Sprecher
Beschreibung
During and in the aftermath of the Second World War, Allied information and propa-ganda agencies engaged with translation in several ways. While leaflets in local lan-guages were dropped on enemy territories, and speakers’ voices travelled on radio frequences, booklets and guides helped troops and civilians navigating a global war. However, organisations like the British Central Office of Information (COI) and the American Office of War Information (OWI) were also active in international copyright negotiations at a time when few others could. The activities of these agencies would “include work usually done by book publishers, […] literary agents, export booksellers, and library suppliers” (COI Publications Division Report, Oct. 1946, TNA, INF 8/1). While carrying out daily copyright clearance tasks for their own publi-cations, Allied organisations set up copyright facilitations aimed at encouraging the commercial translation of British and US works in newly liberated areas.
Following traces found in Italian agents’ and publishers’ archives, this paper explores the agenting function of British and American information agencies before and after 1945. Delving into records at the UK National Archives (Kew) and US National Ar-chives and Records Administration (College Park, MD), it unpacks goals, features, and results of translation rights programmes between 1943 and 1947, with Italy as a target area. In doing so, it reflects on the interactions between nation states, literary agents, and book trades at home and abroad; on the tension between propaganda and cultural diplomacy in modern times; and on the origins and legacy of state-run translation aids, as the conflict became an opportunity to test the soft power potential of copyright on the international landscape.
Speaker Bio:
Anna Lanfranchi is a Teaching Fellow in Translation and Transcultural Studies and Italian at the University of Warwick. Her research intersects translation and book his-tory; she is the author of Translations and Copyright in the Italian Book Trade: Pub-lishers, Agents, and the State (1900-1947) (Palgrave, 2024). She has published arti-cles and book chapters on Italian publishing and translation history, history of copy-right, intellectuals and the book trade, and translation programmes in the Second World War.