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Project

Intra-Belgian literary translations since 1970 (BELTRANS)

BELTRANS studies the untold history of literary translation flows in Belgium between French and Dutch in the period 1970-
2020. This project examines the link between intra-Belgian cultural transfers and the mutual knowledge and perception of
each other's culture in a period of increasing regionalisation of the state, which caused a growing distance between
Belgium’s linguistic and cultural communities. To this end, we will gather, link, enrich and disseminate data on Belgian
authors and their works, knowing that they are currently dispersed and disconnected in various collections. This way, the
project adds greatly to the preservation of Belgium’s cultural heritage at a national and international level and renders large
quantities of new and FAIR data available for scientific research, as well as for book professionals and a broad public.
Until now, intra-Belgian literary translation flows have never been studied at a large and systematic scale, neither
quantitatively nor qualitatively, for the past fifty years. This history remains a blind spot. There has not yet been extensive
research on the embeddedness of translation history in the broader political, social and institutional evolutions within
multilingual Belgium. Although some qualitative studies have already been devoted to intra-Belgian translation, until now
research mainly focused on literary translation from Dutch into French, primarily in periodicals, and covered only a small
selection of translators and mediators often situated in early Belgian history (e.g. the interwar period) or limited corpora.
Moreover, existing databases containing translation data require cross-referencing to verify their completeness. The national
deposit library of Belgium, KBR, has already gathered a vast collection of contemporary Belgian publications through legal
deposit, but the ‘Bibliography of Belgium’ still contains some lacunae and exhaustive FAIR datasets regarding Belgian
contemporary authors and intra-Belgian translations have not yet been published as open data, nor have they been integrated
in global open science data repositories.In this project, we will fill these gaps by 1) providing as complete a picture as possible of what 
kind of books from Belgian authors have been translated into French and Dutch since 1970 till 2020, within Belgium and abroad; 
2) by looking at book translations of different literary genres that circulate in the public sphere, not only highbrow translated literature, but also more popular segments of literary production; 3) by mapping an unexplored period of cross-cultural actors, translators and networks 
in Belgian translation history, and also paying attention to gender aspects for the specific 
period, inter alia the pioniers role played by women in translation activities; 4) by linking 
literary book translations to reciprocal cultural perception between Flanders and Francophone 
Belgium, to regional and national identity and to political developments; 5) by fine-tuning the 
concepts and methodologies of existing quantitative and qualitative studies of translational 
cultural exchanges for multilingual states; 6) by studying the interaction between political 
governance structures and cultural cohabitation, and finally 7) by developing policy guidelines. By 
doing so, the project combines an innovative and interdisciplinary approach with strategic goals 
about the scientific and societal valorisation of Belgium’s cultural heritage.
 

Date:15 Dec 2020 →  Today
Keywords:translation flows, French-Dutch, 1970-2020, intra-Belgian cultural transfers
Disciplines:Translation and interpretation sciences