Remembering Literary Translators: A Content Analysis of Their Obituaries

Obituaries, being representative of collective memory, reveal not only whose lives we choose to remember (to allude to the suggestive title of Fowler, Bielsa 2007), but also what values and achievements we hold in high regard. Among others, obituaries of members of the following professions have been the subject of research: librarians (Dilevko, Gottlieb 2004), psychologists (Kinnier et al. 1994) and academics (Hamann 2016). The present paper focuses on obituaries devoted to literary translators, published in academic journals and literary and cultural magazines in 2000–2017. Content analysis, deployed as the main research method in this paper, proved to be useful in identifying references to specific values, typical of translators’ lives and work. As a result, a classification of the most frequently mentioned translators’ characteristics and achievements was prepared. Recurrent characteristics presented translators as competent, hard-working, good friends, intelligent and independent-minded, while their top achievements included prizes and awards, prestigious friendships and acquaintances, and merits for establishing closer relations between nations. The vast majority of texts were positive-factual or personal-emotional in character, but a few included criticalfactual remarks, mainly on translators’ character and the clash of one’s ideals or ambitions with reality. Attention has been drawn to multidirectional careers of most translators. In the last part of the article, obituaries were described as a cultural phenomenon in the context of memory culture, with a special emphasis on the categories of the communicator and the addressee, as well as the language. 

Obituaries, being representative of collective memory, reveal not only whose lives we choose to remember (to allude to the suggestive title of Fowler, Bielsa 2007), but also what values and achievements we hold in high regard. Among others, obituaries of members of the following professions have been the subject of research: librarians (Dilevko, Gottlieb 2004), psychologists (Kinnier et al. 1994) and academics (Hamann 2016). The present paper focuses on obituaries devoted to literary translators, published in academic journals and literary and cultural magazines in 2000–2017. Content analysis, deployed as the main research method in this paper, proved to be useful in identifying references to specific values, typical of translators’ lives and work. As a result, a classification of the most frequently mentioned translators’ characteristics and achievements was prepared. Recurrent characteristics presented translators as competent, hard-working, good friends, intelligent and independent-minded, while their top achievements included prizes and awards, prestigious friendships and acquaintances, and merits for establishing closer relations between nations. The vast majority of texts were positive-factual or personal-emotional in character, but a few included criticalfactual remarks, mainly on translators’ character and the clash of one’s ideals or ambitions with reality. Attention has been drawn to multidirectional careers of most translators. In the last part of the article, obituaries were described as a cultural phenomenon in the context of memory culture, with a special emphasis on the categories of the communicator and the addressee, as well as the language.