Translating New Zealand stories into Spanish: the national imaginary, the canon and the global Spanish-speaking marketplace

This paper addresses the cultural value of the translation and circulation of short stories. Its focus is a translation project aimed at the Spanish marketplace that Paloma Fresno and I embarked on in 2011 (about the time Creative New Zealand inaugurated its new programme of Translation Grants for New Zealand Literature). In 2014 Un país de cuento: Veinte relatos de Nueva Zelanda (“A Country of Tales: 20 Stories from New Zealand”), our selection of New Zealand stories translated by Paloma, was published by the University of Zaragoza Press, and later awarded a translation prize by the Asociación Española de Estudios Anglonorteamericanos (AEDEAN). Our aim was to increase the global reception and appreciation of New Zealand stories by attracting new audiences and readerships in Spain and Spanish-speaking countries, despite the difficulty of “selling” the short story as a genre there. I will discuss our principles of selection using categories of gender, ethnicity, region, and date, the issues of translation, the text and its paratexts. I will also reflect on how far the stories in Un País de Cuento represent the changing national imaginary over 100 years and the short story canon as consecrated in Dan Davin’s Classic New Zealand Short Stories (1953), Vincent O’Sullivan’s Oxford Book of New Zealand Short Stories (1978), and Marion McLeod and Bill Manhire’s Some Other Country (2008 [1984]). Other questions are: How has the publication, distribution and dissemination of twenty “classic” stories by a University Press commodified “brand New Zealand” in the literary marketplace? And as the first compilation of Zealand stories in Spanish, and so representing a modest renegotiation of New Zealand’s position in the global cultural sphere even while reflecting the unequal spread and impact of world literature, does this pioneering publication point to any particular model(s) of contemporary cultural production, movement and circulation?