Characteristics of a digital literary translation publisher: revisiting Bourdieu’s mapping of the publishing field

ABSTRACT

Bourdieu defined the French publishing field after conducting a study of 61 publishers in 1999. His study identified key features that can help us define the position of a publisher in the field. How has the field changed since then? Are these features useful in defining other publishers? Are there any features specific to digital publishers? This article revisits Bourdieu’s study and tests his observations about the polarised publishing field through a case study of a Barcelona-based publishing initiative that issues literary translations in e-book format. The data collection for this study followed an ethnography-inspired approach, involving participant observation, field notes, reflective diaries, semi-structured interviews, and the collection of translation drafts, correspondence and paratexts. Book reviews and blog posts were also collected to study the dissemination of the translations. The results showed that many of Bourdieu’s observations remain relevant, and the characteristics he defined are useful for understanding many of the changes that have taken place in the last two decades. New categories were created to describe specific features of our case study and to show how digital advances have created possibilities for new forms of publishing.

KEYWORDS:

• Digital publishing
• publishing field
• literary translation
• e-book publishing
• copyright

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. According to the Anuario de estadísticas culturales 2017 (Cultural Statistics Yearbook 2017) published by the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport, 70.1% of book publishers in 2016 were registered as companies (sociedades), 16% were individuals (personas físicas) and 14% had other legal forms (Anuario 2017).

2. These ranges include overlap at 5% and 10% in Bourdieu (1999, 10).

3. Pseudonyms are used to anonymise the participants.

4. Excerpts from interviews have been translated from Spanish.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the General Research Fund, Research Grants Council, University Grants Committee, Hong Kong [12608815].

Notes on contributors

Maialen Marin-Lacarta

Maialen Marin-Lacarta is assistant professor in the translation programme at Hong Kong Baptist University, teaching Chinese literature and translation. She holds a PhD in Chinese studies and in translation and intercultural studies from the National Institute of Oriental Languages and Civilisations (INALCO) in Paris and the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and is interested in the complex position of Chinese and Sinophone literatures in the global literary system. Marin-Lacarta is the principal investigator of the project “Digital Translations in the Making: Hong Kong Contemporary Fiction in Spanish”. Research areas include literary translation, modern and contemporary Chinese literature, literary reception, indirect translation, translation history and digital publishing. She is also a practising literary translator and, among other authors, has published Mo Yan’s work into Basque and Shen Congwen’s fiction into Spanish.