[1]

Poetry translators as cultural ambassadors:

Communicating Modern Greek poetry in English

Nadia Georgiou

Centre for Translation Studies

University of Surrey

Keywords: paratexts, poetry translation, cultural mediation, ambassadorship,

symbolic/social capital

Introduction

The current hegemonic state of the English language marginalizes many of the other

languages used around the globe today. As a result languages less commonly used in

translation are often called ‘minor’ or languages of lesser currency. This power

imbalance is reflected in the cultures in which these ‘minor’ languages are spoken.

Disciplines, such as Postcolonial studies, foreground the role of agents who influence

the dynamics of power and authority through their advocacy of minor languages and

cultures. Similar attempts have been recorded in the field of translation, particularly in

the case of literary translators, whose agency does not remain on the level of

accurately representing the referential meaning of a text but also involves transmitting

as much of its symbolic capital and resonance as possible.

What follows in this paper is a presentation of the influence and agency of three main

poetry translators from Modern Greek into English who were active in the second half

of the twentieth century, Edmund Keeley, Kimon Friar and Rae Dalven. Through the

scrutiny of a number of paratextual materials (appearing within the printed volumes of

translated poetry and retrieved from extratextual sources) recurrent patterns are

identified in terms of the background of the translators and their attitudes towards the

initial and receptor cultures. From these patterns a set of criteria are derived which are

then examined in order to establish the translators’ own sense of cultural mediation

and how this mediation is received by the source and receptor cultures.

Cultural mediation: brief overview

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In this section some characteristics of the ambassadorial role of translators, as found

in relevant bibliography, will be discussed. These characteristics will be used as

criteria in order to explore cultural mediation/agency/ambassadorship in the paratexts

created by translators of Modern Greek poetry into English or paratexts written about

them and their work in the following section.

The translator’s role as communicator between cultures forms part of a wider

discussion concerning the identity and agency of the translator throughout the

translation process. ‘Similar attempts to take into consideration the perspective of the

translator were made in early discussion on the effect of translation norms and the

influence of the translator’s individual style (Toury 1995, Simeoni 1998, Boase-Beier

2006). The concept of ambassadorship is also related to ideas about the function not

only of the translated text within the receptor culture but also of the translator as the

mediating force, the agent who introduces the (new) work.

One of the first translation scholars to make use of the concept of ‘cultural

ambassadorship’ was Francis Jones (2000, 2009). Jones borrows Goffman’s Social

Game Theory (1970), which ascribes prototypical roles that are performed by parties

or players in order to promote their own interests. For Translation Studies the

interesting part of this theory is the role of the ‘ambassador’, who is “… someone who

transmits messages between different parties, but who is also empowered to negotiate

for his or her own party” (Jones 2009: 305).

Jones takes this notion of ambassadorship a step further with relation to the poetry

translator and creates his own model “of the poetry translator’s twin tasks: as text

converter and as representative of source poet or source text” (Jones 2000: 69). He

adds that “literary translators from lesser-known languages usually find themselves

not only discovering and evaluating ‘new’ writers, but also having to package and

promote ‘their’ writers in such a way that publishers, journal editors, reviewers and

the public see them as worth publishing and reading” (2000: 65).

Research shows that translators very often adopt the role of the intermediary. The

description more commonly preferred is the more neutral term ‘cultural mediator’

(Bedeker and Feinauer 2006, Limon 2010, Torikai 2011) or ‘cultural agent’ (Tahir-

Gürçaģlar 2009) and ‘cultural ambassador’ (Asimakoulas 2015, Mackridge 2010). At

times the translator is considered a ‘culture broker’ who can mediate “between

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different intellectual traditions and report back to powerful nations” (Simon 2002:

122).

After exploring the trajectories of two different translators, Mme de Staël and Gayatri

Spivak, Simon contends that both translators “wield[ed] considerable influence as

high-profile mediators, collapsing intellectual and political agendas” (2002: 122). In

the case of Mme de Staël who advocated Goethe’s credos about World Literature,1-

the translator was seen as a mediator “whose task … [was] to promote a spiritual

exchange … toward what we would today call global communication” (2002: 128).

Spivak is not regarded as “a silent mediator; … [but] rather a participant, a

foregrounded link in the interplay between East and West … incarnating the points

where they intersect, overlap, and impinge upon one another” (2002: 134). This

statement describes a fundamental function of most translators, irrespective of

language combination and specialization.

Other Translation scholars who have studied aspects of translators’ ambassadorial role

include Limon, who asks pertinent questions about the relationship between translator

status and translators’ ability to act as cultural mediators (2010: 33). Tahir-Gürçaģlar

views translators as “individuals who are equipped with special assets and abilities”

and a high level of cultural capital, which in turn offers them “high symbolic status …

that positions them higher on the social ladder” (2009: 164). Asimakoulas presents

translators and publishers working in the publishing industry as agents of cultural

ambassadorship who “were not simply transmitters of messages, but also individuals

who felt empowered to negotiate on behalf of interest groups” (2015: 8).

From this brief overview of scholarly discussions on the subject of the translator as

cultural mediator/ambassador some recurring characteristics can be noted. The

translators’ mediating abilities are often a consequence of their elevated status within

the receptor culture, which is often linked to a high level of cultural (symbolic) capital.

The translators have strong ties to the cultures from and into which they translate.

This often offers valuable insights into their motivation for undertaking and

continuing to translate literature. The translators often (feel empowered to) mediate in

1 A fairly well-known utterance by Goethe on his views on Weltliteratur reads “I am more and more convinced

that poetry is the universal possession of mankind, revealing itself everywhere and at all times in hundreds and

hundreds of men.[ . . ]. National literature is now a rather unmeaning term; the epoch of world literature is at

hand, and everyone must strive to hasten its approach” (Damrosch 2003: 12)

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favour of lesser-known or lesser-diffused cultures; despite financial and other

difficulties, the translators exhibit strong dedication to the source culture/poets/text.

Finally, the ambassadorial role does not end with the translation of the text but

continues with other activities, such as its promotion in the receptor culture.

The research cited in this section demonstrates how intercultural representation and

mediation form a dynamic and complex matrix in which translators and their interests

(as well as other agents) affect the selection, promotion and reception of translated

literature. The exploration of the cultural ambassadorship of Modern Greek poetry

translators discussed in this paper offers insights into the forces shaping the field of

production of translated poetry.

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Materials used

Two types of materials were used for the exploration and discussion of the poetry

translators’ position within the spectrum of cultural mediation: texts created by the

translators to accompany their translations and texts written by other agents that are

directly relevant to the translators and/or their translations. Both types of materials fall

under the category of paratexts.

Genette (1997) defines and expands the term “paratexts” from an intriguing

philosophical perspective, describing them as, a threshold, a space of liminality, more

like a link or a bridge than a boundary. Paratexts are generally described as texts

which extend and complement the main text. Sometimes they may accompany it,

appearing in the same bound volume; at other times the paratexts appear in external

sources but maintain a link to the main text, as in the case of an interview with the

author of a book. Genette differentiates between these two categories, calling the first

set of “elements inserted into the interstices of the text” (1997: 5) peritexts. The

second category, which he calls epitexts, consists of “the distanced elements (which)

are located outside the book, generally with the help of the media” (1997: 5).

In Translation Studies and in Translation History in particular, paratexts have been

used for the study of individual cases of translators (Hermans 2014), the route

translated texts follow through space and time (Assinder 2012), the rewriting of

literary texts under different regimes (Linder 2004) and so on. Paratexts provide the

translation researcher with information concerning the intended target readership, thus

offering a glimpse into translation norms within the receptor culture. Their mediating

role helps to trace the transmission of a text from one culture to another and from one

period to another. Like any narrative, paratexts express the point of view of the writer,

advocate specific agendas and are heavily influenced by the cultural norms they

purport to expose.

For the purposes of this study I have included a number of peritexts: introductions,

prefaces, forewords, afterwords, acknowledgements, dedications, front/back/inside

covers, biographies, bibliographies, translator’s notes, critical reading, suggestions for

further reading written both by the translators who translate the main text and by

associates or colleagues--what Genette refers to as allographic paratexts (1997: 9).

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A number of epitexts are also included: interviews with the translator, interviews with

the translator and the poet whose work is being translated, obituaries, critical essays

(by the translator or others on the translator’s body of work), reviews (by the

translator about other translators work or about the work the translator has translated),

autobiographical accounts written by the translators, biographies found in

encyclopedias, university websites and collected papers in library archives (containing

translation drafts, notes and correspondence between co-translators or translator-

editor-publisher or translator-poet). Correspondence written or addressed to the

translators was also used. A list of the paratexts used for this paper is attached as

Appendix A.

The paratexts were first skimmed through in order to establish general categories for a

broad classification. The categories are fluid and overlapping but offer an

understanding of the issues discussed, and often those omitted, by the translators. One

such category includes texts in which the translators discuss their relationship to the

source poet. Another category includes texts on collaboration between a combination

of one or more poets and one or more translators. A third category includes texts

which offer biographical information.

Initially I skimmed through all the texts I found that were relevant. This initial sifting

through material allowed me to determine which texts contained information that

provided some insight into the translators’ role as mediators. The second phase

constituted a close reading of the selected paratexts, bearing in mind the criteria

mentioned in the brief overview section.

Who are the poetry translators?

The subject of this case study is a number of poetry translators working from Modern

Greek into English in the second half of the twentieth century. The translators have

been categorized according to when they were active in the translation industry.

Important names in Greek literature and the history of its translation, such as Giorgos

Savidis, Philip Sherrard, Kay Cicellis, Kimon Friar, Rae Dalven, C. A. Trypanis and

others (see Appendix B) were responsible for introducing modern and contemporary

Greek writers to the Anglophone audiences of their time. Three other translators, who

are still alive at the time of this study, Edmund Keeley, Willis Barnstone and Nanos

Valaoritis, are included in this group.

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The number of individuals translating from Modern Greek into English in the mid-

twentieth century was approximately 20. They reside in the UK, USA or occasionally

in Greece. Most of them were members taught at universities in the US and UK and

wrote fiction and non-fiction, a significant point to which I return in the next section.

In my sampling I tried to cover material translated by the main people working from

Modern Greek in the second half of the twentieth century. These names recurred in

the bibliography, and they seem to have left their personal mark on the poetry they

translated and the poets whose work they introduced. For instance, the translations of

Giorgos Seferis’ work by Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard in 1960, for instance,

seem to have attracted the Swedish Academy’s attention to the Greek poet, resulting

in his being awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1963 (Keeley 2000: 17). Kimon

Friar’s translation of Odysseus Elytis’ The Sovereign Sun facilitated Elytis’ receipt of

the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1979 (Elytis 1980). Rae Dalven’s anthology of

contemporary Greek women poets (published posthumously in 1994), though not the

first to be published in the USA2, remains an unrepeated venture to this day.

Such acts presuppose a certain amount of influence on the part of the translator; or in

Bourdieu’s parlance, ‘symbolic capital’, which could consist of “accumulated prestige,

celebrity, consecration or honour” (Bourdieu, 1993: 7). The freedom to venture into

re-discovered territory and introduce foreign authors came from the position of the

translators within the receptor community. This position was not, however, at least

initially, a direct result of their translatorial activity. Pym’s comment that “(t)hanks to

their status and competence in other professional activities, some translators gain

considerably more social and intellectual power than they would otherwise have as

just translators” (1998: 164) rings true. These translators derived the power to act in

an ambassadorial capacity from roles and positions they occupied in parallel to their

translating activity and from social networks in which they participated, as will be

demonstrated in the following section.

Position of translators within the receptor culture

An important question at this point concerns the source of the translators’ symbolic

capital. The majority of the translators belonging to this group were also known

2 The first women’s only collection of translated poetry is, to the best of my knowledge, Greek Women Poets, published in 1978 by poet and translator Eleni Fourtouni.

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authors in their own right: Dalven was a playwright for the theatre and the radio,

Keeley and Cicellis were novelists, Friar was a poet and theatre director and also

wrote for the radio. They acted as literary critics, editors in literary magazines and

teachers of literature, poetry and/or translation in established universities in the UK

and the USA. Their affiliation to universities such as Princeton and Ladycliff College

in the USA and Oxford and Cambridge in the UK, to name a few, probably offered

them the necessary status (and formed part of their symbolic capital) which would in

turn help them reinforce their position as translators of the then largely unknown

Modern Greek literature. The obituaries published in such newspapers as The

Independent, The Guardian and The New York Times for several of the translators

discussed here (Dalven, Friar, C. A. Trypanis, P. Sherrard, N. Stangos) offer ample

evidence of their status as literary personalities.

A type of symbolic capital less frequently discussed but of paramount importance for

this study is the translators’ social capital. In translation research, social capital has

been defined as the “resources deriving from durable networks of institutionalized

relationships of mutual recognition and acquaintance” (Asimakoulas 2007: 114). The

foregrounding of the structure and nature of professional relationships which are

utilized as social leverage is of particular importance for the poetry translators in this

study, as these translators’ correspondence has demonstrated.

Friar was largely known in the American literary field as the co-editor (with John

Malcolm Brinnin) of the anthology Modern Poetry: American and British, which they

published in 1951. During the preparation of this anthology, while Friar was teaching

at universities in the US, he had the opportunity to come to contact with a number of

important Anglophone poets of the time. These contacts he later used in order to

promote his translated work from Modern Greek, by asking them to provide blurbs or

reviews for his books (C. M. Bowra 1954, L. Durrell 1954). Dalven and Keeley in

their correspondence with publishers and editors of literary journals also frequently

mention the translations they were preparing, usually offer brief descriptions of the

themes and value of the poems and conclude by asking of the possibility of being

published (Keeley 1970, Dalven 1975). This constant attempt at promoting their own

translation work but also the poetry which for the Anglophone literary world

represented the poetic production of an entire country, prompts me to suggest that

people like Kimon Friar, Rae Dalven and Edmund Keeley acted as ambassadors for

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the culture from which they translated. Their names became associated with Greek

culture by the Anglophone readership after they published anthologies and poetry

collections; as the number of publications increased so did the acknowledgement from

private and public institutions in the form of awards and grants (Keeley won the

P.E.N.-Columbia University Translation Center Prize in 1975 and the First European

Prize for Translation of Poetry in 1987 among other awards, Friar won both a Ford

Foundation grant and a National Foundation of the Arts and Humanities grant in

1986).

A perusal of the front and back covers of the anthologies and collections translated by

these translator-scholars supports the claim that they used their symbolic and social

capital within the receptor culture in order to promote and diffuse their translated

poetry. They accomplished that by using their own status within the receptor culture

in order to introduce lesser known poets and poems.

In Kimon Friar’s 1982 collection Modern Greek Poetry the most prominent name on

the front cover is that of the translator--quite a striking fact in the English world of

translated literature. The two Nobel Laureates’ names are included on the cover in

smaller type (See Appendix C). The biographies and information about all the poets in

Friar’s anthology are included in a separate section towards the end of the volume.

Friar in this case acts as the gatekeeper who brings forth something new and uses his

name and status as guarantee for the value and quality of the material, in conjunction

with the prestige attached to any recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature awards.

Jones notes that this is an important “element to the translator’s ambassadorial role:

that of ‘gatekeeping’, of deciding which writers are to be given a voice in the lingua

franca and which are not” (2000: 70).

Similar is the case of Rae Dalven’s anthology of Greek women poets. The

editor/translator’s name appears on the front cover and the poets’ biographical

information is provided by the editor as an introduction to their poetry. A photograph

and a short biographical note of the translator are included on the back cover where

her Greek origin, her degrees and her publications are highlighted (see Appendix C).

Links to the source culture

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An issue of additional interest respecting the translators’ ambassadorial role, is the

connection of the translators to the source language and culture. Cultural historian

Peter Burke writes that ‘translators are often displaced people … Renaissance

translators [the subject of his study] from one language to another were often émigrés,

exiles or refugees. They took advantage of their liminal position and made a career of

mediating between two countries to which they owed a kind of allegiance’ (2009:

100). This claim is echoed in Baker when she writes that “translators and interpreters,

on the whole, seem to have historically belonged to minority groups of one type or

another” (2001: xiv).

Research into scattered references confirms that the translators of this period had

personal ties to Greece even if they did not originally come from that country. The

biographical notes for translators such as Rae Dalven and C. A. Trypanis include the

information that they were born in Greece and later migrated. Dalven who was born

in northwest Greece (near Ioannina in Epirus) migrated to the USA as a child. Kimon

Friar’s family came from Propontis in the Sea of Marmara and they moved to the US

when he was young. Keeley, who was born in Damascus, moved to Thessaloniki in

Northern Greece in 1936 at the age of eight and stayed there until 1939 (Siotis 2010).

These examples demonstrate how these translators retained their ties with the Greece.

Regular trips to Greece are mentioned in the cases of Dalven, Friar, Trypanis, Keeley

and Sherrard, as well as summers spent in the homes of family, friends and often

writers. For instance, Keeley describes a working day in his holiday home on the

island of Evia, near Athens, where he and Sherrard translated Seferis. Keeley has

written extensively on his personal working relationship with most of the poets he

translated, with whom he was often friends (Keeley, 2000). Friar dedicates his poetic

anthology to his ‘collaborators the Greek poets’ (1982: 3).

The translators’ familiarity extended to broader literary and artistic circles and

constituted a bond that informed their writing about the country and the poets and, I

believe, to some extent informed their selection and re-writing of the source texts into

English. The impact of the poetry networks of the source culture may be noted in one

of Keeley’s most recent interviews for the Greek newspaper Eleftherotypia:

When I came to Greece to prepare with Philip Sherrard our first poetry

anthology Six poets of Modern Greece, his wife’s uncle, the pulmonary

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specialist Stathatos told me: ‘Six poets? And where is Ritsos?’ I had met

Katsimbalis and his circle and no one mentioned Ritsos’ name to me. I later on

understood there was an issue because some of his poems were

propagandist … It seems that part of the intellectual society of the time was

against him because he was a communist intellectual (Keeley 2010, my

translation).

Dalven acknowledges her debt to the same spirit of collaboration she found among

the Greek poets when she was gathering the material for her 1949 collection Modern

Greek Poetry. She writes “in a very real sense, this anthology is a collective job. I am

indebted to a great number of poets and scholars in Athens, Paris and New York.”

(1949: 15). Another example is also found in Dalven’s account of how she met the

poets and gathered the material which was later published in her collection of

Contemporary Greek Women poets:

Melissanthi introduced me to the Cypriot poet Pitsa Ghalazi … [and] to Ioanna

Tsatsou. … Rita Boumi Pappa introduced me to Yolanda Pengli … Katerina

Anghelaki-Rouke introduced me to Maria Servaki and Heleni Vakalo … In

time I came to meet all the recognized poets of Greece, each of whom gave me

copies of their books, selected poems they preferred to have me translate …

(Dalven 1994: 15-16).

Motivation to translate Modern Greek poetry

The question of how and why poetry translators decide to translate poetry in the first

instance or continue translating it despite its many challenges has been a point of

enquiry for other translation scholars. David Connolly inquires “… why do translators

of poetry exhibit such a passion for translating (rendering, recreating, re-writing) the

work of others for a different linguistic and cultural readership?” (Connolly 2002: 33).

He proposes some explanations: affinity with a poet’s work, the wish to appropriate

the poems in the translator’s language and culture, as an exercise in style and a

‘starting point for our own creative ambitions’ (Connolly 2002: 33) or a wish to make

a specific poet known in the receptor culture, if the translator considers the poet’s

work to be important and original. Connolly finds the last reason to be the most

powerful motive for the translator.

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With regard to translators’ initial motivation, there has been scattered evidence among

the paratexts studied. Of interest is the autobiographical account by Rae Dalven

discussing exactly how and why she started translating Modern Greek poetry.

According to the translator, it all began quite unexpectedly on one of her trips to

Europe in the late 1920s when she was informed of a struggling but promising poet,

Joseph Eliyia. A correspondence started between them which lasted until the poet’s

death three years later. It was in 1935, during one of Dalven’s trips to Greece, that the

deceased poet’s mother bequeathed all his poems to Dalven and asked her to translate

them into English. When the book was published, Dalven sent it to several Greek-

American newspapers and got raving reviews from one of them, Atlantis. She was

invited to present the book “at various organizations and churches” (1990: 310). As a

consequence, she writes that “Friends now began to recommend me to American

publishers as a recognized translator of Modern Greek, a new idea for publishers at

that time” (1990: 310). This was in 1945. In 1949 her next translation project included

poetry written by the later Nobel Laureates Giorgos Seferis and Odysseas Elytis, as

well as a collection of poems by C. P. Cavafy.

Dalven’s ambassadorial role is even more apparent in her account of the origins and

progress of her career as translator from Modern Greek (1994). In this account Dalven

explains how she made use of her social capital, by activating her network of

colleagues, family, friends and connections in an effort to get her translations

published. Dalven mentions a Greek-American writers group in New York of which

she was a member and whose president lent her books of poetry by younger poets of

Greece, a number of whom she came to translate. He also introduced her to one of the

poets. Then it was another Greek-American poet and translator, Antonis Decavalles,

“familiar with the work of most of the Greek poets and a reader for Fairleigh

Dickinson University Press” (Dalven 1994: 16), who helped her edit her translations.

For other translators, like Edmund Keeley, what started as an exercise in literal

translation for the purposes of PhD research quickly developed into a translation

project that spans half the twentieth century and continues today with a great number

of essays, reviews, critical pieces and interviews and translated work. In his account

of how he started translating Modern Greek poetry, Keeley comments that very few

people practiced it at the time. He mentions Kimon Friar and his teacher at Oxford C.

A. Trypanis, also a translator-(while interestingly forgetting to mention Dalven’s

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translations until he mentions Cavafy). Keeley notes “I knew that Sherrard had been

working on a doctoral dissertation in Modern Greek literature at London University

(circa 1956) while I was doing the same at Oxford (we were the first in the English-

speaking world to attempt that marginal enterprise” (Keeley 2000: 30). Keeley then

anecdotally relates his first contact with Sherrard on a Greek island in the summer of

1956 and their agreement to publish their collected translations of six Greek poets.

Keeley’s personal motivation seems two-fold on this account: a writer’s/poet’s

interest in a different type of creative writing and a potential avenue for professional

development. In another comment he admits that he had “an early interest in

promoting the masterworks of an unrecognized culture, as I then regarded, with some

justification, the culture of modern Greece” (Keeley 2000: 30).

Kimon Friar’s translation production is equally long-term and prolific. His magnum

opus is the translation of Kazanzakis’ Odyssey: A Modern Sequel, which he started

translating in 1946. For the next 11 years Friar worked on the epic poem with the help

of the poet and a number of other occasional advisors, despite the fact that he

submitted the “translations and the synopsis to about fifteen publishers, and although

all were interested in the project, they thought it commercially unfeasible” (Friar,

1972: 219). Finally, in 1958 the epic was published. Friar observes “such long

dedication on my part indicates, at least, my own personal belief in the validity and

achievement of modern Greek poetry” (Friar 1982: 14).

Modern Greek-English poetry translators as cultural ambassadors

So would it be justified to say that some of these translators assumed an

ambassadorial role? To summarize, the criteria for acting in an ambassadorial role as

presented in the Brief Overview section mention such characteristics as links to both

the source and target cultures, a high level of cultural (symbolic) capital, mediation

between a hegemonic (Anglophone) and a culture of lesser currency (Greek), an

influential presence within the receptor culture and long-term dedication, often

despite adverse financial or other difficult circumstances.

As demonstrated above, these translators enjoyed strong ties to the source and

receptor cultures. They also enjoyed the symbolic capital initially bestowed on them

by the receptor culture for their complementary activities as writers, poets, literary

persons and academics. This elevated status reinforced their ability to introduce the

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lesser-known Modern Greek literature to the Anglophone world through the act of

translation. They performed the act of cultural mediation and became ambassadors as

a consequence of their general intellectual and literary work, with translation being a

complementary activity.

Long-term dedication is certainly present among the translators I have been

discussing. A number of them kept translating for the duration of their lifetime, which

roughly translates to a period of more than 30 to 40 years for each person. Equally,

the sheer number of written materials produced by some translators (Friar, Keeley)

illustrates their deep and wide-ranging interest in Greek literature and culture.

The translators’ cultural legacy is evidenced in obituaries and scholarly tribute pieces

written by the currently active group of Modern Greek to English literary translators.

Their individual merits and their contribution to the fields of translation and Modern

Greek Studies are celebrated by this younger group of translators. This view

foregrounds their significance as cultural ambassadors not only for Anglophone

readers of Modern Greek literature but also for their students and colleagues, the

current poetry translators.

The significance of these poetry translators’ work for the readdressing of the

imbalance of linguistic and cultural hierarchies cannot be overstated. Translators as

cultural mediators are the chroniclers and cartographers of entire cultures; they make

sure to record and draw attention to what otherwise may be silenced or marginalized.

By their mere existence, translators act as reminders of the possibility to communicate,

even inadequately, across languages. And it is their valuable mediation that makes

this communication happen.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my supervisors Dr Dimitris Asimakoulas and Dr Stephen

Mooney for their advice and suggestions. My deepest thanks also to Dr Alison Yeung

who helped me craft a smoother and more reader-friendly paper. Thank you to my co-

editors, Özüm Arzik Erzurumlu and Idun Heir Senstad, and to the reviewers for their

insightful and useful comments.

[15]

[16]

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---. 1990. ‘Un Unsought for Calling: My life as a translator from the Modern Greek’.

In Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 8 (2): 307-315.

[17]

--. 1994. Daughters of Sappho: Contemporary Greek women poets. Fairleigh

Dickinson University Press. London and Toronto: Associated University Presses

Friar, Kimon. 1972. "A Unique Collaboration: Translating The Odyssey: A Modern

Sequel". In The Journal of Modern Literature, 2(2): 215-244.

---. 1982. Modern Greek Poetry. New York: Simon and Schuster

---. 1983. ‘How a poem was translated’. In Translation review, Volume 11, 15-19.

Genette, Gerard. 1997. Paratexts: Thresholds of interpretation. Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press

Damrosch, David. 2003. What Is World Literature? Princeton: Princeton UP

Durrell, Lawrence; 1946-1983; Kimon Friar Papers, Box 138 Folder 7; Manuscripts

Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University

Library.

Elytis, Odysseas. (1980) Letter addressed to Kimon Friar. In Tomes; circa 1973-1980;

Kimon Friar Papers, Box 59 Folder 3-4; Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare

Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

Fourtouni. Eleni. 1978. Greek Women Poets. New Haven, Connecticut: Thelphini

Press

Goffman, Erwin. 1970. Strategic Interaction. University of Pennsylvania Press

New York University. Alexander S. Onassis Programme in Hellenic Studies. Visited

February 2015. http://hellenic.as.nyu.edu/page/raedalven

Hermans, Theo. 2014. Positioning translators: Voices, views and values in translation.

Language and Literature, 23(3), 285-301.

Jones, Francis. R. 2000. ‘The poet and the ambassador: communicating Mark

Dizdar’s Stone Sleeper’. In Translation and Literature, 9 (1): 65-87.

---. 2009. ‘Embassy networks: Translating post-war Bosnian poetry into English’. In

Agents of translation, Milton, J. and Bandia, P. F. (eds), Amsterdam: John Benjamins

Publishing Company. 301-325.

[18]

Keeley, Edmund. 2000. On Translation: Reflections and Conversations. Tampa, USA:

harwood academic publishers

---, 2010. ‘I am an illiterate person with the face of a Hellenist’. In Eleftherotypia.

Visited April 2016. http://www.enet.gr/?i=news.el.article&id=174569

Linder, Daniel. 2004. “The Censorship of Sex: A Study of Raymond Chandler’s the

Big Sleep in Franco’s Spain.” TTR : Traduction, Terminologie, Rédaction 17 (1):

155–182. doi:10.7202/011977ar

Mackridge, Peter. 2010. ‘Kay Cicellis: the unresolved dilemma of the bilingual

writer’. In Greece and Britain since 1945, Wills, D. (ed.). Newcastle Upon Tyne:

Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 9-34.

Modern Greek Studies Association (last accessed 12/12/2015) www.msga.org

Penguin Books; 1964-1993; Edmund Keeley Papers, Box 122 Folder 5; Manuscripts

Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University

Library.

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Translation review, 2(1): 2-8.

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(1): 1-39.

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Translation and Power, Tymoczko, M. and Gentzler, E. (eds), Amherst and Boston:

University of Massachusetts Press. 122-140.

Tahir-Gürçaģlar, Şehnaz. 2009. ‘A cultural agent against the forces of culture: Hasan-

Âli, Yücel’. In Agents of translation, Milton, J. and Bandia, P. F. (eds), Amsterdam,

NLD: John Benjamins Publishing Company. 161-188.

Torikai, Kumiko. 2011. ‘Conference interpreters and their perception of culture’. In

Identity and Status in the Translational Professions, Sela-Sheffy, R. and Shlesinger,

M. (eds), Philadelphia, PA, USA: John Bnenjamins Publishing Company

[19]

Toury, Gideon. 1995/2012. Descriptive Translation Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam:

John Benjamins

Tymoczko, Maria. 2003. ‘Ideology and the position of the translator: In what sense is

a translator ‘in between’?’ In Apropos of Idelogy: Translation Studies on Ideology-

Ideologies in Translation Studies, Calzada Perez, M. (ed.), Manchester: St. Jerome,

181-201.

Wallace, Warren. 1978. ‘The translator’s Voice: an interview with Edmund Keeley’.

In Translation Review, 11(1): 1-14.

[20]

Appendix A

List of the paratextual material used

A. Peritexts (texts not included within the volume of the anthology)

1. Autobiographical accounts by the translator

Dalven, Rae. 1990. “Un Unsought for Calling: My life as a translator from the

Modern Greek”. In Journal of Modern Greek Studies, 8 (2): 307-315.

Friar, Kimon. 1972. "A Unique Collaboration: Translating The Odyssey: A Modern

Sequel". In The Journal of Modern Literature, 2(2): 215-244

Keeley, Edmund. 2000. On Translation: Reflections and Conversations. Tampa, USA:

harwood academic publishers. 29-42

2. Interviews with translators

Keeley, Edmund. 2010. ‘I am an illiterate person with the face of a Hellenist’. In

Eleftherotypia. Visited April 2016. http://www.enet.gr/?i=news.el.article&id=174569

---. 2000. ‘With Honig, Ewin: on translating Cavafy and Seferis’. In On Translation:

Reflections and Conversations. Tampa, USA: harwood academic publishers. 51-68

Photiades, Myrsine. 1979. ‘The translator’s Voice: an interview with Kimon Friar’. In

Translation review, 2(1): 2-8

Wallace, Warren. 1978 ‘The translator’s Voice: an interview with Edmund Keeley’.

In Translation review 11(1): 1-14

3. Obituaries

Moschos, Michael. 1993. Obituary: Kimon Friar. The Independent. Visited February

2015. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary-kimon-friar-2316177.html

Saxon, Wolfgang. 1993. Kimon Friar, 81, translator of Greek literature. The New

York Times. Visited February 2015.

http://www.nytimes.com/1993/05/30/obituaries/kimon-friar-81-translator-of-greek-

literature.html

[21]

Lambert, Bruce. 1992. Rae Dalven, 82, Former Professor and a Historian of Jews in

Greece. The New York Times. Visited February 2015.

http://www.nytimes.com/1992/08/03/nyregion/rae-dalven-87-former-professor-and-a-

historian-of-jews-in-greece.html

4. University websites

New York University. Alexander S. Onassis Programme in Hellenic Studies. Visited

February 2015. http://hellenic.as.nyu.edu/page/raedalven

5. Articles, essays (by other agents on translators/translators’ work)

Mackridge, Peter. 2010. ‘Kay Cicellis: the unresolved dilemma of the bilingual

writer’. In Greece and Britain since 1945, Wills, D. (ed.). Newcastle Upon Tyne:

Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 9-34

Siotis. Dino. 2010. ‘The story-maker Edmund Keeley’. Visited May 2016.

http://www.enet.gr/?i=news.el.article&id=198888

6. Collected Papers

Bowra, Cecil Maurice; 1952-1963; Kimon Friar Papers, Box 134 Folder 10;

Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton

University Library.

Dalven, Rae; dates not examined; Helenē Vakalo Papers, Box 10 Folder 7;

Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton

University Library.

Durrell, Lawrence; 1946-1983; Kimon Friar Papers, Box 138 Folder 7; Manuscripts

Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University

Library.

Elytis, Odysseas. (1980) Letter addressed to Kimon Friar. In Tomes; circa 1973-1980;

Kimon Friar Papers, Box 59 Folder 3-4; Manuscripts Division, Department of Rare

Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

[22]

Penguin Books; 1964-1993; Edmund Keeley Papers, Box 122 Folder 5; Manuscripts

Division, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University

Library.

B. Epitexts (texts found within the same volume as the translated poetry)

1. Introductions

Friar, Kimon. 1982. Modern Greek Poetry. New York: Simon and Schuster. 9-25

Dalven, Rae. 1949. Modern Greek Poetry. New York: Gaer Associates.

Acknowledgements: 15-16.

--- 1994 Daughters of Sappho: Contemporary Greek women poets. Fairleigh

Dickinson University Press, London and Toronto: Associated University Presses.

Acknowledgements: 15-16.

2. Dedications

Friar, Kimon. 1982 Modern Greek Poetry. New York: Simon and Schuster. 7

3. Translator’s notes

Seferis, George.1995. Complete Poems (tr. Keeley, E. & Sherrard P.) London: Anvil

Press Poetry. 277-290

[23]

Appendix B

List of translators from Modern Greek into English active in the second half of the

twentieth century

Translator’s name Dates of

Birth-death

Country of

origin

Main country of

residence

1 Sally Purcell 1944-1998 UK UK

2 Peter Levi 1931-2000 UK UK

3 Rex Warner 1905-1986 UK UK

3 Kimon Friar 1911-1993 Greece USA/Greece

4 Rae Dalven 1907-1992 Greece USA

5 John Nicolas

Mavrodordato

1882-1970 UK UK

6 C.A. Trypanis 1909-1993 Greece UK/Greece

7 Kay Cicellis 1926-2001 France Greece

8 George P. Savidis 1929-1995 Greece Greece

9 Philip Sherrard 1922-1995 UK UK

10 Amy Mims 1936-2010 USA USA

11 Lawrence Durell 1912-1990 UK UK

12 James Merill 1926-1995 USA USA

13 Peter Colaclides 1920-1985 Greece USA

14 E.S. Phinney 1957-1996 USA USA

15 Athena Dallas-

Damis

1923-2005 Greece/USA USA

16 Theodore P.

Sampson

1932-2014 Greece/Canada Canada

17 Nikos Stangos 1936-2004 Greece Greece/UK

18 Leslie Finer 1922-2010 UK UK/Greece/USA

19 George Thaniel 1938-1991 Greece Toronto, Canada

20 Theodore P.

Stephanides

1896-1983 India/Greece

21 William F. Wyatt Jr 1933-2011 USA

[24]

[25]

Appendix C

Front cover of Kimon Friar’s Modern Greek Poetry anthology (1982)

[26]

Front cover of Rae Dalven’s Daughters of Sappho: Contemporary Greek Women

poets (1994)