Seruya, Teresa, D’hulst, Lieven, Assis Rosa, Alexandra and Moniz, Maria Lin, eds. (2013): Translation in Anthologies and Collections (19th and 20th Centuries). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 287 p.

Anthologies and collections, considered by some scholars a genre and by others just a format, contain a vast cumulus of information on source and target cultures, publishing policies, authors, editors and translators (sometimes even readers), socio-historical contexts and coercive forces featuring polysystems.

So far, anthologies have been an object of creativity rather than of analysis. Literary critics, authors, translators, editors and cultural agents, have become occasional anthologists, but not many scholars have devoted their academic efforts to scrutinizing anthologies from a multifocal perspective, as this volume does. The systematic interest in the anthological genre is, as the editors state, very recent, with landmarks like Korte (2000) and Odber de Baubeta (2007). Their borderline condition, between engaged literature, committed selection based on different criteria (quality, theme, chronology, geographic area, etc.) and cultural policy/propaganda, turns anthologies into problematic products, suffering from multiple overlapping personalities and touching on the very sensitive chord of representativeness within the source literary framework and via selection and translation also within the target one.

Apart from the novelty of its research object, this volume presents interesting methodologies, as well as original viewpoints (see Gombár’s comparison between translation propaganda in Hungary and Portugal) and extrapolations (such as Uribarri’s insight into the philosophy collections published in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in Spain, or Martha Cheung’s introspective exercise, making a critique of her own critique of Chinese Discourse on Translation in her anthology which she considers a “therapeutic project”).

The book is structured in three balanced sections (each of five or six chapters) devoted to 1) discursive issues (both textual and paratextual) as well as anthologizing practices; 2) editorial policies with a special focus on canonization image building and the role played by anthologies in these purposeful actions; 3) censorship in its various forms and strategies, including blacklisting and even “whitelisting” i.e., recommending books, as we see in Lombez’s study on the Otto and Matthias lists in occupied France. Equally valuable is the coverage of two complicated centuries for Europe: the nineteenth, with its social changes, upheavals and fall of empires, and the twentieth, with its wars, dictatorships and the end of colonial systems, with their tragic aftermaths, the effects of which are still being felt today.

In their Introduction, the editors start from Greek and Latin etymological definitions to distinguish between anthology and collection, and to observe that this genre is in line with the postmodern atmosphere of fragmentation of (personal and communal) identities in Western cultures. This “anthropological object” can be defined according to D’hulst (p. 8) in linguistic, geocultural, generic, historical or thematic terms, whereas its features are physical, institutional, formal, semantic and functional. From a functionalist viewpoint, the skopos of anthologies is to offer pleasure, structure, accessibility or profit, and to educate, preserve and disseminate values, innovate and protect cultural heritage (p. 5). Since they represent a recontextualized structured selection, they can be representative for a theme, genre, author, period or artistic movement. Translated anthologies add to this classification the categories of: one or several source languages, national or regional authors, and translator or publisher as an anthologist. The first section opens with the study by Lieven D’hulst, who surveys the anthologies of translated texts published in France in the nineteenth century and concludes that these do not differ so much in concepts and terms from those of so-called original works, since they both depend on auctorial and editorial decisions, they share discursive and institutional strategies, as well as aims such as the reproduction of classical canons, literary renewal and the revival of the national cultural heritage. Thus, since they do not belong to national literatures, they can be studied from an intercultural transfer approach (p. 34). A very interesting discussion on terminology in French and evolving concepts is provided.

Alexandra Assis, in turn, launches a series of questions related to authorship (of text and translation/selection) as she approaches English short stories anthologies published in Portugal, oscillating between creative rewriting, adaptation and manipulation (p. 35). She interestingly suggests studying a rather unfrequented field: the mutual influence source and target cultures exert via anthologies. Her discussion on the external and internal history of translation is also visited in this volume by Pieta (p. 154) and the metaphor of “comet’s tail text” is introductory for an analysis of eight collections by seven publishers comprising 140 titles in TL with only eighteen in SL, which she divides into four groups according to their explicitness or opaqueness in revealing authors’ names. These successive versions of one original text show us that the anthological genre is consubstantial to translation.

Marta Pacheco investigates the European turn to the East and Oriental otherness starting with the second half of the nineteenth century, a fact also observed by Seruya (p. 175). By means of the Lambert-Van Gorp model, she analyzes the translation of a book of Chinese songs (Cancioneiro Chinez) into Portuguese by Antonio Teijo via the French version by Judith Gautier (1867). She concludes that the Portuguese volume is a domesticated text in rhymed verse intended to distance itself from French central literature (Le livre du Jade opting for prose poems) and to move closer to the Galician “cancioneiro” style. However, the Cancioneiro Chinez remained a milestone of Orientalism in Portugal at a time when Chinese was one of the least translated languages worldwide. On the other hand, Martha Cheung handles ethical, ideological and political issues related to identity and representation as developed in her own “Anthropology of Chinese Discourse on Translation” in a valiant “academic navel gazing” exercise, starting from the slogan “think global, act local, speak glocal.”

The first section ends with Sabio Pinilla’s systematic study of fourteen anthologies of texts on Translation Theory published in the Iberian Peninsula between 1987 and 2009, concluding that the numerous anthologies published in that period are a consequence of the institutionalization of T&I studies in the Peninsula and provide didactic support for subjects like Translation History or Theory. Moreover, their main profiles are Eurocentered, general, universal anthologies and collections focused on the communication between the two neighbouring countries.

The second section features the comparative methodology applied by Ana Maria Bernardo in her study of four world poetry anthologies, none of which bear this term in their title. Two are Portuguese and two German in order to signal the role of translation in the design of an anthology, bearing in mind Goethe’s famous statement: “translatability is a sign of grandeur,” as well as the selection criteria priorities in each country. Since the “florilegium” of ancient times, Germany has followed a tradition of well-developed, documented and analyzed collections, while in Portugal they scarcely existed. Bernardo tries to determine whether interferences are reciprocal in the national-foreign literatures relation (p. 111). She concludes that the main interest when selecting poets, cultures, works and translations for these anthologies (regarded as four different “modes of reading the map of the world poetry”) is to present the most relevant works over centuries to a wide audience within the stability provided by the literary canon (p. 120).

From a more recent sociological turn in TS, João Almeida Flor observes that diplomatic relations contributing to cultural exchange and industrialization in the late nineteenth century influenced publishing productivity, dividing the market into prestigious, modestly circulating, canon literature, and literature for women and the petty bourgeoisie, which was widely disseminated and extremely onerous (p. 126). Intellectual property is recognized (1867) and Portuguese publishers gravitate around cosmopolitan France, while catalogues are major landmarks in translated literature at the time.

In her case-study, Vanessa Castagna analyzes the short stories series published by Portugalia Editora in the 1940s and 1950s, in search of patterns of selection, introduction (by means of paratexts) and canon formation. Among them, the Hungarian short stories for instance speak about the 1956 repressed revolt against Communist rule with an impassioned preface on intellectuals opposing Communism in an attempt to show they share the same values as the Salazar regime (p. 145). The USA, homeland of short stories par excellence, where this genre is at once popular and intellectual, represents an inspiration to Portuguese anthologists who aim to show a genre famous “all over the world except in Portugal” (p. 148). This attitude allows the “New Romanian Short Stories” edited and almost entirely translated by Victor Buescu to appear, comprising thirty texts (of five to ten pages each, later called sketches) in an “unabridged version” the reader is warned, since texts were often shortened for commercial interest at the time (p. 144). This chapter concludes that despite censorship, Portuguese publishers tried to update tastes, introducing foreign classics but also less known literatures and emerging sub-genres.

This is partially corroborated by Hanna Pieta’s study on translations from Polish literature between 1855 and 2009, a testimony of the cultural relations between two semi-peripheral languages. Starting from a corpus of 145 book-length translations, Pieta discovers that 75% are indirect translations (via French or English) and that the first peak in demand was the beginning of the twentieth century (after Sienkiewicz’s Nobel Prize award) followed by a period of stagnation until the 1980s when Portuguese society became interested by Pope Vojtyla or Solidarnosc. Polish collection profiles refer to genre, topic, status and addressee, with ideological shifts (Poland joining the UE, the collapse of Communism) representing the most popular theme.

The last chapter of this section belongs to Teresa Seruya, who describes the Estado Novo (1933-1974) with a focus on Indian, Chinese, Arabic and Japanese short story anthologies motivated by the colonialist mentality of “civilizer” with its “mythical past deemed to legitimize the present.” Seruya compares the period of the First Republic (1910-1926, exhibiting an interest for Orientalism but still seeing Portuguese Expansion as a “meeting of cultures”) to that of the Estado Novo talking about the “colonizing action of the Portuguese,” reviving the exotic orientalism of the nineteenth century and the paternalistic, elitist, authoritarian tone. One of her conclusions is that publishers do not have a special interest in these literatures (with their careless editions, and prefaces containing disparaging judgements) due to their lack of market demand. Nevertheless, they do perform the ideological function of stereotyping.

The last section of this volume tackles the issue of censorship and begins with Patricia Anne Odber de Baubeta who investigates the anthologies intended for adult readers in the SL, but appropriated by editors for juvenile audiences in the TL. Swift, Dafoe, Conan Doyle and Verne are examples of such adaptation processes (p. 190). Publishers like Verbo with its Série 15 imported from France or the Spanish Fher with thirty volumes in the 1970s, in which translators often resorted to the “textual elimination” already announced by Bastin in the Routledge Encyclopaedia when explaining adaptation and its motives, or Minerva Italica (later Mondadori), all fail to address the profound changes that took place in European societies after the Second World War.

Christine Lombez analyzes the ambiguous relation between occupiers and occupied, as reflected in the “Anthologie de la poésie allemande des origines à nos jours” (Paris, 1943) with paratexts by K. Epting, Director of the German Institute in Paris, under whose aegis the book is published by “Stock” led by Jacques Chardonne, a collaborationist writer. The French literary market was controlled from 1940 through a powerful coercive mechanism: blacklisting and whitelisting. Thus, the Ministry of Propaganda issued the Otto list to ban certain works of a “tendentious, misleading spirit that poisoned French public opinion” and at the same time, the Matthias list to recommend German works for translation into French, whose publishing would be subsidized by the Vichy Government. As a response to the collaborationist “Anthologie,” in which names like Heine or Brecht are obviously missing while other anti-Nazi authors like Morgenstern, Rilke and Britting, as well as Hofmannsthal, an Austrian poet of Jewish descent, are surprisingly included, a “counter-anthology” was published in 1944 by Editions Minuit aimed at reestablishing the prestige of German authors who were ignored by the Third Reich.

Cristina Gómez Castro and Carmen Camus Camus focus on censorship in Spain under the Franco regime through the analysis of short-story anthologies translated from US pulp magazine serials dealing with horror plots in the case of the former and western stories in the case of the latter. As shown, translated anthologies were closely scrutinized in search of sexual and religious allusions, political beliefs and improper language. The case of science fiction is particularly striking with 53 files recorded by the Official Records Bureau, out of which 29 were rejected, 18 authorized without further hindrance, and six authorized after previous cuts on grounds of sexual morals and improper language. Translators opted for omitting, softening or commuting content, refocalizing, or paraphrazing. However, the same situation is depicted by Camus in the case of westerns, extremely popular during the Franco period, deliberately encouraging local authors into imitation and pseudotranslation, which many indeed chose in the 1950s and 1960s.

Ibon Uribarri raises the question of censorship in the case of philosophy anthologies in Spain, showing that the conflict between modern secular philosophy featuring European thought in the nineteenth century and Catholicism, the dominant power in the symbolic field, had been a constant. The background to this situation goes back to 1478 when the Inquisition began controlling all printed works. On this obscure canvas, translation plays a decisive role in seeking to modernize Spanish economic, social and political spheres, otherwise mired in philosophical illiteracy with an education system in the hands of the church (the main European texts were untranslated in Spain before 1860). Uribarri makes an interesting point: apart from censorship filters, there are other equally harmful mechanisms of coercive force such as destructive criticism, blacklisting, silencing, economic constraints, denigrating of translators, imprisonment, and exile, which cloistered freedom of thought. Along with translation, anthologizing played a key role in gathering authors banned by tools like the Index librorum prohibitorum issued by the Catholic Church and valid until 1966. The most outstanding anthologists-translators were Azcárate (Biblioteca filosófica), Zozaya (Biblioteca Económica Filosófica), and Ortega y Gasset (Revista de Occidente), but they were either blocked or expelled due to their democratic and secular ideals.

Zsófia Gombár adopts an original perspective to compare propaganda and censorship mechanisms employed by left- versus right-wing dictators. While in Communist Hungary the new society was being reeducated in the spirit of classical values and anthologies (especially of poetry with 119 volumes between 1949 and 1974), in Salazar’s Portugal society was deliberately kept in ignorance and the lack of governmental support obliged publishers to opt for profitable bestsellers, hence the clear dominance of crime fiction books and only five translated poetry anthologies during the entire period. The most frequently anthologized authors in Hungary were Shakespeare and Hardy, whereas in Portugal they were Christie, Charteris and Clarke. This shows how circumspect the Hungarian totalitarian regime was towards contemporary authors, abiding by the principle “the deader, the better.” While Hungarians read prestigious literature massively and at very low prices, the Portuguese lacked access to universal literature masters due to the cost factor.

Two more aspects are perhaps worth mentioning before we draw our final impressions on this book. In the first place, the fact that all but one of the chapters are written in English is striking since one would expect bilingualism, if opted for, to be more convincingly represented. Secondly, the relation between title and contents could perhaps be improved on. On reading the title, we anticipate a more comprehensive framework to depict the situation either continentally or perhaps worldwide, or in some other countries relevant in terms of anthologizing records on the European continent. We receive exhaustive information on Portugal, ample on Spain, profound insights into the French context, some data on the Hungarian situation, and a limited view on the German and Italian ones, but no pan-European overview to include other countries with a strong tradition in translating foreign literature (e.g., Romania) or those with a high print volume in the anthological genre nowadays (e.g., the UK). Nonetheless, the variety of source languages and cultures dealt with throughout the book prevent the approach from becoming monochrome. All in all, the volume is essential for its novel foci and courageous critical stances. It reveals surprising facts about anthologies and transla-anthologists, and will surely be a useful tool for scholars and students alike. Indeed, chapters like the Introduction or Lieven D’hulst’s provide valuable methodological patterns to be applied in further efforts, since this seems to be just the tip of the anthological research iceberg.