Transediting Newspaper Fiction: Bulgakov's The Master and Margarita serialized

Transediting Newspaper Fiction Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita serialized During the 19th and 20th centuries, newspapers and other periodicals harvested large amounts of fiction. These stories and novels were usually split up into a number of episodes, becoming recurrent features and doing so enhancing the readership loyalty of the periodical, as readers were enticed to read the next episode. At the same time, a considerable sample of these so-called feuilletons were used to disseminate ideologically suitable deemed content in a highly pillarized society, where most newspapers voiced their publisher’s political orientation (e.g. a political party, or a trade union). By their very nature, serialized novels were subject to a number of constraints. Not only did they need to fit the newspaper’s format, but as they were serialized, stories and novels were divided up in episodes. As a result, abridged translations are not uncommon in periodicals. The choice of what is selected for translation is revealing, but perhaps even more essential and telling are the (often) deliberate choices to deselect certain paragraphs, subplots or other entities of text. This sets in motion a number of interventions to compensate for the abridged content. Adding sentences to smoothen transitions, restructuring plot elements, and highlighting distinct features all belong to the cut-and-pasting connected with media processes but are nevertheless not alien to the periodical translator’s toolbox either. In my paper, I focus on the 1968 publication of Michail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita in the Dutch Catholic newspaper De Volkskrant. The novel contains three storylines, each foregrounding a different genre, so The Master and Margarita is at once a historical novel, a lovestory, and a satire. For the novel to fit the publication in 146 installments, the editors deemed a large number of adaptations necessary, “otherwise the reader-in-episodes would get lost” in the novel’s layered structure. I will draw on these adaptations to identify practices of simplification and ‘transediting’ (translated and edited) with text-surgical methods such as addition, substitution or deletion in an effort to understand the functionality of the translation for its target audience. The editing and adapting of translations offers perspectives on the daily consumption of literary texts and their cohabitation in the highly constrained environment of a newspaper. In my paper I will argue that both translation studies and periodical studies, and language-driven research at large can considerably benefit from incorporating translated periodical fiction into its research agenda. References Baker, Mona 1995 Corpora in Translation Studies. An Overview and Some Suggestions for Future Research. Target. International Journal of Translation Studies 7/2: 223-243. Fólica, Laura, Diana Roig-Sanz & Stefania Caristia (eds.) 2020 Literary Translation in Periodicals: Methodological challenges for a transnational approach. (Benjamins Translation Library vol. 155) Amsterdam: Benjamins. O’Connor, Anne 2019 Translation in nineteenth-century periodicals. Materialities and modalities of communication. Translation and Interpreting Studies 14/2: 243-264. Özmen, Ceyda 2019 Beyond the Book: The Periodical as an ‘Excavation Site’ for Translation Studies. TranscUlturAl 11/1: 3-21. Philpotts, Matthew 2012 The Role of the Periodical Editor: Literary Journals and Editorial Habitus. Modern Language Review 107/1: 39-64. Schäffner, Christina 2012 “Rethinking Transediting.” Meta 57, 4: 866–883. Van Doorslaer, Luc 2011 The relative neglect of newspapers in translation studies research. In: Chalvin, Luc, e.a. (eds.), Between Cultures and Texts: Itineraries in Translation History, 45-54. Frankfurt: Peter Lang