Translation

The article regards the advantages and setbacks of being bilingual when it comes to foreign women teachers and writers who contributed to the Bulgarian national project from the 1860s to the 1920s. They are the Serbian teacher Rahil Barak Dushanova (1845-1888), the Czech teacher and journalist Bogdana Iraskova Hiteva (1844-1929), and the second-generation Bulgarian émigré in Romania Evgenia Mihailova Vassileva (1852-1926) who was a poet, journalist, and writer. First, the article distinguishes the types of bilingualism for each case, attributing a coordinate type to the women teachers Bogdana Hiteva and Rahil Dushavova, and a subordinate one to Ekaterina Vassileva, who did not feel convenient in Bulgarian and wrote her texts in Romanian or French. Then the paper follows the biographical path of each of these women in order to distinguish whether her positioning in the receiving country displays a strategy of adaptation and inclusion into Bulgarian social and cultural life, and at what cost it was achieved. However, as it concerns the Bulgarian literary history, the identity of a bilingual woman writer has fewer chances for posthumous inclusion into the literary canon due to her unstable and transitive identity. The conclusion of the paper is that those women who managed to claim sufficiently their newly achieved and sustained Bulgarian identity have better chances for future remembrance. Yet, large parts of their writings need the application of a new and non-nationalistic perspective, which could acknowledge better their specific contribution to both Bulgarian literature and that of their birthplace.

The essay “Meager Consolation” is concerned with the state of contemporary Moroccan literature which is torn between its local audience and its desire to reach readers in France. The author argues that Arabic writers nowadays are preoccupied with matters of translation and achieving universal acclaim and recognition. The essay “The Arabic Borges” is devoted to the Argentinian author and the inspiration he drew from works such as “One Thousand and One Nights”. The last years of his life are discussed in relation to the Arabic language and culture.

The current review examines the structure, content, textual and biographical annotation, and the reception of translated texts in the field of American literary theory and criticism in Albena Bakracheva’s American literary theory & criticism (2020). In addition, it offers a comparative platform for the appreciation of the said anthology in view of a selection of contemporary guides in literary theory and criticism published in Bulgarian and in English. Last but not least, there is a thought on Albena Bakratcheva’s overall contribution to the initiation of the Bulgarian reader into American literature, with an especial focus on American transcendentalism – itself a context for the current edition.The current review examines the structure, content, textual and biographical annotation, and the reception of translated texts in the field of American literary theory and criticism in Albena Bakracheva’s American literary theory & criticism (2020). In addition, it offers a comparative platform for the appreciation of the said anthology in view of a selection of contemporary guides in literary theory and criticism published in Bulgarian and in English. Last but not least, there is a thought on Albena Bakratcheva’s overall contribution to the initiation of the Bulgarian reader into American literature, with an especial focus on American transcendentalism – itself a context for the current edition.

The novel “Time Shelter”, by Georgi Gospodinov, parodies both the ideological arsenal of communism and that of nationalism, with their symbolic dates, kitsch, and material legacy. It made me think about what and how I was trying to convey them through my translation: much more than "culture" that is transmitted through education, whether in the family, at school, or in society, and which is, therefore, more or less consciously assimilated, it concerns the imaginary on which ideologies rest, since the imaginary contains many emotions, irrational and unconscious things. Yet the notion of “imaginary” has been surprisingly rare and belatedly included in critical reflection on translation, even though philosophy, linguistics, anthropology, and literature have been interested in it since the mid-twentieth century. In this paper I seek to answer the question: is the power of the imaginary translatable in “Time Shelter”?

The article is a critique of the Bulgarian translation of the novel “Apostoloff”, focusing on its deviations that significantly distort the original text. The consequences of this distortion are examined. Moreover, the question is raised of what responsibility the translator might bear. The public convention of transparent translation is problematized as well.

The article examines the translation of novel titles containing quotations from the Shakespearean corpus. The quotation title is considered as both paratext and intertext. Translators’ approaches to the rendering of titles with Shakespearean intertext in different target languages are compared, with a particular focus on Bulgarian examples. The aim of the study is to search for characteristic solutions in translations that deserve to be discussed. The article proposes and problematizes three translation strategies: the search for dynamic equivalence, neutralization, and compensation. The collected data, which do not claim to be exhaustive, are presented in tables, followed by analytical comments. Rather than presupposing conclusions, the comparative analysis interprets the data as they are.