Translating the Greek Civil War: Alexandros Kotzias and the translator’s multiple habitus

Authors

  • Kalliopi Pasmatzi

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.14456/nvts.2012.9

Keywords:

Bourdieu, Greek Civil War, ideology, narrative theory, translator’s agency

Abstract

This paper examines how literary and socio-political influences might permeate translatorial action and lead to the articulation of the translator’s multiple habitus by looking at the Greek translation of a highly controversial book. Nicholas Gage’s Eleni, published in the USA in 1983, captures the darkest moments of the ideological rift between Left-wing and Right-wing forces during the Greek Civil War (1946-1949). The translator of Eleni into Greek, Alexandros Kotzias (1926-1992), a post-war political novelist, was considered a highly controversial literary figure amongst the Greek Left- wing literati. Drawing on narrative theory, this paper establishes how Kotzias’ own constructed public narrative of the civil war, an outcome of his individual past socialization within the Greek socio-political field, surfaces in the translation of Eleni. Ultimately, this paper argues for the translator’s habitus as a multiple entity, whose various facets correspond to the translator’s diverse socialization within a variety of social fields.

 

Author Biography

  • Kalliopi Pasmatzi

    University of Manchester, U.K.

     

Published

2023-04-04

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