Introduction
By Nathan H. Dize and Laëtitia Saint-Loubert
This special issue of Reading in Translation was born through a transatlantic dialogue between two translators specializing in Caribbean literature, who first met in 2019 during the Migration, Mobility, and Sustainability: NEH Caribbean Studies and Digital Humanities Institute held at the University of Florida. We felt this fact was worth sharing with readers because, as is often the case with translation, this encounter was born under the stars of serendipity, but also of a shared passion. The themes of the 2019 Institute – migration, mobility and sustainability – are also all deeply connected to translation, and to the concerns of this special issue of Reading in Translation dedicated to archipelagic Francospheres. They also invite us to think across different temporal scales. In an age of accelerated time, when movements of people, languages and literary texts are increasingly intensified and compressed, this special issue is meant to offer a way of slowing down and taking a longer view on transoceanic dialogues through translation.
Recent publications have increasingly turned toward mapping connections within and across the Francospheres, adopting regional or transnational perspectives, some of them lending particular attention to oceans and archipelagic spaces.[1] Yet, despite this widening of critical and literary horizons, translation – and the voices of those who practice it – has not always been placed at the center of these conversations.
This special issue therefore seeks to foreground translation not only as a key analytic lens for understanding how Caribbean, Indian Ocean, and Pacific literatures circulate between different Francospheres and beyond, but also as a lived, creative, and professional practice. Our aim is to create a space for translators, authors, publishers, editors, and other cultural agents – including readers – who shape these circulations and actively redefine what “Francospheres” can mean.
The special issue is composed of a series of translations, accompanied by translators’ notes, hybrid translation-commentary-essays, book reviews and interviews with authors and translators. We opted for an incremental publication, with new pieces released each week over the course of three weeks in September. This format gives readers time to appreciate and engage with each batch, while also reflecting the rhythms and realities of archipelagic literary circulation, made of ruptures and continuities that echo island flows. The incremental publication of the special issue is therefore meant to echo archipelagic realities and their tidal movements or “tidalectics”.[2]
We are delighted to present a rich collection of contributions that offer thoughtful and engaging readings that explore and celebrate transoceanic dialogues between archipelagic Francospheres through translation. Not only do these contributions interrogate the enduring colonial logics that continue to structure literary production – from publishing markets and gatekeeping institutions to the mechanisms that determine which works circulate, in what languages, and for which markets –, they also act as conduits for interconnectedness across oceans.[3]
We would like to thank all the contributors – researchers, writers and translators – for their generous engagement with the theme of this special issue and for the thought and care they have brought to their contributions. We extend our warmest thanks to Reading in Translation and to Stiliana Milkova for welcoming this special issue, and for their ongoing commitment to addressing the longstanding neglect of translated literature in mainstream Anglophone publishing. This special issue would not have been possible without the generous support, time, and care of all those who contributed to bringing it together.
Nathan H. Dize & Laëtitia Saint-Loubert
Editors, Special Issue on ‘Archipelagic Francospheres: Transoceanic Dialogues through Translation’
First Movement
Coral Relation: Reading translated excerpts from Denis Pourawa’s “Our Coral Soul” by Julia Frengs & Katherine Hammitt
A Review of “AfroTrans: Perspectives. Entretiens. Poésie. Fiction” by corine labridy
‘Archipelagic Francospheres: Transoceanic Dialogues Through Translation’ an Interview with Ananda Devi by Nathan H. Dize and Laëtitia Saint-Loubert
Notes
[1] For academic analyses, see, for example, Charles Forsdick & Claire Launchbury (eds.), Transnational French Studies (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2023) & Jacqueline Couti & Anny-Dominique Curtius (eds.). Women, Theory, Praxis, and Performativities: Transoceanic Entanglements in Francophone Settings (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2025). Other recent open-access publications intended for a general audience include the special issues of Words Without Borders on “Familiar and Unknown Worlds: Science Fiction and Fantasy from Quebec” (Feb. 2024) and “Francophone Writing from the South Pacific” (June 2024).
[2] See Kamau E. Brathwaite, “Caribbean Culture – Two Paradigms”, in Jürgen Martini (ed.), Missile and Capsule (Bremen: Universität Bremen, 1983), p. 9–54. Also see Elizabeth M. DeLoughrey, “Routes and Roots: Navigating Caribbean and Pacific Island Literatures” (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2007). In the context of Caribbean, inter-island literary circulation and translation flows, see Laëtitia Saint-Loubert, “The Tidalectics of Translation. On the Necessity of Rethinking Translation Flows from the Caribbean”, in Ilse Feinauer, Amanda Marais & Marius Swart (eds.), Translation Flows. Exploring Networks of People, Processes and Products (Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing, 2023), 207–224.
[3] For a translator-centered approach to translation, ecology, and decolonization, see: Nuzhut Abbas (ed.), River in an Ocean: Essays on Translation (Toronto: Trace Press, 2023). Kathryn Batchelor & Claire Bisdorff (eds.), Intimate Enemies – Translation in Francophone Contexts (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013). Kavita Bhanot and Jeremy Tiang (eds.), Violent Phenomena. 21 Essays on Translation (London: Tilted Axis Press, 2022). Madhu H. Kaza (ed.) Kitchen Table Translation. (Pittsburgh: Blue Sketch Press 2017).