1 Introduction
Studying how cultural practices overcome traditional geographic and linguistic barriers and flow across the world is nowadays a stimulating area of research, which in recent years has become more and more interdisciplinary. Literature and culture did always travel far across linguistic and geographical borders, but the relevance of this topic (underlined by Sassoon 2006; Iriye and Saunier 2009; Saunier 2013) is that a transnational approach may allow the creation of a transnational cultural history (Baily et al. 2006) that should complete the investigation of local and national histories and reformulate the validity of the nation-state concept. Such a history would overcome the problematic reductive national approach.
In that respect, Global History studies (from the 1990s onward: Appadurai 1996; Giddens 1994; Swyngedouw 2004) have favored the break with an almost exclusively national focus and several works have explored transnational connections and networks and the social capital they represent, or how transnational encounters are shaped by asymmetrical power relations . The ātransnational turn ā in literary studies led to a significant rise in critical interest in the role of translation , but the enormous scope and scale of the topic, combined with the very focused linguistic and literary expertise required for the study of translation, allowed for very few comparative studies. This shortage was more evident when it came to languages referred to as āsmall ā, āminor ā, āperipheral ā, and āless translatedā . Although widely discussed (Deleuze and Guattari 2006; Branchadell and West 2005), these terms remain controversial.
Based on Abram de Swaan ās (2001) global language system , Johan Heilbron (Heilbron 1999, 2000, 2008; Heilbron and Sapiro 2002) developed a sociological model for the study of book translations worldwide. According to Heilbron, international flows of book translations form a world system which is based on a centre-periphery structure and in which translations flow from central languages and cultures to peripheral ones. However, there is disagreement as to which languages should be considered central or peripheral, based on different parameters taken into account: number of speakers, position in the international book market , or definition of ānationalā language and ānationalā literature.
The recent turn towards globalization , transnationalism, and cosmopolitanism (Beck and Sznaider 2006) calls us to rethink the role of major national literatures and broader regional configurations, as well as the place of smaller literatures and their relations to the wider world. What makes this turn interesting is the stress on the use of English as a global language , on the one hand, and the spread and circulation of minor languages and literatures, on the other. Comparative literature , world literary studies , and translation studies have generally focused on central languages or, at best, on the relationships between central and peripheral literatures (Cronin 1998, 2003), but there is still a lot of research to be done with regard to inter-peripheral literary exchanges (Heilbron 1999) . In this respect, despite the fact that some of their texts can be classified as world literature (Damrosch 2003), minor literatures have been mostly overlooked by literary scholars, except for a few recent initiatives (see e.g. Brems 2017). It has been assumed that minor literatures play a marginal role in the global literary system , and even major works such as The Routledge Companion to World Literature (DāHaen et al. 2012) have paid little attention to truly small languages and less known literatures. As such, they tend to continue the assumption that major literatures , such as English, French and German, traditionally play a culturally exporting role, while small literatures tend to become cultural recipients .
In that respect, this book intends to abandon the focus on āinnovativeā centres and āimitativeā peripheries and aims to follow processes of cultural exchange as they develop. We build on cross-border studies and their criticism of a nation-centred research lens and aim to deal with so-called mediations and mediators (see below). Specifically, we aim to analyse the role of cultural mediators as customs officers or smugglers (or both in different proportions) in so-called peripheral cultures . The smugglers, as we understand them here and as will be illustrated by the different contributions in this book, promote exchanges and often create their own norms, circuits, channels and forms. In very relevant moments they felt a social responsibility towards a culture and literature and they revolted against the trend, against the market (as far as this is possible), against the taste of the readers or against the prevailing aesthetics of the time. The custom officer, however, occupied an existing position, wanting to fulfil the dominant norm and hindering exchanges. Sometimes, the custom officer operated within a context of ideological or political control and in a highly-politicized publishing field, as in the case of Spain during Francoās regime or South Africa during apartheid . As we will further develop, we believe that in the case of literary transfer in peripheral cultures, the role of cultural mediators acting as smugglers prevails.
Within this framework, this volume sets the grounds for a new approach exploring cultural mediators as key figures in literary and cultural history (Meylaerts et al. 2016; Meylaerts and Roig Sanz 2016). This book proposes an innovative conceptual and methodological understanding of the figure of the cultural mediator, defined as a cultural actor active across linguistic, cultural and geographical borders, occupying strategic positions within large networks and being the carrier of cultural transfer . Next to the more traditional focus on linguistic and (mostly national) geographical border crossing in which cultural mediators are involved, this definition crucially wants to stress the need for a more developed analytical focus on the process of transfer, on the overlap of actor roles, and on the transgression of cultural fields . Of course, pre-modern or modern actors never performed single roles, but they were traditionally studied in that way, so their (sometimes too simple) conceptualization has made us blind to their actual overlapping mediating roles.
On the other hand, many studies on translation and cultural mediation privileged the major metropolises of Paris , London , and New York , as centres of cultural production and translation. However, other cities and megacities that are not global centres of culture and translation also featured vibrant translation scenes: e.g. Buenos Aires became a main centre of publishing and a centre for Jewish publishing in Spanish in the first third of the twentieth century; the multilingual ground of Trieste also helped the city to become a translation zone . Indeed, while some literatures have had limited exposure to foreign literatures, others have been perpetually impacted and changed (Thomsen 2008).
The focus of this collective volume lies not only in a variety of agents , spaces and translation flows in less studied settings, but also in asking questions about intra- and inter-national networks and less typical patterns in the migration of people and texts, as well as atypical channels of transfer . This book offers insights into an under-analysed body of actors and institutions promoting intercultural transfer in often multilingual and less studied venues such as Trieste, Tel Aviv , Buenos Aires, Lima , Shanghai, Lahore , and Cape Town . Some of these settings are characterized by highly populated areas and important linguistic and cultural traditions. However, literary translation and transfer flows into, and from, many Latin American, Asian and African languages still remain under-documented. Undoubtedly, tracing the various forms of literary translation and transfer in these less explored areas and the agents and agencies involved enriches current debates in a broad range of academic fields : translation studies , literary studies , cultural history, art , anthropology , and religion .
This book combines close reading , contextual analysis and theoretical reflections, and questions Eurocentric dispositions and the traditional division between centre and periphery in cultural production and circulation within an entangled global society . Literary translation and other forms of cultural transfer circulated within and between Latin America , Asia, the Middle East , and Africa , but these relations have mostly been overlooked in favour of those in which European literatures played a central role (Hung and Wakabayashi 2005; Thornber 2009; Ricci and Putten 2011). There is no doubt that imperialism impacted the languages and literary production of both postcolonial spaces and former metropolises (Thornber 2009, 5), but, although the influence of Europe and its colonial background has been significant, many Latin American, Asian and African societies preserve characteristics of their indigenous cultures and still maintain an important oral orientation (Ricci and Putten 2011, 2).
Looking closely at the types of texts that have been translated offers insights into how agents and agencies helped in shaping national and transnational literary exchange and how they contributed to regulate power relations and negotiate and renegotiate international canons and hierarchies among various literatures from all over the world. Translation flows are marked by significant discontinuities: the historical variability of centres (China was...