The French Novel in Translation: A Distant Reading for Romania during Communism (1944–1989)
The French Novel in Translation: A Distant Reading for Romania during Communism (1944–1989)

Summary/Abstract: This article uses quantitative methods to show the evolution of the translation of French novels in communist Romania. The author argues that the period between 1949 and 1989 can be separated in three different periods, according to a distant reading of the translated novels: 1949–1964, the period of socialist realism, which mainly features novels from the 19thcentury; 1964–1975, a “synecdoche translation,” in which French renditions recreate the exhaustive image of the French novel between 1830 and the 1960s and 1970s; 1975–1989, a period when the French novel in translation shifts from the modernist and existentialist core to genre fiction and award-winning French novels. The article uses Andrei Terian’s concepts of “compensation” and “cultural dumping” in order to better explain how interferences between cultures often create visible chronological delays or fast-forward synecdoche translations.

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