PUBLISHING POETRY IN TRANSLATION IN SLOVAKIA 2013–2023

• Authors: Gavura Ján
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Poetry’s peripheral position in translation affects the book market by leaving its production to small and non-profit presses that compensate for their economic loss with state and cultural subsidies. This has been the reality in Slovakia during the last decade (2013–2023), with most poetry translations published by small semi-professional presses headed by single managers who, in most cases, happen to be authors, poets, and poetry translators themselves. In the period under review, 158 poetry translations were published by 24 presses, four of which published 88 of the collections (55.7%). The most prolific publishers include three presses run by poets – FACE (run by Ján Gavura), Skalná ruža (Juraj Kuniak), and Modrý Peter (Peter Milčák) – while the fourth press is Vydavateľstvo Spolku slovenských spisovateľov (VSSS), the publishing house of the Slovak Writers’ Society. Each press has a specific policy of selection for publishing, with the diversity of poets being one of the main criteria, and translators’ input being another. Unlike other genres of translation, the English language is not as dominant in the portfolio of the four most prolific presses, followed by Serbian and Polish. A semi-peripheral language position is held by Spanish, German, Hungarian, Norwegian, and Slovenian, but there are also translations from other 13 languages.

Keywords

EN

TRANSLATED POETRY; PUBLISHING PRACTICES; SMALL POETRY PRESSES

• Publisher: Institute of World Literature, Slovak Academy of Sciences
• Journal: World Literature Studies
• Year: 2024
• Volume: 16
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 86 – 107

Contributors

author

Gavura Ján

• Department of Slovak and Media Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Prešov in Prešov, Slovak Republic

• https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6662-9931

Identifiers

DOI

10.31577/WLS.2024.16.3.7