Behind the Satire of Todd Hasak-Lowy’s ‘The Task of this Translator’: the Vicious Circle of Literatures in ‘Obscure’ Languages

Abstract

The plot of Todd Hasak-Lowy’s short story ‘The Task of This Translator’ (2005) revolves around a ‘translation institute’ where an amateur translator Ben takes on the job of an interpreter for an unspecified Balto-Slavic language he had studied at college but barely understands. Even though the ‘obscure’ language remains unrevealed, its description points towards Serbo-Croatian and its successors. By taking Hasak-Lowy’s story as a starting point, the present essay engages with the Serbian context in an attempt to illustrate the status of a minorised literature in a wider cultural framework, particularly that of Anglophone countries. The essay takes a sociological approach by concentrating on the roles that educational institutions, publishing industry, and the reading public play in the processes of cultural cross-contamination. The quantitative data are collected mainly from databases and statistical reports, whereas the qualitative data are extracted from interviews and articles by translators, scholars, and publishers involved in the mediation. The essay tests the following hypotheses: 1. the availability of Serbian-language courses at Anglophone universities is limited; 2. in Anglophone contexts, the Serbian language is often taught in combination with Croatian and Bosnian, which lowers the visibility of all three standards; 3. literary markets are largely governed by commercial interests; 4. the general interest in translated literature is lacking in the Anglosphere. Investigating the causal relationship between the hypotheses, the essay argues that it is the combination of these factors that creates a vicious circle preventing Serbian literature from penetrating the canonical barriers of world literature to a greater extent.