As time goes by : retranslating fiction in periodicals

Aging, the single most important motive for retranslation, does not apply to literary translations published in periodicals. On the contrary, their sheer ephemeral nature seems to provide a rationale for retranslation. Even though Translation Studies has seen an increased interest in translations published in periodicals (cfr. Folica 2020), a retranslation perspective has hardly been explored. Drawing on a corpus of over 1.800 translations of Russian literature published in Dutch newspapers, retranslation can be identified as a distinct feature of periodical translation. On a macrostructural level the database already reveals some of the idiosyncrasies of newspaper retranslations, but also foregrounds methodological issues. I offer a case-study of retranslations of Tolstoy ’s Bog pravdu vidit, da ne skoro skažet (God sees the truth but abides his time). Between 1884 and 1925, this story was (re)translated 19 times in Dutch newspapers. The analysis shows that 13 of the retranslations can be catalogued in 4 different clusters of retranslation, demonstrating the need to address the ‘virality’ of retranslations in news periodicals. Identifying subsequent retranslations in terms of reprinting, re-editing, repackaging, revising, adapting, etc. is only the first challenge. Issues of copyright need to be discussed, as well as topics of multimediality: how do translations in periodicals interact with translations in book volumes? Published in newspapers with a distinct profile, this raises the question to what extent retranslations were made to fit the newspaper’s ideological agenda. By presenting a preliminary taxonomy of motives for periodical retranslation I would like to broaden the scholarly debate