The War Novel in the Post-War Years in France and Britain: Comparative Perspectives

Transcultural memory and literary translation: Mapping the Field (with a case study on Lydie Salvayre’s Pas pleurer and its Spanish translation)

“…Translation produces contact zones and permits transgressions; at the same time, it is itself a liminal phenomenon that makes borders visible in the first place. Translations draw on a “play of difference and similarity, of distance and proximity” (Kershaw, 2019: 268). On the one hand the translation reconfigures the source text in another language; on the other hand it never completely flattens out the source text’s particular singularity because it adapts the text to the needs of the target culture in which it achieves an existence in its own right.…”

“…As translation studies scholar Dizdar (2009: 90) puts it, “a ‘translational turn’ can only take place effectively if all attempts to broaden the concept of translation (and/or to use it in a metaphorical sense) have ‘translation proper’ as their point of reference.” One of the challenges of future research lies in overcoming this dichotomy of a literal and a metaphorical understanding of the concept, of the narrow concept of “translation proper” on the one side and the broad concept of “culture as translation” on the other. 5 A promising step in this direction is Angela Kershaw’s integrative method of “reading translationally” which is informed by Brodzki (2007):“Reading translationally never discards actual translation , that is, translation understood as a contact between (at least) two different languages, even as it locates interlingual transfer as a practice that is inseparable from a wide range of other material, social, political, and textual operations.” (Kershaw, 2019: 8)…”

The haze of the Shoah

“…Born Anna Regina Szternfinkiel in Lublin, Poland, the only child of a secular and assimilated Jewish family, Anna Langfus grew up in a comfortable environment 4 . She studied in Lublin's best secondary school, learning and mastering French during her teenage years, contrary to the semi‐legend she carved following her arrival in Paris, whereby she tended ‘to exaggerate her lack of fluency in French’ (Kershaw, 2019, 253) 5 . In 1938, she married Jakub Rajs.…”

“…Some Langfus commentators have written of her decision to emigrate (see Kershaw, 2019, 246). In the conversation with Rawicz, quoted above, Langfus herself asserted her willingness to leave Poland, which she was able to do endowed with some financial means and a good grasp of the French language.…”

Born translated memories: Transcultural memorial forms, domestication and foreignisation

“… 2. The combined perspective of memory and translation is also taken by Kershaw (2019) in her study of the movement of literary memories of WWII from France to Britain in 1940–1960. …”