Electronic Literature Translation: Translation as Process, Experience and Mediation

Abstract

This article expands how we might think of literary translation and software culture simply by considering how electronic literature is translated. Beyond negotiating specific languages, cultures, and even media in translating literature, when the networked procedurality of electronic literature is taken into consideration, additional layers of textual production, engagement, and creativity have to be accounted for. As translating electronic literature includes “translation between versions and layers of software,” the paper argues for a focus on programmed compositional processes (that is, behind the screen and before on-screen representation) just as much as instantiations on the screen, as well as a need to focus on interface as the vehicle of presentation. Therefore, translating e-lit becomes a question of translating code and interface. The article breaks down translating programmed literature into four dimensions: the translinguistic, transcoding, transmedial, and transcreational. Inspired by the notion of transcreation, the article highlights that the potential for transcreative works to stand as autonomous allows a re-consideration of what translation can be—potentially “a creative practice-based methodology.” Translation as creative practice is explored by focusing on three case studies: Woetmann et al.’s The Poetry Machine (2012), María Mencía’s The Poem that Crossed the Atlantic (2016), and Luís Lucas Pereira’s Machines of Disquiet (2015).