Plurilingual Literary Fields at Large Communication dans un congrès

Keynote for the Conference "Book translation in multilingual States (1945-2024)." Organized by UC Louvain and KU Leuven at the Royal Library of Brussels, November 28-29th, 2024. This lecture aims to bridge the gaps between three research trends in translation studies and the sociology of the international circulation of literature. The first trend involves studying literary translations across cultures and countries ; the second interrogates literary circulations that occur without translation in international linguistic areas ; the third focuses on literary exchanges within a single country. The objective of this lecture is to understand how local and global linguistic power relations interact. I will first unravel the linguistic power dynamics within a local plurilingual literature (Algeria), in original languages as well as through translations. As I will show, these relations are fundamentally marked by the transnational structure of the local literary field. I will then focus on the international circulation of literature itself : first in original languages within international linguistic areas, in particular in the francophone one ; then in English translation in the USA. Broadening the scope, I will take into account the “Maghrebi literature” in circulation. It includes the literature of three former French colonies (Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia) that share similar plurilingual configurations, utilizing Arabic (standard and dialectal), French, and secondarily Tamazight and English as languages of literary creation. Through statistical analysis and interviews with writers, translators, editors, and literary agents in Algeria, France and the USA, my lecture seeks to explore how local hierarchies, based on languages, countries, but also gender, are reconfigured as a consequence of international circulation, and subsequently impact local dynamics back in the Maghreb. Secondarily, the communication will broaden the classical understanding of multilingual states by considering the American literary field as a plurilingual literary space where translations from the Maghreb are part of the American literary market, and competing in particular with Arab-American literature.