Intercultural Worlds: translations of Australianness in Italy and Germany from 1945 to the present
Denise Formica, Monash University
Leah Gerber, Monash University
Humboldt introduced the idea that translation involved cultural transfer, declaring in 1816 that language is embedded within its speakers. In the 1980s, Jan Vermeer introduced the idea of translation as a cross-cultural transfer, maintaining that a translator needed to be bicultural as well as bilingual. We draw on Bassnett & Lefevere, who state that the effect of translation in constructing cultures is most obvious in the domain of cultural capital. Through translation, strategies are devised which enable texts from one culture to penetrate "the textual and conceptual grids of another culture, and function in that other culture" (Bassnett & Levefere 1998).
This paper investigates the intercultural exchange of literature (both adult and children's) between Australia-Italy and Australia-Germany between 1945-present. We examine the reasons why certain titles/authors have been selected and others overlooked for translation in two different target cultures. The paper also explores the manner in which the importation and exportation of cultural capital is "manipulated" through translation by patronage, institutions and ideologies.