This paper examines how literary and socio-political influences might permeate translatorial acti... more This paper examines how literary and socio-political influences might permeate translatorial action and lead to the articulation of the translator’s multiple habitus by looking at the Greek translation of a highly controversial book. Nicholas Gage’s Eleni, published in the USA in 1983, captures the darkest moments of the ideological rift between Left-wing and Right-wing forces during the Greek Civil War (1946-1949). The translator of Eleni into Greek, Alexandros Kotzias (1926-1992), a post-war political novelist, was considered a highly controversial literary figure amongst the Greek Leftwing literati. Drawing on narrative theory, this paper establishes how Kotzias’ own constructed public narrative of the civil war, an outcome of his individual past socialization within the Greek socio-political field, surfaces in the translation of Eleni. Ultimately, this paper argues for the translator’s habitus as a multiple entity, whose various facets correspond to the translator’s diverse soci...
Target. International Journal of Translation Studies, 2021
This article scrutinises instances where translation corresponds to what I call ‘cultural repatri... more This article scrutinises instances where translation corresponds to what I call ‘cultural repatriation’, through the examination of two Anglophone novels about the Greek civil war and their transfer into Greece. Translation as repatriation concentrates on works which are, effectively, repatriated into their original context and made vulnerable to its aesthetic and socio-ideological encounters. The translation of Gage’s Eleni (1983a) and de Bernières’s Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (1994) into Greek constitutes cultural repatriation as cultural representations in the works are constructed through a ‘foreign gaze’ and rendered problematic upon transfer. Within this context, I examine how specific strategies in the promotion, translation, and consumption of these works challenge or reinforce hegemonic versions and narrative modes of the historical narrative and lead to a renegotiation of the cultural categories constructed in them. Methodologically, the article combines Bourdieu’s sociolo...
This paper examines how literary and socio-political influences might permeate translatorial acti... more This paper examines how literary and socio-political influences might permeate translatorial action and lead to the articulation of the translator’s multiple habitus by looking at the Greek translation of a highly controversial book. Nicholas Gage’s Eleni, published in the USA in 1983, captures the darkest moments of the ideological rift between Left-wing and Right-wing forces during the Greek Civil War (1946-1949). The translator of Eleni into Greek, Alexandros Kotzias (1926-1992), a post-war political novelist, was considered a highly controversial literary figure amongst the Greek Leftwing literati. Drawing on narrative theory, this paper establishes how Kotzias’ own constructed public narrative of the civil war, an outcome of his individual past socialization within the Greek socio-political field, surfaces in the translation of Eleni. Ultimately, this paper argues for the translator’s habitus as a multiple entity, whose various facets correspond to the translator’s diverse soci...
Target. International Journal of Translation Studies, 2021
This article scrutinises instances where translation corresponds to what I call ‘cultural repatri... more This article scrutinises instances where translation corresponds to what I call ‘cultural repatriation’, through the examination of two Anglophone novels about the Greek civil war and their transfer into Greece. Translation as repatriation concentrates on works which are, effectively, repatriated into their original context and made vulnerable to its aesthetic and socio-ideological encounters. The translation of Gage’s Eleni (1983a) and de Bernières’s Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (1994) into Greek constitutes cultural repatriation as cultural representations in the works are constructed through a ‘foreign gaze’ and rendered problematic upon transfer. Within this context, I examine how specific strategies in the promotion, translation, and consumption of these works challenge or reinforce hegemonic versions and narrative modes of the historical narrative and lead to a renegotiation of the cultural categories constructed in them. Methodologically, the article combines Bourdieu’s sociolo...
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