Asymmetries of Translation

Abstract

Given the incompatibility between aesthetic and economic approaches to literary translation, the A. perceives a lack of creative initiative in the international socialisation of Bulgarian literature within its literary field (and especially in the subfield of criticism). Together with a probable inability to (re)integrate ethnically Bulgarian emigré writers, this gives Bulgarian literature a “repellent capacity”. Pointing at non-mainstream developments in both literature and translation may offer a way out: Gorčeva recommends abundant analytical and not self-exoticising self-representation. She also stresses that not only interliterary ‘export’ but also ‘import’ forges a literature’s status, and suggests that “small” literatures can take part in interliterary communication as equals in so far as they have the opportunity to keep on translating not in an assimilative but in a foreignising manner.