Chapter 3. Poetry translation webs
3.3.3.1 Translators, projects and poets
One way of assessing translators’ involvement with a region’s poetry, and how
richly networked they are with others working to transmit that poetry, is to count
how many projects and poets they have been involved with.
Figure 8 shows that about half (21/44) of the translators participated in one
Bosnian poetry project each. The rest participated in several projects – with one
translator (Amela Simić), no fewer than 11 projects. As many projects (25/59, or
42%) involved multiple translators, this will have increased their likelihood of
working with other translators. Figure 9 shows that 62% of translators (26/42^9 )
translated works by one source poet. A sizeable minority (38%), however, trans-
lated works by several poets – with Mario Suško translating no fewer than 31 poets
(plus his own work)^10 for his Contemporary Poetry of Bosnia and Herzegovina
(1993). Multi-project and multi-poet translators arguably show a longer-term, wid-
er commitment to Bosnian poetry. Moreover, they are also more richly networked
with editors, poets, fellow translators and other members of poetry-production or
poetry-translation fields in the source and/or receptor-language country.
Participating in just one project may conversely mean lower involvement with
Bosnian poetry, but this need not always be the case. Aida Vidan’s only project, for
example, was a full-length bilingual academic edition of 1930s-1940s Bosnian folk
poetry, where she was sole transcriber, editor and translator (2003). Such a task
requires intensive, long-term commitment, even if it offers relatively restricted
networking opportunities.3.3.3.2 Career maps
The shape of translators’ networking and commitment is no less important than its
scope. This can be shown graphically with ‘career maps’ – extended actor-network
maps incorporating a translator’s various projects. The two example case studies
below present the career maps of two very different translators: a Bosnian native
with experience of relatively few projects, and a US native with experience of rela-
tively many projects.
In Figure 10, translator and translations are marked by an oval and rectangles
respectively, but other actors and relations within a project are summarized in a
starburst. Figure 10 shows how Sarajevo-based translator Ulvija Tanović translated
poems by Dinko Delić for the web journal Muse Apprentice Guild (Delić et al. 2003).
She later translated poems by Senadin Musabegović for the paper collection Wo r d s
Without Borders (Salierno Mason et al. 2007).- Excluding unknown poet-counts.
- ‘Auto-translations’ are omitted from this chapter’s quantitative analyses.