Chapter 7. Conclusion
sub-field. Kameni spavač/Stone Sleeper (Dizdar 1973/1999) for instance, in which
the poem Message from Chapter 2 was republished, was just one element in a web
of Dizdar translations by various translators; and, like other Dizdar projects, its
underlying motive was part of a wider trend of using translated poetry to promote
a cosmopolitanist vision of Bosnian culture during and after the 1990s war.7. 5 Extended networks
Translators and their teams also engage with more extended networks: the interest
networks that use or are affected by the translation project; vocational fields and
textual systems; and wider discourses of culture, ideology and identity.7.5.1 Choosing and communicating texts
This section examines the practical context of poetry translating: deciding on a
project’s contents, bringing it to an audience, and the nature of that audience.7.5.1.1 Choosing, producing and publishing
The first and most crucial factor determining the shape of communication via
translated poetry, and its effects, is the decision to select a certain poet’s work for
publication. Self-selection can sometimes occur: source poets, especially those liv-
ing in receptor-country diaspora, may approach publishers directly; or source po-
ets may self-publish (on their own website, say). Poets are usually, however, selected
for translation and publication by others: by an anthology editor, a translator enthu-
siastic about a certain source poet, or (less often) a commissioning publisher. As for
which poets self-select or are selected, several variables play a role: the recognized
quality, or cultural capital, of the poet’s work; the poet’s social capital (especially
integration into target-culture literary production networks); the ability to self-
publish via the web; a fit with the project team’s underlying motives; and, some-
times, a fit with target readers’ expectations. Goran Simić, the most widely trans-
lated poet in the Bosnian survey, arguably scores highly on all these variables.
Selection decisions by other players, such as translators, are acts of intercul-
tural gatekeeping: granting some poets access to international readers by including
them in an anthology, say, inevitably means not granting access to other poets. The
effects of such decisions are magnified when the receptor language, like English,
has a global readership (Jones 2004: 720,723; Casanova 2002/2010). Especially in
‘dominated’, non-globalized languages with relatively few translators, like BCS or
Dutch, this can create status differences and even tensions between poets who gain
international visibility via translation and those who do not (Casanova ibid.).