Consecration and accumulation of literary capital: translation as unequal exchange

In Pascale Casanova’s 2002 essay, literary translation, when examined from the standpoint of the power relations played out in the international literary field, is no longer seen as a simple transfer from one language and culture to another. Positing an unequal distribution of linguistic-literary capital among national languages and literatures enables translation to be analyzed as a transfer of capital. The twin logic of symbolic economics and internationalization shows that translation functions as varying “transactions” whose meaning depends on the respective position of the three authorities that determine each translation: the two languages, source and target; the author, who must also be placed in two contexts, both in a national literary space and in the global framework within which national languages and literatures are positioned hierarchically; and finally the translator. To define a translation, whether as an accumulation of capital or as an official recognition, it is necessary to describe in detail the direction in which literary capital is Typesetter : please add the following date at base of the first page of this chapter :2002transferred.