Translation and Slovene Publishers in Italy

The Slovene ethnic territories that are presently part of Italy have had an extremely important role in the development of the Slovene national identity, therefore this chapter presents the most prominent publishers as well as translation activity in the regions of Trieste and Gorizia. Publishing and translation activity connected with Slovene in Trieste and Gorizia began in the mid-18th century with the translation of religious texts. A hundred years later, and along the first Slovene newspapers, transla­tions of literary works from various languages began to appear. After an initial period of rich production with the common goal of developing the Slovene national identity, most Slovene publishing and printing houses were closed down in the years after the First World War, with only Edinost, Goriška matica and Goriška Mohorjeva družba remaining active. Apart from publishing newspapers, they also published transla­tions of literary works into Slovene (with more or less pronounced publishing poli­cies). After the Second World War in particular, translations of Slovene authors into Italian and other languages also gradually started to appear in the desire to introduce Slovene authors to a foreign readership. Thus, in the second half of the 20th century, and now into the 21st, and despite the considerable commercial production of trans­lations from English and other languages, there is also a marked effort to preserve the Slovene national identity and to mediate between Italian and Slovene cultures. Another noteworthy aspect is the desire to present local Slovene authors, to whom such publishing houses devote a relatively large amount of resources.