Chapter 3. Poetry translation webs
rarely appears in bibliographic data. From personal experience, however, editors
more often ask translators to select translations from their archives than to review
untranslated source poems.
Poetry translators usually take on such additional roles because they have ex-
pertise or publisher contacts which (other) lead actors – like a Bosnia-based or
recently-exiled source poet – lack. Alternatively, direct translators might help se-
lect poets and poems because an editor does not read the source language or have
in-depth knowledge of its literary scene.
Similarly, translating may be shared between two co-translators. The survey
showed co-translating to be mainly of the common ‘complementary-language’
type, pairing a bilingual source-language reader^13 with an expert receptor-language
writer (see e.g. Kunitz and Weissbort 1989, Whyte 2004). This enables recruiters
(typically, editors) to get round a shortage of direct translators who can do both.
As for a player’s power to influence the project’s workings or outcomes, this
may take various forms. One might be called ‘authority’, or prime decision-making
power. Players with authority initiate long recruitment chains, like the editor in
Figure 6; this is particularly important because it also typically implies power to
specify or negotiate a project’s object or motive. Power might also be based on
‘involvement’: being a node though which many recruitment chains pass, like the
1st co-translator in Figure 6. A further type might be called ‘indispensability’: be-
ing a node which all actions ultimately originate from or lead to, like the publisher
in Figure 6.
Sources of power may also lie outside the project. Thus capital that players have
earned in earlier translation or original-writing projects can strengthen their influ-
ence on project outcomes. This study highlights the importance of symbolic capital,
with the prestige of poet 2nd-co-translators being used not only to ensure high-
quality translations, but also to help market the text complex. This supports Casa-
n o v a’s observation that some literary translators have more power than others to
“consecrate” a writer (give him or her international prestige) because they are al-
ready consecrated as receptor-culture writers (2002/2010). Social capital, however,
may also be important: the rich networks which poet Goran Simić eventually built
up in Canada, for instance, almost certainly helped him figure in so many projects.
Finally, ‘external visibility’ is public acknowledgment of power, as indicated by
mentions on book covers or in reviews, for instance. The most externally-visible
players, especially in single-poet projects, tend to be source poets; and editors are
particularly visible with paper anthologies (especially if these have paratexts- In this book, ‘bilingual’ denotes someone with relevant skills in the two languages con-
cerned. The term ‘equilingual’ is used for bilinguals with native-like skills in both languages
(Edwards 2004: 9).