Secret Agencies: Publishers, Producers, Pilferers

Michelle Woods

Literary translation studies has often focused on the mediative function of the translator in relation to the author and his/her work to the extent that other mediative influences have been effaced. This paper, with material from the archives of two translators (Peter Kussi and Vera Blackwell) and an editor (Nancy Nicholas at Alfred A. Knopf), examines detailed cases of the less explicit mediative function of other institutional agencies – editors, publishers, producers, critics – in importing ‘foreign’ writers into, and constructing ‘foreignness’ in, the English-speaking world.

The paper focuses on two Czech writers, Milan Kundera and Václav Havel, and the means by which their work was translated into the Anglo-American sphere. Moving beyond an analysis of the translator/author relationship, the paper examines the influence of other mediative agencies and why their influence has been ignored in critical analyses of the work and of the representation of the two authors in the English-speaking world. The paper examines the financial pressures to produce texts palatable (in the eyes of the publisher/theatre/agent) to a domestic audience to engender commercial success; the cultural pressures to contain the texts within recognizable forms of discourse and within recognizable ideological bounds; and the proprietorial needs to ‘own’ and to ‘understand’ the material.

The paper suggests that the representation of Czech literature has been forged by Western economic and cultural demands through the agency of economically or culturally powerful institutions or figures. Finally the paper questions the implicit concealment of these agencies in the revelation of controversies between the authors and their translators and questions the role of archival research and accessibility in light of this.