Introduction

by Sabrina Jaszi, Mirgul Kali, & Ena Selimović 

When we first weighed what we’d want our collective to do, we bandied about the idea of starting a translation journal. The collaborative nature of translation seemed to have parallels in the work of publishing a journal. And given that languages deemed “small” or “minor”—among them, a large number of Turkic and Slavic ones—continue to be underrepresented, even in the relatively few outlets that publish translations, the prospect of creating another platform for the work thrilled us. Then, in the fall of 2021, we were offered the opportunity to collaborate with the University of Iowa’s Exchanges journal. And so this once far-off idea of ours began to take shape.

And here we are, presenting the contents of our inaugural issue! With the help of Eylül Doğanay from the University of Iowa as guest poetry editor, we selected eight prose and three poetry translations. There must be something special about the number 11—the 11 submissions mirror the 11 letters in “Turkoslavia.” The prose translations include two from BCMS (one Yugoslav, one Croatian), one from Macedonian, two from Polish, one from Russian (via Azerbaijan), one from Turkish, and one from Uzbek. They are generically diverse, reflecting the short story, novel excerpt, and memoir. The poetry translations include two from BCMS (one Bosnian, one Montenegrin) and one from Russian (via Uzbekistan). Thinking of each piece individually and collectively was an exercise in close reading with the issue in mind, a task that required a split focus on line editing and overarching themes and, broader still, on how each piece is situated in historical time and place. 

Launching a journal of translations from Turkic and Slavic languages comes with a unique set of challenges. One major risk was perpetuating orientalization. Another was overrepresenting Russia at the expense of other Turkic and Slavic languages and cultures. These tendencies have persisted in the common perceptions of Central Asia or the Balkans and in the ways North American and West European academic institutions organize their departments. (See, for example, the recent framing of the Balkans as the “Wild East.”) The journal pushed us to question our own predispositions as we advocated for minoritized languages and early career translators (including, excitingly, a collective of translators!), placing them alongside imperial languages and established translators.

But how to perform this advocacy when one is limited by a submissions pool with many translations from Russian and Turkish? How also to do this in light of aesthetic preferences that carry their own historical and institutional baggage? The linguistic and geographic distribution of the pieces are not as varied as we’d hoped. On the one hand, we regretted not receiving more contributions from Central Asian languages, since they are important to our project. On the other hand, we were ecstatic to read so many submissions from BCMS, especially from Bosnia, underrepresented in literature in translation from former Yugoslavia. And language takes many forms: it was equally important to preserve the many different varieties of BCMS, for example, as it was to preserve different Englishes. That’s one of the reasons we decided not to enforce a standardized American English throughout the issue, if the translators had chosen to use British or Australian English, and so on. For just as the authors of the source texts emerge from somewhere, so too do the authors of the translations. 

In our editorial process, we reflected on our role as guardians for texts, and wondered how to guide authors with less or different experience in English language publishing. Who is seen as a legitimate guide? Perhaps our interest in this question is explained by our being four women with varied migration experiences and personal histories. At the same time, we were grateful for the careful and thoughtful editing our own translations had received in the past and wanted to provide this to contributors. We enjoyed drawing from our shared or overlapping languages to read the source texts together with the translations. 

And what an absolute thrill and honor the experience has been of bringing these 11 pieces together! We couldn’t wait to finish writing this introduction, as it was the last piece keeping us from launching the journal and sharing the brilliant work of our fellow translators. We thank them for entrusting us with their work for this inaugural issue.