engleski

“But you do misery so well!”: Cultural Stereotypes, Translation Politics and Croatian Literature in English

Considering the 1990s war in ex-Yugoslavia as the key historical episode in the (re-)definition of the region’s public image in the English-speaking world, this paper aims to examine the links between the politics of translation, publishers’ marketing strategies and the formation of cultural stereotypes about ‘minor’ literatures and cultures, using Croatian literature as a case study. The paper surveys the history of translations into English of Croatian texts and proposes the following chronological and thematic division of authors and narratives: 1) authors and texts translated before the 1990s war (perceived as Yugoslav/Croatian classics at home, mostly published by PEN’s Zagreb-based The Bridge/Most journal, translated as part of the initiative to promote Yugoslav/Croatian literature abroad) ; 2) authors and texts translated during the war and immediately after (titles focused on war-related subjects, mostly published by major UK and US publishing houses during the global news networks’ coverage of the conflict) ; and 3) authors and texts translated after the war, now mostly by specialized independent or university-affiliated presses. The current choice of titles for translations seems to feed into the, by now established, image of standard local narratives: misery, exile, and war-related topics. The paper concludes by analysing the role of translation politics for the creation of the Anglophone version of the Croatian ‘literary system’, and queries the translations’ relationship to the Croatian literary mainstream.

Croatian literature; stereotype; translation; world literature

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