Nation, Narration and Translation: the Construction of an Australian Literary Archive in Italian

Abstract

The cultural capital attached to the Australian literary archive reflects those nation-specific values and discourses that have been historically ‘constrained and enabled’ by national literary institutions (Dixon 2005). The body of Australian texts which, through translation, is made available to the Italian readership constitutes an extension of that national archive which is shaped by another set of dynamics – both cultural and economic – that further constrain those selections. Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of cultural production foregrounds the role of socio-cultural agencies in the production of texts and provides the framework for my recent research into the selection, translation and publication of Australian texts translated into Italian between 1945 and 2006. In this article I examine how in this period the selection of Australian texts for translation into Italian was ‘constrained’ by agencies in the target culture and also offer some insight into the manner in which Australian cultural institutions influenced that process. By foregrounding the role of socio-cultural agencies in the selection of Australian titles for translation, this article acknowledges the complexity of the relationship between translated literature as cultural artefact and as commodity, stresses the interconnectedness between texts and society, and suggests how this has contributed to shaping the archive of Australian texts in Italian.