A Case Study: Poetry Translator Profiles in Publishing Company Parkko’s 2023 Book Catalogue

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to explore the concepts of translator identity and symbolic capital with the help of translator profiles. This thesis focuses particularly on poetry translators, drawing on previous research on both literary translators and poetry translators. This study examines the poetry translator profiles found in publishing company Parkko’s 2023 book catalogue. The details included in these profiles are sorted into five different categories. The categories are as follows: cultural identity, academic identity, occupational identity, translator identity, and writer identity. All the five categories depict the translators’ symbolic capital, i.e., resources that grant them credibility as poetry translators. In the analysis different types of translator profiles are described and the information given in the profiles is analysed category by category. The profiles are found to consist of elements that increase the translators’ symbolic capital, and the results show that even among the poetry translators of one publishing company there is a great deal of variety of translators with different cultural, academic, and occupational backgrounds.Additionally, around half of the translators write original poetry, and the prevalence of “translators into Finnish” (“suomentaja”) aligns with previous research.