Translating Jane Austen

Welcome to Translating Jane Austen! This is a research project by Asha Parekh, supervised by Dr Gillian Dow at the University of Southampton.

The images above come from a wide range of translated editions of Jane Austen’s novels. In them, Austen has many names: Jeanne Austen, Džeina Ostina, 简·奥斯丁著, Johanna Austen, Jane Austenová, جین آستین. Readers across the world have encountered her in all kinds of strange, wonderful, and unusual ways. Often, she is considered the pinnacle of ‘Englishness’ – referenced in countless TV shows, films, books, and more, as representing an idyllic view of English country life and love. But how does such a quintessentially ‘English’ author fare when transplanted across cultures, and indeed across time?

This year marks Austen’s 250th birthday. It gives us a landmark opportunity to consider how the passage of a quarter of a century has shaped the reputation, influence, and impact of a much loved cultural celebrity. Understanding how she has travelled across the world is key to understanding how we come to see her now, and how millions of global readers have come to love and appreciate her writing.

From Local Author to Global Phenomenon

Austen was born in the village of Steventon and lived in Hampshire for most of her life, including two brief residences in Southampton. Often, her novels are described as dealing only with small and very particular sections of life and society. She has been critiqued for seeming to neglect global political events such as the French revolution, and has been variously styled as the author of ‘women’s fiction’, ‘canonical literature’, and ‘romantic fiction’. These competing attitudes towards Austen’s place, concerns, and importance come out in startling ways when magnified on a global scale – and yet the difficulty of studying Austen’s reception and translation worldwide is a barrier to deeper research.

For the first time, this project aims to bring together existing lists of translations – in reference books, national library catalogues, newspaper archives, and more – to start building a freely accessible database of translations. This prototype represents the start of what we hope will ultimately become a much broader and more comprehensive project. For more information about which translations I have chosen to focus on recording for this project, see the ‘Database’ page.

So far, the translations I have included range from the earliest French translations published in Geneva and Paris, to a recently discovered Norwegian translation serialised in a newspaper, to translations in Hebrew, Urdu, Azerbaijani, Ukrainian, and Georgian. Cataloguing these allows for much more confident conclusions to be drawn about Austen’s global presence – if indeed ‘conclusivity’ is what you are after, which in this project is a contentious term.

Overall, much of what I have unearthed is more questions – more unknowns – more strange, bizarre, and thought-provoking findings. In the spirit of collaborative research, which is integral to this project, I have added a ‘contributions’ section (which you can find in the sidebar), where you can share your own thoughts about the development of the project.

Though my time on the project is over, it will continue to be updated, and I will continue to check back every now and again. So come back soon for the latest updates! The ‘Blog’ page contains welcome posts from myself and from Dr Gillian Dow, as well as information and updates about the project’s progress. Below I have written a brief guide to the key areas, which I will update as the website – and database – gain new capabilities.

In the meantime, happy 250th birthday to Jane!

Guide

This website offers many different resources for thinking about translation and Austen’s works. Below is a brief overview of the website and its capabilities, so you know where to look first.

ABOUT – this page describes in more detail the aims and practices of the project. You can read about everything I’ve achieved and what more we are hoping to accomplish

CHAWTON VILLAGE – on the ‘About’ page, you will find an overview of the two collections of translations I visited in the village of Chawton, and their significance to the project

DATABASE – the heart of the project. This is where you can search the data for yourself and see details of each translation catalogued so far, from 1813 to 2023

EXPLORE – this section dives deeper into the data, featuring my analysis of patterns and trends from the dataset. It also features my investigations of specific details such as cover images and illustrations. Whilst only a small start on extracting the rich trove of information from the dataset, it presents a selection of interesting ideas that I hope will spark ideas for future research

MAPS – I developed these maps to provide a visual overview of the history of Austen translations. They display the location of all translations catalogued so far, alongside detailed information and images, and are filterable by novel, language, and more

BLOG – here you can keep updated on the project’s progress, as well as reading Welcome messages from myself and Dr Gillian Dow

BIBLIOGRAPHY – this contains full information about the sources I used to develop the project and the database. It also has information about other brilliant Digital Humanities projects to explore if you are interested

CONTRIBUTE – use the ‘contribute’ button in the sidebar to send me your thoughts, comments, and suggestions

ADD A TRANSLATION – use this button in the sidebar to fill out information on a translation, new, old, forgotten, rediscovered, or otherwise. If you have information about a translation that’s already in the database, you can use this form too. I’m keen to hear about any information that I’ve not yet recorded. Thanks!

Many thanks to Jane Austen’s House, Chawton House, and Goucher College, for access to the images above.

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Quick Links

Home
Database
Maps
Blog

Get in Touch

Got a question? Suggestion? Information about a new translation? We’d love to hear from you! Click below to contribute.

If you are looking to contribute information about a specific translation, or correct/add to information we already have in the database, please use the form below. Thanks!