ABSTRACT

This article proposes a new sociological model for understanding the circulation of a single widely translated book, from local creation to transnational production and reception. Reconstructing the career of War and Turpentine by the Dutch-speaking Belgian author Stefan Hertmans, it examines the book’s circulation as a process mediated through a transnational literary field linking the literary field of the original and the many separate yet co-implicated national literary fields of its translations. It is argued that War and Turpentine’s success, which was by no means guaranteed, can be explained by cumulative interactions across these fields. Three aspects are investigated to illustrate cross-field interactions: the timely and fortuitous interventions of the work’s foreign rights manager, its anglophone reception, and the covers of its various translations.

摘要

本文提出了一种新的社会学模型，用于理解从本地创作到跨国生产和接受的一本广泛翻译的书籍的发行情况。该书通过讲荷兰语的比利时作家斯特凡·赫特曼斯（Stefan Hertmans）重建了战争与松节油的职业生涯，并考察了该书的发行过程，该过程是通过将原始文学领域与许多独立但又相互牵连的国家文学领域联系起来的跨国文学领域而介导的它的翻译。有人认为战争与松节油不能保证的成功，可以通过这些领域之间的累积互动来解释。从三个方面进行了研究，以说明跨领域的相互作用：该作品的外国版权管理者的及时而偶然的干预，英语使用者的接待以及其各种翻译的封面。