Internationale Neerlandistiek - Volume 61, Issue 3, 2023

In the literary infrastructure, several actors are involved in translating a literary work from one language to another. This article presents the results of an institutional study of one of the biggest players in the Dutch literary life, namely the Dutch Foundation for Literature. Through participatory research (interviews and questionnaires), the main focuses of this organisation emerged, of which this article examines one of its working tools, the Translation Database. This database, for which Marlies Hoff (Library and Documentation) is responsible, is a nationally unique phenomenon and a transnational tool. Both the staff of the Dutch Foundation for Literature, and external users inside and outside the borders of the Netherlands make extensive use of it. To investigate this database and to map its users, a questionnaire was compiled on both internal and external use of the database. This research seeks to better understand by whom, for what and how this database is used inside and outside the Dutch Foundation for Literature.

Mike van Diem’s Character (1997) is one of the few Dutch films that has received high international praise. The film won an Oscar in the category Best Foreign Language Film in 1998, at the most-watched Academy Awards of all time. This article demonstrates that the film’s reception abroad fundamentally differed from its reception in Dutch media. In the Netherlands, critics and journalists focused on the question of author fidelity, the film being an adaptation of a famous Dutch novel written by Ferdinand Bordewijk. Character was repeatedly qualified as un-Dutchlike, because it applied a visual and narrative style that was akin to the Hollywood blockbuster. This article argues that the international appeal and success of Character surfaced specific notions and assumptions regarding author fidelity and national identity. The latter relates to the national self-image of the Netherlands as a Calvinist nation.

This article examines the Basque translations of Anne Frank’s Het Achterhuis. A total of two translations are to be scrutinised. First of all, a partial translation from the 1960s, that was made by a somewhat atypical duo of translators – a Dutch upcoming specialist in Basque Studies and a teen-age Basque girl – and published in one of the first fully Basque-language literary journals. Secondly, a full translation from 2004, with reissues in 2014 and 2017. The article looks at translations from a sociological-receptive point of view intending to reconstruct goals, working methods and profiles of the translators, and investigates the reception of both works in peritexts, mainly reviews in the press. To this end, I have used, among others, archival material, interviews with two of the three translators (those who are still alive), and a contextual analysis of developments in the Basque literary field in recent decades. All this offers an opportunity to see how one of the modern Dutch-language classics circulates in the only partly autonomous literary field of a minority language. The question should be asked whether Anne Frank has been translated as a Dutch or a global icon. In the end, it is the international success of the book that seems to have prevailed rather than the desire to open up Dutch culture to Basque readers.