Staging the Literary Translator in Bibliographic Catalogues

Abstract

In recent years, the translator's "(in)visibility" has deserved special attention, particularly within Anglo-American Translation Studies. This has paved the way for a new field of research that addresses questions such as the political dimension of translation, the power relationships established in the course of intercultural contact activities and the historical and sociological reasons for the translator's invisibility. As for the latter, one of the areas in which literary translators should be visible ‒ both as authors and literary actors ‒, is the field of bibliographic catalogues as a traditional example of knowledge organization resources in our modern societies. However, preliminary studies made so far in a European Spanish context have shown that this is not always the case. On the background of a close interaction between Translation Studies and Library and Information Science (LIS), this contribution is built on the hypothesis that data about literary translators ‒ as opposed to translations ‒ in bibliographic catalogues is not always consistent or easily accesible, thus helping to perpetuate the literary translator’s invisibility. Taking the Spanish National Library as an example, we have analized the different fields of bibliographic records, searching strategies and display options. Thus, we shall present and explore this methodological approach, considering both the boundaries and the possibilites of library catalogues as a tool for researching the literary translator.