Translated Historical Novels

The chapter deals with two corpora: Slovene historical novels translated into other languages (works by Josip Jurčič, Ivan Tavčar, Ivan Pregelj, Vladimir Bartol, and Drago Jančar) and historical novels of other literatures translated into Slovene. The corpus of historical novels translated into Slovene up to 1945 comprises around 200 works. German historical novels were translated the most frequently, other major literatures (Russian, English and French) were fairly equally represented, followed by historical novels in other Slavic languages. Among the original authors were world classics of the genre (more than ten novels contributed August Šenoa, Henryk Sienkiewicz and Alexandre Dumas). The most prolific translators (with more than five translations) were Vladimir Levstik, Ivan Mulaček, Peter Miklavec and Boris Rihteršič. A notably large number of novels was translated anonymously. South Slavic historical themes were particularly dear to translators and publishers in the Slovene west, i. e. in Gorica/ Gorizia and Trst/Trieste. The bibliographical overview of the translated historical novel on Wikivir and this contribution should encourage the completion of the miss­ing chapters in the history of Slovene translation and their encyclopaedic coverage.