Mirok Li (1899-1950) has been described in various ways—an exile, an overseas student, an independence activist, a philosopher, a zoologist, and a novelist. His life paths cannot be singularly defined, reflecting the intricate interweaving of different aspects of his transnational trajectory. Born in Haeju, he continued his medical studies in Gyŏngsŏng, fled to Germany via Shanghai, and later engaged in literary activities in exile. Even after settling in Germany, his path remained multifaceted: Three years after publishing his dissertation in Zoology, he began writing short stories, ultimately publishing his first novel The Yalu flows in 1946.

This study explores the central questions: Why did an exile Mirok Li begin writing fiction in Germany? The existing scholarship has largely portrayed him as a 'cultural ambassador of Korea' of a figure spreading knowledge of his homeland. However, it has overlooked his active editorial and publishing engagement with literary works from East Asian nations. Addressing this gap, this study examines the characteristics of Li’s exilic literature in Germany and explores its connections with world literature. Li was the first Korean to write in German, actively participated in Germany’s World Literature series projects, selecting and introducing East Asian literary works for a German readership. Thus, this study hypothesizes that Li, as a mediator of East Asian literature, sought ways for East Asian literature to coexist within the framework of world literature, while ultimately exploring pathways to world peace.

To achieve these objectives, this research employs Goethe’s concept of Weltliteratur and Rey Chow’s theory of cultural translation as its methodological framework. Given that Li began his literary career after his exile to Germany, this study focuses on his literary activities between 1920 and 1950. It examines the networks he established with German writers, Asian intellectuals, and socialist circles in Europe. The primary sources include his essays and novels published in Germany, and archival materials from the German Literature Archive Marbach related to Germany’s world literature projects. Li also personally translated and introduced East Asian literary works into German, making it crucial to examine how his own writings positioned and represented East Asian culture and literature within the field of world literature.

The ultimate goal of this research is to expand the scope of studies on Mirok Li, which have so far been confined to his novel The Yalu Flows (Der Yalu fließt).

Furthermore, by examining post-World War I era -when values such as peace and reconciliation were emphasized- through the lens of Li as an exile, this research offers insights into the contemporary understanding of world literature and global citizenship. In doing so, it critically engages with and rethinks key concepts such as borderlessness, post-nationalism, and transnationalism.

Cette communication examine les dimensions linguistiques (et traductologiques) des récits migratoires d’autrices iraniennes telles que Marjane Satrapi, Maryam Madjidi et Nahal Tajadod, dont les œuvres, écrites directement en français, témoignant d’expériences complexes de migration, de mémoire et d’appartenance, mais où l’écriture en français devient un acte de traduction intérieure, un processus d’auto-traduction au sens métaphorique. L’objectif principal est d’analyser comment cette traduction intérieure agit comme un vecteur de médiation interculturelle, tout en interrogeant les représentations de perte, de transformation et de transfert culturel qui émergent dans le passage entre la langue de l’univers de ces récits (le persan) et celle de leur écriture (le français).

Dans cette communication, j’analyserai mon corpus de deux points de vue :

1. La (auto)traduction intérieure comme outil de recontextualisation

Je présenterai les stratégies traductives employées par ces trois autrices pour adapter les référents culturels iraniens (les concepts religieux, les rituels, ou la poésie persane, les proverbes et noms propres) au lectorat français.

2. Langue de l’exil : écrire ou s’autotraduire ?

J’explorerai les tensions linguistiques dans les textes d’autrices comme Nahal Tajadod (Passeport à l’iranienne) ou Maryam Madjidi (Marx et la poupée), où l’écriture en français devient un acte de traduction intérieure et j’étudierai l'impact de la migration sur la langue source et la langue cible, en me posant une question principale : quels déplacements opère ce type de traduction/écriture sur les récits d’exil et d’appartenance ?

Mon corpus sera constitué principalement de :

• Persepolis (2000-2003) de Marjane Satrapi : (bande dessinée autobiographique traduite dans plusieurs langues).

• Passeport à l’iranienne (2007) de Nahal Tajadod : (récit semi-autobiographique écrit en français, explorant les tensions identitaires entre l’Iran et la France).

• Marx et la poupée (2017) de Maryam Madjidi (roman autobiographique écrit en français, qui interroge les thèmes de l’exil, de la langue et de l’héritage culturel).

Je choisis de travailler spécifiquement sur les autrices, car leurs récits migratoires sont souvent marqués par des enjeux de genre et des expériences spécifiques liées à la condition féminine en Iran. Ces écrivaines, à travers leur langue et leurs choix narratifs, ouvrent un champ d’analyse particulier sur les tensions et les rapports de force linguistiques et culturels, ainsi que sur la manière dont la traduction et la langue de l’exil deviennent un outil pour revisiter et redéfinir leur rapport à la culture d’origine et à celle d’accueil. L'objectif de la communication est donc de comprendre la traduction comme un acte créatif et culturel, en montrant que la (auto)traduction des récits migratoires,où chaque mot porte une charge émotionnelle, ne se limite pas à un simple transfert linguistique, mais implique une reformulation des expériences d'exil pour un lectorat étranger.

This presentation, which will be brief and exploratory, examines the even shorter autobiographical chronicle, "Balada de los Apalaches" (Ballad of the Appalachian Mountains) by Melanie Márquez Adams, written and published in Spanish in 2020 in Querencia, the author's compilation of similar chronicles. Of particular interest to me is Márquez Adams's understanding and use of the concept of "soledad": a concept (often translated into English as "solitude") that in many respects has become emblematic of the Latin American condition and to some extent of the Latin American region as a whole; indeed, soledad – as it is developed and expressed across several moments in Latin American thought – is the focus of my current monograph; I am still in the early stages of this project, so I would welcome any suggestions. In "Balada de los Apalaches," I am particularly interested in how the author grapples with her stimulating but uneasy residency in the United States, where the mountains of eastern Tennessee both remind her of her Ecuadorian homeland, while simultaneously reminding her that she is now in a new region, far from her origins. In expressing this nostalgia, Márquez Adams deploys notions of soledad. To what extent does this deployment of our concept align with other usages within the Spanish-American intellectual tradition? Conversely, to what extent does it depart from said usages? In either case, in what ways does Márquez Adams's short chronicle expand our understanding of "soledad" in the Americas? The answers to these questions entail explorations into both migration and translation, the twin subjects of this panel.

People moving across borders naturally bring languages into contact, occasioning acts of translation. Yet the standard history of translation theory has surprisingly little to say about immigration, emigration, or diaspora—and there is strikingly little research in translation studies on the place of migration in the movement of literature across languages. This brief (8–12 minute) paper will introduce and frame the panel "Translating Migration: The Movement of Texts and Individuals in World Literature." Modern forms of diasporic mass migration across national language boundaries are prone to precipitate the translation of literature. This chapter in the history of world literature surpasses any dynamic once envisioned by Goethe. It gives us a vision of literary translation as a distinctively migratory literary practice, and one which might have particular expressive import to writers caught up in histories of migration as they play out over the course of generations.