The Belated Translations of Texts by Frances Burney and George Eliot

• Lorenzo Modia, María Jesús ^[1]
  1. [1] Universidade da Coruña

     Universidade da Coruña

     A Coruña, España

     
• Localización: Concepts, Discourses, and Translations / Barbara Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (ed. lit.), Marcin Trojszczak (ed. lit.), 2022, ISBN 9783030960988, págs. 263-277
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This article analyses the belated translation of English literary texts into Spanish as exemplified in the cases of two women writers: Frances Burney and George Eliot. The reception of both Burney and Eliot in Spanish in the Iberian Peninsula has been irregular regarding both the works translated and the periods in which they were issued. Although it is known that one of Eliot’s novels was published in Spanish in the nineteenth century—in an abridged edition—immediately after having been published in England, the Spanish reading public had to wait until the twentieth, or even until the twenty-first century, to enjoy the complete literary work of these English authors. This presentation will explore the reasons behind this deleterious practice in the transnational transmission of literature and culture from the theoretical framework of reception studies, as developed by Ingarden (1989), Iser (1993), Jauss (1982) and Di Giovanni and Gambier (2018), gender studies (Gilbert and Gubar, 1984; Spencer, 2015; Todd, 1989), and postcolonial translation (Bassnett & Trivedi, 1999; Lefevere, 2016; Venuti, 1998). Translation into Spanish was not a neutral task during most of the twentieth century, in particular, during Francoism (1936–1975), when all texts had to be thoroughly revised through the compulsory censorship system, and, as a consequence, they could be either rejected, or authorized—sometimes with deletions or changes—so that many texts, particularly if coming from the English-speaking world were never read in Spanish translation until the present day. This study will focus on recent translations of works by the above-mentioned authors and how they are placed in the literary system of the target language.