Translating Iberian Literatures into Galician: An Empirical Approach to the Strategies of Twenty-first-century Publishing Houses

This paper studies the production of 29 Galician publishing houses born after 2003, focusing on their Galician translations from Basque, Catalan, Portuguese and Spanish. Using the Projeto Livro Galego database, empirical data about these publications (publication year, source language and literary genre) is discussed, in order to provide insight into these publishers’ strategies. The criteria with which these publishers are selected are put to test, and the discussion shows a concentration of Iberian imports around a reduced group of agents. Also, the referential role each Iberian culture plays towards Galician culture in the dataset is analysed. A separate examination of children’s and young adults’ literature versus adult literature shows that more de-territorialized, industrial practices apply to the former, while a wide scope of motivations (which are described in detail) on a significantly lower scale apply to the latter.