Rethinking the Role of the Translator: The Zsolnay Publishing House, 1924–1938
The aim of the project is to investigate the “translation culture” (E. Prunc) of the Zsolnay publishing house between 1924 and 1938. Analyzing correspondence between the main actors of translation (publisher, translator, author) helps to establish the reasons for the press’s success in publishing translations. Moreover, the project contributes to translator-oriented perspectives in Translation Studies (Chesterman’s “translator studies” and Wolf’s “activist turn”), which acknowledge translators’ key role in both the publishing process and in communication between publishers and authors.
In the case of Zsolnay, the protagonists’ Jewish background played an essential role in the destiny of the translators and the publishing house, so the project combines Jewish studies with interdisciplinary approaches, including translation studies, history (histoire croiseé), and sociology (Bourdieu’s field theory).
Tatsiana Haiden holds two Master’s degrees in Translation, one from the Belarusian State University in Minsk (2012) and one from the University of Turin (2015). She is currently completing her Ph.D. in Transcultural Communication at the University of Vienna. Her previous works have focused on the pragmatics and translation of political discourse. Her academic interests include translator studies, translation sociology, translation history, translators in exile, publishing translations, and policies of publishing houses. Tatsiana Haiden has been working as a language trainer and translator for over a decade in Belarus, Italy, Austria, France, Germany, and the USA. She speaks Russian, Belarusian, Italian, German, English, and Ukrainian, as well as possessing basic knowledge of Spanish, Hebrew, and Polish.
"Mimi Grossberg," in: Österreichische Übersetzer im Exil, forthcoming 2019; „Überlegungen an die Rolle des Übersetzers," in: Fremdsprachen: Innovationen, Perspektiven der Forschung und der Lehre, Minsk 2018, p. 229; "Pragmalinguistica angloiazichnogo recevogo akta prosbi. Sbornik nauchnih statei studentov, magistrantov i aspirantov Belarusskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta", fakulteta mejdunarodnih otnoshenii, in: Vipusk 9, Minsk 2012, pp. 144–47.
This case study highlights the importance of the role of the translator in the publishing industry, the preconditions of today’s “activist turn” in translation studies, and the social nature of the translation process. The reasons for the unexpected success of the Jewish Zsolnay publishing house in pre-“Anschluss” Austria will be explored.