Appel à contribution : “Translators”
Revue Yale French Studies n° 151 (à paraître à l'été 2027)
Research in Translation Studies has illuminated many aspects of the field by exploring the history of translation and developing theoretical approaches that account for sociology and ethics of translating. Yet we still know surprisingly little about translators themselves – their lives, their working methods, their networks, and in some cases even their names. Recent work has begun to shed new light on the lives of translators, their cultural significance throughout the centuries, their role in the development of national literatures, and the dissemination of knowledge. If we are to gain a deeper understanding of the individual and subjective dimension of translation, however, there is still much work to be done as far as translators from the French or into French are concerned. The archival turn in Translation Studies offers an opportunity to find out more, and gain a better understanding of a complex practice that should be of interest for textual genetics, archival studies, sociology, comparative literature, and the history of the book.
Indeed, for the last fifteen years or so, institutions and archives around the world have been making translators’ collections available to researchers: a host of drafts, diaries, correspondence with authors and publishers, contracts, proofs, and other documents are now easily accessible and exploitable. Together with translators’ prefaces, interviews, and memoirs, these rich and diverse materials – in Genettian terms, the avant-texte, the peritext and the epitext – should help contributors to this special issue reconstruct intellectual biographies of translators, enhancing our understanding of their perspectives regarding the aesthetic, political, and ethical dimensions of their practice, while “capturing the person in their social entirety, their historical and cultural embedding, and including the life circumstances in which the translator has not only worked but also lived” (Kaindl 2024).
1. The avant-texte: translators at work
What exactly are the mental and scriptural processes involved in a text “becoming” another text in another language? To better understand how translations come into being, we will be looking at translators’ working documents. Translation archives can shed light on translators’ creativity and working processes by enabling us to find out when, in what order, at what pace, from what original text, with the help of what secondary sources, thanks to what collaborations, under what material conditions, and with what tools, a translation came into being.
2. The peritext: translators as writers
Translators are often educated commentators of their own practice. Their “invisibility” has become something of a commonplace since Lawrence Venuti’s (1995) seminal essay; however, whether in a footnote, in an interview about their work or in a preface, translators sometimes make illuminating remarks about their relationship with the text, the difficulties they have encountered with a particular endeavor, or the art of translation in general. This section deals with translational writings (prefaces, memoirs, essays) that form a wealth of unexpected intuitions and meta-translational reflections, including memoirs by translators, and the more recent genre of “autotheoretical translation memoirs” (Grass 2024).
3. The epitext: translators as people
This section will mostly focus on translators’ correspondences to create “micro-histories […] reclaiming the details of the everyday lives and working processes of sometimes little-known or forgotten translators” (Munday 2014). Whether in edited collections (Delisle 1999, 2002; Renouard & Kelly 2013; Washbourne 2024), or in monographies (Guzman 2011; Hersant 2024; Sardin 2025), scholars have put such documents to good use to draw portraits of translators from a wide range of countries and centuries. Correspondence may shed light on another little-known aspect of the translation process: the invisible collaboration between the translator and the author, or other seldom seen agents such as revisers, spouses, friends, colleagues, or copyeditors, sometimes also accompanied by reflections on practice.
Contributions to this issue may address one or more of the following questions:
• What is gained by examining the translation process instead of (or in addition to) the final product – the printed book? Why have the working documents of some literary translators survived, while others have been lost or forgotten? Do the traces on the page of the translator's work reveal unexpected collaborations (e.g. with the author) or the intervention of unsuspected third parties (e.g. the editor or the reviser)? Are there theoretical and/or sociological differences between translators in France, in French-speaking countries, and the United States?
• What methodologies are available to researchers in translation genetics? What can translation theorists learn from other disciplines that study and theorize archives? How can the archival approach enrich translation analytics, and what are its constraints or limitations?
• What can learning more about the microhistories and modes of working of a translator reveal about the state of world literature? How does the translator – and how do other agents that the translator relies upon – impact and inflect book culture and the transmission of world literature?
• What difficulties does the researcher face when analyzing working documents located outside libraries and other institutions? Does the proliferation of personal computers, translation technologies, databases, and other digital media pose specific problems for this approach to translation studies?
• NB: With the aim of enlarging the scope of this volume, proposals concerning translators and translations from French-speaking countries outside of Europe as well as translators working in time periods before the XXth century are particularly welcome.
Abstracts of no more than 600 words to be submitted by the 1st of February 2026
Submission of completed articles in English, between 3,750—5,000 words, by the 1st of August 2026
Please send an abstract with a short biographical note to patrick.hersant@ens.fr
Selected Bibliography
Allen, E. & Bernofsky, S. (eds) (2013) Translation: Translators on their Work and What it Means, New York: Columbia University Press.
Berman, A. (1995) Pour une critique des traductions: John Donne, Paris: Gallimard.
Buffagni, C., Garzelli, B. & Zanotti, S. (eds.) (2011) The Translator as Author: Perspectives on Literary Translation, Berlin: Lit Verlag.
Chesterman, A. (2009) ‘The name and nature of translator studies’, Hermes, 42, p. 13–22.
Cordingley, A. (2024) ‘Theoretical Challenges for a Genetics of Translation’, Translation Studies, 17, 1, p. 1–18.
Cordingley, A. & C. Montini, C. (eds) (2015) Towards a Genetics of Translation, special issue of Linguistica Antverpiensia (NewSeries), 14.
Cordingley, A. & Hersant, P. (eds) (2021) Translation Archives special issue of Meta, 66, 1.
Delisle, J. (ed) (1999) Portraits de traducteurs, Arras: Artois Presse Université.
Delisle, J. (ed) (2002) Portraits de traductrices, Arras: Artois Presse Université.
De Biasi, P.-M. (1996) ‘What is a Draft? Toward a Functional Typology of Genetic Documentation’, Yale French Studies, 89, p. 26–58.
Deppman, J., Ferrer, D. & and Groden, M. (eds) (2004) Genetic Criticism: Texts and Avant-Textes. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Foscarini, F., MacNeil, H., Mak, B. & Oliver, G. (eds) (2016) Engaging with Records and Archives: Histories and Theories. London: Facet Publishing.
Genette, G. (1997) Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, transl. Jane E. Lewin, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Grass, D. & Robert-Foley, L. (2024) ‘The Translation Memoir: An Introduction’, Life Writing, 21, 1, p. 1–9.
Guzman, M. C. (2011) Gregory Rabassa’s Latin American Literature A Translator’s Visible Legacy, Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press.
Hersant, P. (ed) (2024) Brouillons de traduction, special issue of TTR, 36, 2.
Hersant, P. (ed) (2020) Dans l’archive des traducteurs, special issue of Palimpsestes, 34.
Hersant, P. &Livak, L. (2024) Portrait d’une traductrice. Ludmila Savitzky à la lumière de l’archive, Paris: Sorbonne Université Presses.
Kaindl, K., Kolb, K. & Schlager, D. (eds) (2021), Literary Translator Studies, London: John Benjamins.
Kaindl, K. (2024) ‘The translator’s nested identities: translator studies and the auto/biographical turn’, Perspectives, p. 1–13.
Lowe-Porter, H. T. (1966) ‘On Translating Thomas Mann’, in John C. Thirlwall, In Another Language, New York, Alfred A. Knopf.
Mitchell, B. (2013) ‘The Barbara Wright Archive at the Lilly Library,’ in M. Renouard and D. Kelly, Barbara Wright: Translation as Art, London: Dalkey Archive.
Munday, J. (2013) ‘The Role of Archival and Manuscript Research in the Investigation of Translator Decision-Making’, Target, 25, 1, p. 127–40.
Munday, J. (2014) ‘Using Primary Sources to Produce a Microhistory of Translation and Translators: Theoretical and Methodological Concerns’, The Translator, 20, 1, p. 64–80.
Nunes, A. et al. (eds) (2020) Genetic Translation Studies, London: Bloomsbury.
Pickford, S. (2025) Professional Translators in Nineteenth-Century France, New York: Routledge.
Renouard, M. & Kelly, D. (eds) (2013) Barbara Wright: Translation as Art, London: Dalkey Archive.
Robert-Foley, L. (2024), Experimental Translation: The Work of Translation in the Age of Algorithmic Production, London: Goldsmiths Press.
Sardin, P. (2025) Barbara Bray, A Woman of Letters, London: Routledge.
Scott, C. (2006) ‘Translating the literary: Genetic criticism text theory and poetry’, in S. Bassnett (ed), The Translator as Writer, London: Continuum.
Van Hulle, D. (2022) Genetic Criticism. Tracing Creativity in Literature, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Washbourne, K. (2024) Translators on Translation. Portraits of the Art, London: Routledge.