Translingualism 2.0

Abstract

This article examines recent technological and cultural developments that have transformed the publishing industry in the past two decades—the rise of social media platforms for writing and reading genre fiction as well as the translingual practices they enable. My focus on the digital aims to update earlier studies of translingualism in a world literary space (Stephen G. Kellman, Pascale Casanova). In particular, I examine a French-language platform (Fyctia) and a multilingual one (Wattpad) to argue that digital platforms’ affordances and constraints shape the translingual strategies of their writers and readers.

Keywords:

• translingual practices
• digital platforms
• Fyctia
• Wattpad
• self-publishing
• genre fiction

Notes

1 Of course, users’ access to Internet networks and mobile devices is unevenly distributed in the world.

2 I refrain from quoting comments since many readers may be underage.

3 I place usernames in inverted commas to distinguish them from my own text and because they are often pseudonyms.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Oana Sabo

Oana Sabo is an Associate Professor of French at Tulane University, USA. She specializes in 20th- and 21st-century French and Francophone literature and is the author of The Migrant Canon in Twenty-First-Century France (University of Nebraska Press 2018). She currently investigates new literary practices in a digital age.