Margarida Vale de GATO (University of Lisbon Centre for English Studies, Portugal)

Upgrading the sebenta: the collaborative anthology in the literary translation course

Any set of texts used for translation training will end up displaying criteria that have been, to a greater of lesser extent, willfully introduced and that may be regarded as indicators of an anthological intention, albeit almost solely guided by didactic purposes – dealing with different types of text, varying degrees of difficulty, familiarity with literary trends, or illustration of the diversity of tone and register. In view of the indelible link between the anthology and the textbook, or even the stack of miscellaneous literature papers that the students are advised to photocopy and take to class (the sebenta, a popular compendium among the copyright outlaws of the Portuguese academia), it seems expedient to select literary texts for the translation classrooms within a pre-designed anthological context. In other words, it would be wise for the teacher to realize and try to enforce anthological motivations in the selection of texts. Such planning might be supplemented by the engagement of the very students in setting up the type and scope of the anthology, providing them with an opportunity for collaborative work which until very recently would have been unthinkable for the self-conscious literary translator, but more and more this represents an asset that the marketplace associates with “transference skills” – encouraging a disposition towards teamwork, a necessary talent for the editing of anthologies.
In this paper, I will present some examples from my recent experience in literary translation training, where open discussion in class and online forums (http://traduzirliteratura.blogspot.com/) prepares the ground for a collective publication envisaged as a pre-professional portfolio. I shall also present my current efforts to find ways of co-managing a more ambitious translation and editing e-learning platform, where students from different courses or institutions may engage in the production of translation anthologies that will fill some gaps or niches in the literary system while helping students develop their translating competence more efficiently.
Finally, I wish to discuss the kinds of anthologizing norms that would best suit this latter objective, considering that the thematic anthology is more suitable for the inclusion of different types of texts and the encouragement of intertextuality awareness, while anthologies devoted to a particular literary period, movement or group of authors are more marketable or desired by the community.