The BWLET.net Resource
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In addition to providing practical information, for example, whether a particular author/work exists in translation or how many translations are available – BWLET.net has considerable potential as a means of advancing cultural understanding of Wales. It should, for instance, make possible for the first time a historical study of translation activity in Wales. And it should also bring Wales for the first time – albeit very belatedly – within the purview of modern Translation Studies. Among the questions that it can help answer in the latter context are the following:
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What works were published in what period(s) and why?
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Which period was the most productive from the point of view of translation? Where were translations published and by what presses?
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How many authors have translated their own work?
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What sort of target audiences can be inferred from the translation activity of certain periods and authors?
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What works have not been translated and why?
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Who financed translations?
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What styles and strategies of translation have been employed?
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How have translators viewed their work?
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How many collections of translation have been by single authors and how many by several hands?
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How can one start tracing the critical reception of translated texts?
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How many bilingual editions have been published, and when?
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What is the nature, or status, of a bilingual edition?
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How does a translator deal with a situation where the source culture and the target culture are out of phase with each other?
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Is the gender of the translator and/ or the gender of the person whose work is being translated at all material to the case?
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How far can a translation become active as a literary influence on the target culture?
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What view of the receiving culture is implied by these translation?
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What view of the source culture?
This is not just a list of “academic” questions. All of them have the potential to yield illuminating, and perhaps original, insights not only into the history of Welsh-English translation, but also into the very infrastructure of Welsh culture.