Post-1945 austrian literature in translation

Ingeborg Bachmann in English

Lina Fisher

pp. 463-481

in: Jean Boase-Beier, Lina Fisher, Hiroko Furukawa (eds), The Palgrave handbook of literary translation, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

Abstract

The poetry and prose of Ingeborg Bachmann (1926–1973) are concerned with the societal and human impact of the National Socialist regime. In this chapter Fisher compares the reception and the ideological and commercial positions of a novel, a novel fragment, and a collection of short stories in the German-language literary system with those of their English-language translations.The contrast between the position of German-language translated literature in the Anglo-American literary polysystem and the way in which Bachmann's success in German was anchored in the position she fulfilled in the German-language polysystem made it difficult for the translations to be successful. Bachmann's case serves as a useful illustration of the interaction between these two systems.

Cited authors

Bachmann Ingeborg