Discussion Group: Translation in Periodicals: Working with Series and Databases

Translations published in cultural periodicals are being increasingly recognised as fundamental pieces of literary history. As central contributions to the debates of their times and to the transnational circulation of ideas and forms, they are often the most direct witnesses of literary change and of the subtle negotiations that underpin cultural fields. The study of translation in periodicals, however, is only emerging as an academic field, and an in-depth, systematic reflection on the interconnection of the practice and medium is called for. In this session, we will pay special attention to how we are to understand and analyse such vast and heterogeneous bodies of text, and in particular to the complex relationship between the part and the whole, or between the level of textual specificity (on which most translation decisions take place) and that of editorial lines and practices. Drawing on examples from my doctoral research on Mexican periodicals and from the Spaces of Translation project, I will discuss different strategies that allow us to bridge this gap between the particular and the general, various of which rely on data. Indeed, databases are becoming increasingly popular, especially with the recent digital turn in humanistic disciplines, and quantification can be a valuable tool when used in combination with qualitative approaches. Thus, I would like to spark a discussion around the ways in which working with data can enhance traditional research in translation history, relocate translation and/in magazines at the centre of a new understanding of literary history, and do justice to the exceptional but challenging richness of translational and periodical texts.

Dr Marina Popea is Stipendiary Lecturer in Spanish at Balliol and Brasenose. She specialises in translation and cultural periodicals with a broad comparative focus and a particular interest in data-driven and mixed approaches. Her doctoral research, completed in 2023, focused on the role of translation in shaping modern poetics in Mexican magazines of the early twentieth century. She has also been a Research Fellow on the AHRC- and DFG-funded Spaces of Translation project, based at Nottingham Trent University, for which she has mainly been working on the implementation of a database of translations and translators in post-WW2 European periodicals.