, as quintessentially constituting US society and culture.

The understanding of the Slovene diaspora as a constituent part of US culture can also be found in diasporic periodicals of slightly different ideological orientation. For example, in the weekly Nova Doba, the publication’s editor, Anton J. Terbovec, reminded the readers of the aims of the South Slavonic Catholic Union (the organization financing the periodical): first, to provide support to its members in times of hardship; second, to educate them “in line with progressive principles,” and, finally to “encourage among them the love for Slavonic nations, and in particular for our new homeland America” (Terbovec 1927Terbovec, Anton J. 1927 “V tretjem letu [In year three].” Nova Doba 3 (1): 2., 1; my translation).

Members of the Slovene diaspora in the interwar period in the US therefore saw themselves, on the one hand, as representatives of the Slovene culture of origin, and on the other, as representatives of the Slovene-American culture that constituted their diaspora, and the culture of the entire US consisting of different immigrant cultural voices – thus blurring the clear-cut borders between ethno-linguistic unities, the source and the target cultures, the culture of origin, and the culture of the host country.22.It seems that the gradual linguistic integration of the Slovene community was similar to the social and linguistic conditions of assimilation of other disaporas (e.g., of Serbian, Croatian, and Czech diasporas) in the US following the mass migrations of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, preliminary evidence suggests that some immigrant groups (e.g., Russian) and their periodicals took a slightly different path towards their linguistic integration. For more details see Baer and Pokorn (2018)Baer, Brian James, and Nike K. Pokorn 2018 “Diaspora as a Distinct Site of Translational Activity: The Case of U.S. Immigrant Newspapers, 1917–1941.” In Minority and Migrant Intercultural Encounters: From Binarisms to Complexity, edited by Denise Merkle and Gillian Lane-Mercier, special issue of TTR 31 (2): 141–165. . By insisting on this double-bind, their self-definition and positioning in the new homeland seem to challenge the presupposed unity of a single, univocally defined culture, be it the source or the target, and consequently also question the difference substantialized in Toury’s conceptualizations.

The bordering (i.e., the act of drawing the border) if we use Sakai’s (2010)Sakai, Naoki 2010 “Dislocation in Translation.” In Translation in Japan, edited by Natalia Teplova, special issue of TTR 22 (1): 167–187. words, is even more difficult since a particular diasporic community was only partly defined by the use of a particular language. In the late 1920s the Slovene-American diaspora started experiencing a language shift, which Adamic described as follows: “In the majority of Czech, Polish and Yugoslav33.That is Slovene, Croatian, and Serbian (note by Adamic [1928]Adamic, Louis 1928 “The Bohunks.” Prosveta 21 (161): 7.). The historical and religious differences between these diasporas were considerable – see, for example Roucek (1935Roucek, Joseph S. 1935 “The Yugoslav Immigrants in America.” American Journal of Sociology 40 (5): 602–611. , 602): “Antagonism between Serbs, Croats, and Slovenians is such as to make any kind of co-operation exceptional.” families English is spoken habitually, although only the children, as a rule, speak it well” (Adamic 1928Adamic, Louis 1928 “The Bohunks.” Prosveta 21 (161): 7., 7). The same is described by Thernstrom, Orlov, and Handlin (1980Thernstrom, Stephan, Ann Orlov, and Oscar Handlin eds. 1980 Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups. Cambridge: Harvard University Press., 939) in the Harvard Encyclopedia of American Ethnic Groups:

The immigrant Slovenes attempted to teach the native language to their children, but generally they were not very successful. Without question most second-generation Slovene Americans acquired some familiarity with idiomatic Slovene from their parents, but they did not use it among themselves or when it was not absolutely necessary. Rarely do third- and later-generation Slovenes have any real command of the language.

Since the Slovene diaspora in this period used both languages, the borders of their émigré community did not only equal linguistic borders, which further complicates the definition of the community’s source and target languages.

In this article, I focus on the practice of translation in diasporic settings, carried out within the wider multilingual and multicultural society of the US in the interwar period, and argue that literary translations in diaspora periodicals in this period fulfilled different roles, including strengthening intracultural ties within the émigré community, and transferring information to the world outside the diaspora’s boundaries about a facet of Slovene culture that in their mind represented their community at its best.

In Section 2, I briefly discuss previous research on translations in periodicals. The description of the chosen methodological approach used in the archival and bibliographic research, and the relevance of the selected corpus are set out in Section 3. After presenting the results of the analysis in Section 4, I focus on the role of literary translation from Slovene into English in Section 5, and conclude the article in Section 6.

2.Translation in periodicals and translation in and by diaspora

The study of the role of literary translation in periodicals has recently attracted increased attention in the academic literature. The specifics of literary translation in periodicals has been researched in different periods: from the eighteenth century (e.g., Navarro and Poupeney 2019Navarro, Aura E., and Catherine Poupeney Hart 2019 “Translating from/for the Margins of Empire: The Gaceta de Guatemala (1797–1807) and the Enlightened Elites.” In Language, Translation and Empire in the Americas, edited by Roberto A. Valdeón, special issue of Target 31 (2): 207–227. ; Penso 2020Penso, Andrea 2020 “Novels, Translations and Reviews: A Digital Enquiry on Eighteenth Century Literary Journalism.” In Fólica, Roig-Sanz, and Caristia (2020, 225–246). ), through the nineteenth century (e.g., Wadsö-Lecaros 2011Wadsö-Lecaros, Cecilia 2011 “The Swedish Periodical Tidskrift för hemmet and the Woman Question in Sweden in the 1860s.” In Literature, Geography, Translation: Studies in World Writing, edited by Cecilia Alvstad, Stefan Helgesson, and David Watson, 108–119. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.; O’Connor 2019O’Connor, Anne 2019 “Translation in Nineteenth-Century Periodicals: Materialities and Modalities of Communication.” In Guzmán (2019, 243–264). ; De Clerke 2020De Clerck, Ernest 2020 “Eternal Problems: The Study of Stendhal in Translation in British Late-Romantic Periodicals.” In Fólica, Roig-Sanz, and Caristia (2020, 347–364). ) and the interwar period (e.g., Forbes 2020Forbes, Meghan 2020 “The Politics of Translation: Textual-Visual Strategies Towards Transnational Network Building in the Periodicals of the Czech Interwar Avant-Garde.” In Fólica, Roig-Sanz, and Caristia (2020, 365–384). ; Lovett 2019Lovett, Dustin 2019 “The Politics of Translation in the Press: Siegfried Kracauer and Cultural Mediation in the Periodicals of the Weimar Republic.” In Guzmán (2019, 265–282). ; Mus 2020Mus, Francis 2020 “Translation, Monolingualism and Multilingualism as Symptoms of Literary Internationalisation After the First World War: A Case Study of Belgian Periodicals in the Immediate After War Period.” In Fólica, Roig-Sanz, and Caristia (2020, 47–68). ; Sisto 2020Sisto, Michele 2020 “Literary Journals and Book Series as Agents of Consecration: Thomas Mann and Franz Kafka in the Italian Literary Field (1908–1938).” In Fólica, Roig-Sanz, and Caristia (2020, 69–94). ), to the post-war era, such as in post-Civil War Spain (Outon 2000Outon, Cristina Blanco 2000 “La España de posguerra y la poesía anglófona: Traducción y recepción en las revistas Escorial, Espadaña y Cántico [Postwar Spain and English poetry: translation and reception in the periodicals Escorial, Espadaña and Cántico ].” Babel 46 (4): 332–356. ), the German Democratic Republic (Owen 2011Owen, Ruth J. 2011 “Freedoms of Expression: Poetry Translations in the East Berlin Poesiealbum.” In Poetry and Translation, edited by Lawrence Venuti, special issue of Translation Studies 4 (2): 133–148.), and Soviet Russia (Bollaert 2019Bollaert, Charlotte 2019 “The Russian Thick Journal as a Discursive Space of Negotiation: Jean-Paul Sartre’s Reception in the Soviet Union during the Thaw Era.” In Guzmán (2019, 198–217). ). Translations in periodicals published outside Europe have also been examined. For example, Li (2019)Li, Bo 2019 “Serialized Literary Translation in Hong Kong Chinese Newspapers: A Case Study of The Chinese Mail (1904–1908).” In Guzmán (2019, 306–324). studies serialized literary translations in Hong Kong Chinese newspapers, and Çelik (2019)Çelik, Bilal 2019 “Translation in the Kurdish Magazine Hawar: The Making and Legitimization of a Cultural Identity.” In Guzmán (2019, 283–305). translations from and into Kurdish in the early twentieth century. In addition, in 2019 a special issue of the journal Translation and Interpreting Studies was dedicated to translation in periodical publications (Guzmán 2019Guzmán, María Constanza ed. 2019 Translation and/in Periodical Publications, special issue of Translation and Interpreting Studies 14 (2). ), and in 2020 a collective volume on literary translation in periodicals appeared, paying particular attention to methodological issues (Fólica, Roig-Sanz, and Caristia 2020Fólica, Laura, Diana Roig-Sanz, and Stefania Caristia eds. 2020 Literary Translation in Periodicals: Methodological Challenges for a Transnational Approach. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. ).

Translation in and by a diaspora, however, is relatively under-researched in the emerging field of Diaspora Studies (Asscher 2021Asscher, Omri 2021 “Translation as a Probe into Homeland-Diaspora Relations.” Translation Studies 14 (1): 36–50. , 37) as well as in Translation Studies.44.Studies of translations in diaspora periodicals are even rarer, despite the fact that periodicals are particularly well equipped to reflect current events and the zeitgeist in migrant communities. Although there seems to be a tendency to focus on the writings of the diaspora members in the language of the host country as a form of cultural translation (e.g., Steiner 2009Steiner, Tina 2009 Translated People, Translated Texts: Language and Migration in Contemporary African Literature. Manchester: St. Jerome.; Baldo 2019Baldo, Michela 2019 Italian-Canadian Narratives of Return: Analysing Cultural Translation in Diasporic Writing. London: Palgrave Macmillan. ), there are also some notable exceptions that study interlingual translation and diaspora: for example, Baldo (2013)Baldo, Michela 2013 “Landscapes of Return: Italian-Canadian Writing Published in Italian by Cosmo Iannone Editore.” In Global Landscapes of Translation, edited by Angela Kershaw and Gabriela Saldanha, special issue of Translation Studies 6 (2): 199–216. focuses on diasporic Italian Canadian writers and the translations of their work from English into Italian – that is, from the language of their new country to the language of their country of origin. Baer and Pokorn (2018)Baer, Brian James, and Nike K. Pokorn 2018 “Diaspora as a Distinct Site of Translational Activity: The Case of U.S. Immigrant Newspapers, 1917–1941.” In Minority and Migrant Intercultural Encounters: From Binarisms to Complexity, edited by Denise Merkle and Gillian Lane-Mercier, special issue of TTR 31 (2): 141–165. discuss two periodicals of Slovene and Russian diasporas in the US and argue that the roles of translations in the two periodicals were different, mainly because they reflected, on the one hand, the political orientations of the periodicals, and, on the other hand, these immigrant communities’ particular status and stage of cultural assimilation. And finally, Asscher (2021)Asscher, Omri 2021 “Translation as a Probe into Homeland-Diaspora Relations.” Translation Studies 14 (1): 36–50. accentuates the need to expand our knowledge of translation in and by diaspora, and calls for more case studies which would provide insight into the complexities of homeland-diaspora relations defined by the tensions between the hybridity and boundary maintenance typical of émigré communities. This study responds to his call.

3.Corpus and methodology

3.1 Prosveta and Nova Doba

In order to define the role of literary translations in the periodicals of the Slovene diaspora, I focus on the period between World War I and World War II, in particular the period between 1925 and 1939 (i.e., after the implementation of the Immigration Act of 1924 and the beginning of World War II). This period was chosen not only because it represents “one of the most formative periods in the development of the nation’s identity,” according to Gentzler (2008Gentzler, Edwin 2008 Translation and Identity in the Americas: New Directions in Translation Theory. Abingdon: Routledge., 27), but also because it was the golden age of US foreign newspapers (Douglas 1999Douglas, George H. 1999 The Golden Age of the Newspaper. Westport: Greenwood., 209) and Slovene diaspora periodicals. For example, the first Slovene newspaper in the US, Amerikanski Slovenec ‘American Slovene’, appeared in Chicago in 1891. Just thirty-six years later, in 1927, there were eighteen Slovene newspapers of different political orientations (from Communist through Republican to Catholic) and four almanacs published in the US by the Slovene émigré community (Jerič 1927Jerič, J. 1927 “Slovensko časopisje v Ameriki [Slovene newspapers in America].” In Koledar Ave Maria, 117–119. Chicago: Edinost Publ.). The number of Slovene newspapers rose until the end of World War II (the report by the Chicago Public Library Omnibus Project [1942]Chicago Public Library Omnibus Project 1942 Chicago Foreign Language Press Survey (CFLPS). Washington, D.C.: Work Projects Administration (WPA). lists twenty-five Slovene periodicals published in the US at the time), whereafter the numbers began to fall drastically.

In addition, this period was chosen because it was already marked by the transformation and gradual integration of the Slovene diaspora into US society,55.This process of gradual intergration was also exprienced by several other US diasporas in the interwar period, and was not unique to Slovene Americans. which is also reflected in its periodicals. For example, the Slovene weekly Nova Doba (from Cleveland, Ohio), reports that in 1933 five Slovene émigré newspapers66.Again this was not unique to the Slovene diaspora: the transformation of ethnic immigrant newspapers to English-language immigrant newspapers was a common phenomenon in this period in other diaspora communities as well – the turn to English was emblematic of the diasporas’ increasing acculturation. also contained English sections and thus accommodated to the new linguistic reality of their diaspora (Terbovec 1933Terbovec, Anton J. 1933 “Slovene Periodicals.” Nova Doba 9 (17): 4., 4). These newspapers were Ameriška domovina ‘American homeland’, Enakopravnost ‘Equality’, Glasilo KSKJ ‘KSKJ (American Slovenian Catholic union) Voice’, Nova Doba ‘New era’, Prosveta ‘The enlightenment’, and The Journal and Observer. Since the research subject and the fluidity of source and target culture boundaries demand that I pay attention to literary translation in different directions of transfer, I focus on two of these five newspapers which have a slightly different ideological orientation: Prosveta, established in Chicago, Illinois in 1916, and Nova Doba, established in Cleveland, Ohio in 1925.

Prosveta was the most popular left-wing or ‘progressive’ daily in the interwar period (in 1939 it had more than 11 600 subscribers; Zaitz [1940Zaitz, Frank 1940 “Koliko naročnikov imajo slovenski dnevniki v USA? [How many subscribers do Slovene dailies in the USA have?].” Ameriški družinski koledar: American Family Almanach 16: 214., 214]), mainly targeting a working-class readership.77. Prosveta is the only periodical of Slovene-American diaspora that is still published today, although it is no longer a Slovene daily. It is now an English-only online monthly (Pogačar 2017Pogačar, Timothy 2017 “Izseljenski tisk v Ameriki v digitalni dobi: Slovensko-ameriški časopis Prosveta [Immigration periodicals in the U.S. in the digital age: the Slovene-American newspaper Prosveta ].” Slavistična revija 65 (2): 343–53.). The newspaper, which was established by the Slovene National Benefit Society (a fraternal benefit society offering affordable life insurance and disability coverage to members of the Slovene émigré community), was typically four pages long and was published in Slovene. The first page reported international and national news, while the second page was filled with news from various Slovene settlements in the US, reporting mainly on the activities and meetings of different lodges, but also publishing death notices and memorials. Page three provided news from the country of origin, and page four was dedicated to literature, either in the original Slovene or translations into Slovene from various other European languages. On Wednesdays, Prosveta was longer (around 8 pages): additional pages were dedicated to reports on the functioning of the Slovene National Benefit Society, and from 1926 onwards also included the so-called “Prosveta English Section,” which published news from different Slovene settlements in the US (e.g., amateur sporting news, theatrical performances), and sometimes also some literary works in English (either original or translations from Slovene into English).

Between 1925 and 1939, Prosveta was edited by Jože Zavertnik (1916–1929) and Ivan Molek (1929–1944), both members of the Slovene diaspora. Zavertnik (1869–1929) emigrated to the US when he was thirty years old. A staunch social-democrat and steam-engine stoker by profession, he edited socialist and left-wing publications already in Austria-Hungary, and continued with his editorial work in the US until his death (Rozman [1986] 2013Rozman, Franc 2013. (1986) “Zavertnik, Josip (1869–1929).” Slovenian Biography. Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Scientific Research Centre SAZU. http://​www​.slovenska​-biografija​.si​/oseba​/sbi858712​/#slovenski​-biografski​-leksikon). His successor, Ivan Molek (1882–1962), emigrated to the US when he was only eighteen years old, and started working in Pennsylvania’s steel works and mines, where he soon became politically active and edited several left-wing, communist newspapers. Molek also wrote poems, prose, dramas, and popular science texts, and translated. He joined Prosveta when it was established and became its general editor in 1929 (Pirjevec 2013Pirjevec, Avgust 2013 “Molek, Ivan (1882–1962).” Slovenian Biography. Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Scientific Research Centre SAZU. http://​www​.slovenska​-biografija​.si​/oseba​/sbi374601​/#slovenski​-biografski​-leksikon), where he continued strengthening its left-wing orientation.

Nova Doba was the official publication of the South Slavonic Catholic Union (also a fraternal benefit society of Slovene immigrants) and was published once a week. Although the newspaper was published by an organization that had ‘Catholic’ in its title, the Union and its publication did not insist that its members should belong to any particular organized religion, ethnic group, or political or philosophical conviction (Friš 1994Friš, Darko 1994 “Jugoslovanska katoliška jednota (1898–1920) [Yugoslav Catholic Union (1898–1920)].” Dve domovini/Two Homelands 5: 37–62., 52). Nova Doba was edited by Anton J. Terbovc between 1925 and 1939. Terbovc (1882–1962) was a gardener by profession and emigrated to the US when he was twenty-four years old. He worked as a factory worker, gardener, travelling salesman, and assistant editor of different publications of the Slovene diaspora, including Prosveta. In 1925, he became the first editor of Nova Doba and remained in this position until his retirement (Bajec 2013Bajec, Jože 2013 “Terbovc, Anton J. (1882–1962).” Slovenian Biography. Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Scientific Research Centre SAZU. http://​www​.slovenska​-biografija​.si​/oseba​/sbi692073​/#slovenski​-biografski​-leksikon).

Nova Doba was typically four to eight pages long and was predominantly published in Slovene; however, English articles could also be found in its pages. The first page published global and local news, together with reports from Slovene settlements in the US and from the country of origin. Pages two and three, which were called “Juvenile Department,” printed articles and literary works targeted at young readers in Slovene and English. Page four was dedicated to the activities of the South Slavonic Catholic Union. Pages five and six were called the “English Section of New Era” and provided reports in English – the majority of which were written by subscribers. Occasionally, the English section also published English literary translations. The last two pages were dedicated to literature (in the original or in translation), and to reports in Slovene provided by the subscribers of the newspaper.

In both periodicals the reports from subscribers, which provided news from various Slovene settlements across the US, enabled the creation of the “imagined community” (Anderson 2006Anderson, Benedict 2006 Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. Revised ed. London: Verso., 25) of Slovene Americans. In these diasporic periodicals, Slovene immigrants who moved to the US from various parts of Austria-Hungary, and later from the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, found news about the activities of other Slovene Americans from Florida to Chicago. Even though members of the diaspora did not know each other personally, came from different corners of the country of origin, and were from different social classes, often even from different states, these periodicals made them believe that they nevertheless belonged to the same community. The newspapers thus provided the technical means through which the immigrants could re-present Slovene Americans (Anderson 2006Anderson, Benedict 2006 Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. Revised ed. London: Verso., 25), and their contributions became key to the building of the imagined community in the spirit of nineteenth-century nation building enterprises (see also Pogačar 2017Pogačar, Timothy 2017 “Izseljenski tisk v Ameriki v digitalni dobi: Slovensko-ameriški časopis Prosveta [Immigration periodicals in the U.S. in the digital age: the Slovene-American newspaper Prosveta ].” Slavistična revija 65 (2): 343–53.).

The editor of Nova Doba, for example, was aware of the periodical’s potential to unite its readers into an imagined community of equals, and described this aim as follows: “The union’s publication forms a kind of spiritual link between our members, who are scattered across this vast land that we have chosen for our homeland” (Terbovec 1927Terbovec, Anton J. 1927 “V tretjem letu [In year three].” Nova Doba 3 (1): 2., 2; my emphasis). By creating this spiritual link, Nova Doba and Prosveta attempted to unite their readers through the printed word of the community, so that Slovene Americans could imagine themselves as a nation in the making – a nation that at the same time felt connected to the Slovenes in Europe, to the American Slovenes living in different US states, and to other US citizens.

Apart from readers’ contributions, both publications addressed a larger public sphere through literary translations: both regularly published translations, and both also published English translations of Slovene literary works from the mid-1920s: Prosveta started publishing its English pages in 1926, and Nova Doba in 1927.

All issues of Prosveta for the period between 1925 and 1939 are available online on the Digital Library of Slovenia portal (http://​www​.dlib​.si/) in digitalized form in PDF format and as TXT files. They are also archived in the Periodical Department of the Slovene National and University Library in Ljubljana. Issues of Nova Doba are available only for the period between 1927 to 1939 – the first two years are missing. I analysed the printed issues of the newspapers because the digitalized versions often proved to be too dark and therefore hard to read. In cases where some issues were missing from the archives or were too brittle to handle, the Digital Library of Slovenia online versions or the versions available on the microfilm at the National Library were checked. In addition to the archival material, I consulted also the catalogues of literary works (original and in translation) published in Prosveta for the period between 1918 and 1935 available on the Wikisource platform (https://​sl​.wikisource​.org​/wiki​/Prosveta).

3.2Methodology

The research presented in this article is a part of a wider research project studying translations in selected periodicals of different US diasporas (see Baer and Pokorn 2018Baer, Brian James, and Nike K. Pokorn 2018 “Diaspora as a Distinct Site of Translational Activity: The Case of U.S. Immigrant Newspapers, 1917–1941.” In Minority and Migrant Intercultural Encounters: From Binarisms to Complexity, edited by Denise Merkle and Gillian Lane-Mercier, special issue of TTR 31 (2): 141–165. ). With regard to periodicals of the Slovene diaspora, we investigate the extent to which literary translations published in these periodicals contributed to the internal and external dialogics of the newspapers. The term ‘dialogics’, originating in Bakhtin’s (1984)Bakhtin, Mikhail Mikhailovich 1984 Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. theory of polyphony, is used here in the sense it was adapted and applied to translatological research by Tahir Gürçağlar (2019)Tahir Gürçağlar, Şehnaz 2019 “Periodical Codes and Translation: An Analysis of Varlık in 1933–1946.” In Guzmán (2019, 174–197). . According to Tahir Gürçağlar, internal dialogics refers to the way translations influence the relationship between different components of the publication, such as the type of material published in the publication, while external dialogics indicates the periodical’s discursive exchanges with a larger public sphere (Tahir Gürçağlar 2019Tahir Gürçağlar, Şehnaz 2019 “Periodical Codes and Translation: An Analysis of Varlık in 1933–1946.” In Guzmán (2019, 174–197). , 180). In our research we pay particular attention not only to the periodicals’ selections of the source texts, translators, translations’ intended readers, editors, editorial policies, funding organizations, and ideological and political positioning, but also to the framing or packaging of target texts (i.e., noting what other news or advertisements or pictures surround the translation on the actual page; see Kafh 2000Kahf, Mohja 2000 “Packaging ‘Huda’: Sha’rawi’s Memoirs in the United States Reception Environment.” In Going Global: The Transnational Reception of Third World Women Writers, edited by Amal Amireh and Lisa Suhair Majaj, 148–172. London: Garland.), and to the translations’ intended impact.

The research reported in this article is divided into two parts: a quantitative analysis of the presence of literary translation in Prosveta and Nova Doba between 1925 and 1939, and an analysis of the way the literary translations into English impacted the newspapers’ external dialogics with a larger public sphere. First, all issues of Prosveta (n = 4222) and Nova Doba (n = 675) from 1925 to 1939 (i.e., in total 4897 issues) were surveyed in order to identify the presence of literary translation. Only those works that were clearly identifiable as translations were included in the final analysis: literary texts that were published anonymously or under a pseudonym or a name that could not be identified were excluded from the category of translation, since there was a possibility that these were original pieces of writing. In addition, because I was mainly interested in the selection of separate, independent titles, works that were published in instalments (e.g., Dostoevsky’s Demons, which appeared in Prosveta continuously throughout 1921 and 1922 or Knut Hamsun’s Growth of the Soil, which was published in Nova Doba in instalments for three years, from 1935 to 1938) were counted as one item in the catalogue.

Next, all identified literary translations were classified into two broad categories according to the direction of transfer: (a) literary translations of Slovene works into English, and (b) literary translations into Slovene. Literary translations into Slovene were further classified into two sub-categories: (1) those whose aim was to educate readers,88.Since the distinction between the two categories is often not clear, only those literary translations that were published in series, where the editor clearly indicated that its aim was to raise the educational level of the readers, were classified as literature for education. For further detail see Pokorn and Pogačar (2022)Pokorn, Nike K., and Timothy Pogačar 2022 “Entertainment and Education through Literary Translation in a Diaspora Newspaper: Prosveta, a Newspaper of Slovene-American Émigré Community.” Slovo 13 (1): 115–128.. and (2) those whose aim was to provide entertainment. These two categories were identified on the basis of the editorial statements of both publications defining the general orientation of the two periodicals. For example, in the first issue of Prosveta of 1 July 1916, the editors write that the mission of the daily is “to educate working class in the progressive and modern spirit,” but they also add that the journal will bring “original stories and translations of good, modern writers, and from time to time also humorous writings to pass the time” (Zavertnik et al. 1916Zavertnik, Jože, Ivan Molek, Andrew Kobal, and Louis Beniger 1916 “Vabilo na naročbo. [Invitation to subscribe].” Prosveta 9 (27): 1., 1; my translation). Similarly, the general editor of Nova Doba describes the role of the weekly, arguing that the newspaper is “dedicated to the enhancement of brotherhood, mutual help, mutual knowledge and respect, but also to instruction and entertainment” (Terbovec 1927Terbovec, Anton J. 1927 “V tretjem letu [In year three].” Nova Doba 3 (1): 2., 2; my translation). In this article, I will focus on the first category – literary translations of Slovene works into English.

4.Instruction and entertainment

The analysis of all the existing issues of Nova Doba and Prosveta between 1925 and 1939 shows that both periodicals regularly published original and translated literary works. For example, in 1927, 12 literary works in total appeared in Nova Doba, and 10 of them (83%) were translations, while Prosveta published 196 (60%) literary translations out of 362 literary works in total. Literary translations were therefore important content in both publications.

In the period between 1925 and 1939, these two periodicals printed 1898 clearly identifiable literary translations (see Figure 1), with Prosveta publishing 98% (n = 1858) of these. The difference is partly due to the type of publication – Prosveta was a daily, appearing six times a week, while Nova Doba was a weekly – and partly to the fact that Nova Doba tended to serialize translations. Eight out of forty different translated works in Nova Doba were published in instalments over several years (for example, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island from 1927 to 1929, or Knut Hamsun’s Growth of the Soil from 1935 to 1938). In addition, the issues of Nova Doba for 1925 and 1926 are missing. It was possible, however, to identify at least one literary translation that was printed in Nova Doba in 1926: the first issues of Nova Doba from 1927 contained the continuation of the translation of Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt, which indicates that part of this translation had been published in the weekly in 1926. Despite these differences, a closer comparison of individual issues shows that both periodicals are similar in the fact that, with a few exceptions, every issue of both periodicals contained at least one passage taken from a literary translation.

4.1Entertainment

The vast majority, 99% (1875 in raw numbers), of the literary translations (shorter works and novels in instalments) were from various languages into Slovene, and were meant to provide entertainment to the readers.

During the period under investigation, Nova Doba published four translations of novels in serialized form: Conan Doyle’s The Lost World (1926–1927), Jaroslav Hašek’s The Good Soldier Svejk, (1927–1928), Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island (1927–1929), and Knut Hamsun’s Growth of the Soil (1935–1938). It does not appear that any translations were commissioned by the periodical itself. Prosveta serialized forty-six longer translations into Slovene between 1925 and 1939, among them Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer (1927), L. N. Tolstoy’s A Prisoner in the Caucasus (1928), Jack London’s The Sea-Wolf (1928–1929), Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment (1929), Conan Doyle’s The Lost World (1930), Jack London’s The Iron Hill (1932–1933), Upton Sinclair’s 100% – The Story of a Patriot, Louis Adamic’s Laughing in the Jungle (1933–1934), Emile Zola’s Germinal (1934), Maxim Gorky’s The Mother (1935), Jack London’s The Valley of the Moon (1935–1936), Hamsun’s Hunger (1936), Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov (1937–1938), Voltaire’s Candide (1938), and Jack London’s Hearts of Three (1939). Eight of these translations were commissioned by Prosveta (e.g., Sinclair’s 100% – The Story of a Patriot (1932)); however, the rest had previously been published in Europe and were reprinted in the newspaper (e.g., Dostoevsky, Hamsun).

In addition to longer texts, both publications also contained translations of shorter texts, often defined as humorous sketches or fairy tales. Nova Doba published translations of short stories by London, Henrik Sienkiewicz, Twain, H. C. Andersen, Hašek, and the Serbian author Branislav Nušić, among others. Prosveta preferred Russian authors, such as Anton Chekhov, Mikhail Zoshchenko, Gorky, Arkadii Averchenko, and Tolstoy, but also published shorter works by Rabindranath Tagore, Twain, Anatole France, Oscar Wilde and Guy de Maupassant (for more details see Pokorn and Pogačar [2022]Pokorn, Nike K., and Timothy Pogačar 2022 “Entertainment and Education through Literary Translation in a Diaspora Newspaper: Prosveta, a Newspaper of Slovene-American Émigré Community.” Slovo 13 (1): 115–128.).

4.2Education

In line with the general orientation of both publications, literary translations were also used to educate the readership, who were mainly working class. This was made explicit in Prosveta, which in 1927 introduced a section entitled Biseri iz svetovne literature ‘The gems of world literature’. The section provided critical introductions to and short translations of the work of thirty-one authors from the Western literary canon, ranging from Giovanni Boccaccio, William Shakespeare, and Jonathan Swift; through Percy Bysshe Shelley, Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, J. W. Goethe, Honoré de Balzac, Gustave Flaubert, Emile Zola, Edgar Allan Poe, Washington Irving, and Mark Twain; to Fyodor Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Chekhov, and Gorky (for more details see Pokorn and Pogačar [2022]Pokorn, Nike K., and Timothy Pogačar 2022 “Entertainment and Education through Literary Translation in a Diaspora Newspaper: Prosveta, a Newspaper of Slovene-American Émigré Community.” Slovo 13 (1): 115–128.).

4.3Translations into English

Mirroring the linguistic assimilation that occurred within the diaspora, both newspapers introduced English sections: between 1926 and 1939 Prosveta published twelve translations of Slovene literary works into English (among them two novels in instalments in 1926 and ten short stories in 1926, 1927, and 1929), while Nova Doba published fifteen English translations (three novels in serialized form in 1928, 1932, 1933, and 1936; eleven short stories; and a fairy tale in 1933).

Out of twenty-seven English translations, seventeen were translations of the works by Ivan Cankar (1876–1918), the most prominent modernist Slovene writer (six translations of his works were published in Prosveta and eleven in Nova Doba). The rest were translations of five short stories by five contemporary Slovene authors99.The authors were Alojz Kraigher (1877–1959), Zofka Kveder (1878–1926), Ivan Zorec (1880–1952), Milan Pugelj (1883–1929) with one short story each, and Anton Novačan (1887–1951) with two short stories. published by Prosveta, while Nova Doba published two novels by the first novelist in the Slovene language, Josip Jurčič (1844–1881), a chronicle of World War I by Ivan Matičič (1887–1979), and a Polish folktale translated from French into English. The choice of the original reflected the general orientation of the publication: Prosveta tended to publish translations of socially critical works, while Nova Doba mainly published works dealing with World War I.

All English translations in Prosveta were the work of Louis Adamic (1898–1951), who emigrated to the US at only fifteen due to his participation in the Yugoslav National Movement, which fought against the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In the US, he joined the army and became an American citizen in 1917. He then worked as a journalist and freelance writer, publishing all of his works, among them several novels, in English, for which he received a Guggenheim award in 1932. Although he was an ardent supporter of the partisan movement and the new Yugoslavia after World War II, he soon became critical of the new communist Yugoslav government, adding to his opponents from the old Yugoslav regime also the representatives of the new socialist state. As a tragic result, Adamic was found dead in 1951 at his home in Milford, New Jersey; he was most probably murdered, and the circumstances of his death have never been explained (Enyeart 2019Enyeart, John P. 2019 Death to Fascism: Louis Adamic’s Fight for Democracy. Urbana: University of Illinois Press., 135–161).

Nova Doba published twelve translations (all short stories by Ivan Cankar, together with a Polish folktale) by Anthony J. Klančar (1908–1977), who was a representative of the second generation of Slovene immigrants to the US. He was born in Cleveland, Ohio, to Slovene parents, graduated in English, and worked as a journalist for, among others, the Slovene émigré press. Very little is known of the other English translators: John Movern, who authored the English translation of Josip Jurčič’s novel George Kozjak: Slovenian Janisary, emigrated to the US in 1903 and served as a secretary to the American Yugoslav Union; Valentine Orehek (1876–1962), who translated a chronicle of World War I into English, was born in Austria-Hungary and died in New York; and Joseph L. Mihelic (1902–1989), who translated the first Slovene novel, Tenth Brother, by Josip Jurčič, was at the time a chemistry student at Dubuque University in Iowa.

Since all these translations were the first ever literary translations of Slovene literature into English, they were all commissioned by diasporic periodicals, and all translators belonged to the Slovene-American diaspora.

5.The role of translations into English: New generations and cultural representation

Translations into English in both periodicals were introduced to the readership using particular framing and packaging strategies. Before publishing the first ever translation of any Slovene literary work into English in 1926, Prosveta’s editors advertised this work in the Slovene and English sections of the newspaper. When the editors addressed their readers on the Slovene pages, it was clear that they targeted the second and third generation of their community: “We recommend our brothers and sisters to draw attention of their sons and daughters to Adamic’s translation of Yerney’s Justice.” (Zavertnik et al. 1926Zavertnik, Jože, Ivan Molek, Andrew Kobal, and Louis Beniger 1926 “Introduction to Slovene Literature.” Prosveta 19 (111): 6., 3; my translation)

In the English section, however, the editors revealed another aim of this translation, which introduced a new series of Slovene literature in English in Prosveta’s English section. Apart from presenting selected Slovene literary works translated into English to the new generations of their own diaspora, the aim of the series was also to offer to an English-speaking audience a selection of Slovene literature in English translation that best represented the Slovene culture:

The publication of this novel will be the first of a series of translations from the Slovenian through which we intend to acquaint our readers with various types of novels, romances, and poems written by Slovene authors. We are fully aware of the fact that you have not had an opportunity to read Slovene writings in the language you would clearly understand. Therefore, we commence with a new column on our page, »Slovene Literature«. In addition to the works of the various periods of Slovene literature, we will also publish short biographies and explanations. This, we hope, will be educational as well as interesting reading for everyone of our readers, and at the same time it will be an informative answer to all the numerous inquiries about Slovene literature.(Zavertnik et al. 1926Zavertnik, Jože, Ivan Molek, Andrew Kobal, and Louis Beniger 1926 “Introduction to Slovene Literature.” Prosveta 19 (111): 6., 6; my emphasis)

Similarly, the Catholic weekly Nova Doba started publishing an English section from 1925 onwards. At first, the English section in Nova Doba was intended mainly for children, but in 1928 it started targeting an adult audience as well. From 1928 to 1929, the weekly thus published in serialized form the translation of Josip Jurčič’s novel. In the introduction to Jurčič’s George Kozjak: Slovenian Janisary, its translator, John Movern, described the two groups of readers of his translation:

Presenting Slovene literature to the English-speaking public, I shall bring the English-speaking people closer to my countrymen, the Slovenes. […] [Jurčič] did not know that nearly fifty years after his death his heart-touching story “George Kozjak” would have been converted into English and presented to the English-speaking public and to the sons and daughters of his countrymen in the United States of America.(Movern 1928Movern, John 1928 “Translator’s Note.” Nova Doba 4 (25): 4., 4; my emphasis)

At a time when the diaspora experienced a language shift and the new generations no longer shared a common language with the newcomers, these translations of Slovene literary works into English supplemented the efforts of reports from subscribers in the periodicals, and helped form an imagined diasporic community of Slovene Americans.

The first authors published in both periodicals represented classical, canonized Slovene literature, such as the author of the first novel in the Slovene language – Jurčič in Nova Doba – and the most acclaimed and contemporary modernist prose writer, Ivan Cankar, in Prosveta and Nova Doba. When introducing their work in English, both periodicals tended to exaggerate their international fame and stressed their reputation in Europe. For example, Joseph L. Mihelic, a chemistry student from Iowa who translated Jurčič’s Tenth Brother in Nova Doba, wrote that Jurčič “ranks among the world’s greatest authors in the field of popular literature” (Mihelic 1932Mihelic, Joseph L. 1932 “On translation of Tenth Brother .” Nova Doba 8 (42): 4., 4). Similarly, the writer Ivan Cankar was praised by the editors of Prosveta:

Several works [of Ivan Cankar] have already been translated into English in Europe as well as in America. Works of the modern Slovene authors especially, have been translated into most of the European languages. Literary critics of other nations praise most of these translated works as the finest and most elaborate products of modern literature.(Zavertnik et al. 1926Zavertnik, Jože, Ivan Molek, Andrew Kobal, and Louis Beniger 1926 “Introduction to Slovene Literature.” Prosveta 19 (111): 6., 6)

Although Prosveta was, in fact, announcing the first and only translation of any Slovene literary work into English, the editors advertised the author of the original as already established in the English-speaking world through the translations of his works into English. The focus on the canonical authors in both periodicals and the manner in which these translations were packaged and framed indicate that the periodicals wanted to present Slovene literary works as equal in quality to and abreast of contemporary European and US literature.1010.The reception and analyses of Adamic’s translations of Cankar’s novel Yerney’s Justice and of the short story “A Cup of Coffee” are available in Kocijančič (1995)Kocijančič, Nike 1995 “On Louis Adamic’s translation of Cankar’s Hlapec Jernej in njegova pravica .” Slovene Studies 15 (1): 139–150. and Pokorn (2005)Pokorn, Nike K. 2005 Challenging the Traditional Axioms: Translating into a Non-Mother Tongue. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. respectively.

6.Conclusions: Translation as an intracultural act

The survey of two diasporic periodical publications of different ideological orientations published in the interwar period in the US shows that literary translations played multiple but important roles in the internal and external dialogics of both publications. Literary translations from different languages into the diaspora’s language of origin and into the dominant language of the host country appeared in almost every issue of both publications.

While literary translations into Slovene served as a means to implement the explicit aim of both publications, which was to instruct and entertain their readerships, translations into English were used for two additional purposes. First, by providing information on Slovene literature to second- and third-generation Slovene immigrants in the US in the interwar period, literary translations into English published in two Slovene-American newspapers were key to forming an imagined community of Slovene Americans. Second, by means of the English translation of specific literary works, the immigrant diaspora of Slovene Americans in the US attempted to construct and to communicate to mainstream US culture and other diasporas that were able to read English texts their own representation of their original culture, which evoked their homeland’s cultural, social, and geographical features, and presented the diaspora as belonging to a progressive, modernist culture, shaped by humanistic and Christian ideals, but whose roots stemmed from a traditional farmer community in the ethnic Slovene territory. The immigrant community was the promoter, creator, and receiver of these translations and represented the source and the target cultures at the same time, blurring clearly circumscribed borders of a distinct cultural unity.

Gentzler (2008Gentzler, Edwin 2008 Translation and Identity in the Americas: New Directions in Translation Theory. Abingdon: Routledge., 2) argues that “translation constitutes one of the primary means by which culture is constructed and is therefore important to any study of cultural evolution and identity formation.” The study of the role of translation in two interwar diasporic periodicals shows that, indeed, English translations of Slovene classical authors in the US by the Slovene diaspora constituted not only the export and import of literature at the same time, but was primarily an attempt towards identity formation of this diaspora, which felt distinct from, but nonetheless constituent of the US culture. Translation thus became a means of establishing not intercultural, but primarily intracultural communication within the diaspora, and then between the diaspora and other US ethno-linguistic communities that understood and read English, and finally, between the diaspora and the dominant US English-speaking community.1111.The reviews of the first English translation of a Slovene literary work, Yerney’s Justice, were published in three different Slovene-American periodicals, and only in one Slovene periodical published in the Slovene ethnic territory, which shows that the intended readership was primarily in the US. By contributing to the construction of national cultural images of Slovene Americans, translations became an active part of complex intracultural communications between a marginalized and dispersed immigrant linguistic community and the majority English-speaking society, both of which, together with other immigrant communities, helped constitute the US culture of the time.

Toury (1995Toury, Gideon 1995 Descriptive Translation Studies – and Beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. , 31) argues that when describing real-life phenomena in their immediate context “the obsession with restrictive definitions proves counter-productive.” He adds that, in the case of translation in particular, which is characterized “by its very variability: difference across cultures, variation within a culture and change over time” (ibid.), the insistence on fixing this term would constitute an untenable pretense. Toury is right – restrictive definitions are indeed counter-productive: the study of translation practiced by and for a diasporic community living in a multicultural state reveals the fluidity of the notions we use and questions the unity and univocal meaning of culture by showing that translation is not only an intercultural activity but may become an intracultural fact that constitutes the very culture it belongs to.