Monday, March 9, 2009

Galician Literature in English Translation

What books of Galician literature have already been published in English? How many of them are individual titles and how many are anthologies by a single or multiple authors?

The number of books being translated into and out of a language is a sign of how much that language is in dialogue with other cultures and languages, so it’s important to keep track of the books in translation that have been published. The Consello da Cultura Galega produced a list in 2003, and Olga Castro of Vigo University produced another list as an appendix to her paper at the Congress on Plácido Castro and His Time held in November 2005. Vigo University also has a database of literary translations published since 1980.

Here Jonathan Dunne has produced a list of books of Galician literature published in English translation, with links to pages of relevance to each individual publication! Something to celebrate, and also something to work towards…

3 comments:

  1. Non paras, Jonathan! Non coñecía aínda este blog. Só podo darche os parabéns por tan tan importante e interesante traballo.

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  2. I completely agree that "the number of books being translated into and out of a language is a sign of how much that language is in dialogue with other cultures and languages", so I think your project of listing these translations is very important. However, I noticed that your list does not differentiate whether the translations into English have been made from Galician or from Spanish. For example, as far as I know, both books from Domingo Villar have been translated from the Spanish self-translation and not from the Galician original. So it might be very revealing to indicate in your list whether the translations have been done directly from Galician and make a separate counting for books translated directly from the Galician language.

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  3. Thanks for your comment, Eva. I enjoyed your blog on self-translation. Then there's the interesting case of "To the Winds Our Sails" with translations done into English and Irish using an English crib by Minia Bongiorno (translations from English). Or the case of published translations from Galician done by non-native English speakers. There's also the question of whether the book existed in Galician or has been put together in English and contains only Galician literature / translations into English. I have stuck to books of Galician literature published in English, excluding picture books and promotional material.

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