The Social Translating Project is testing a new social practice for literary translation.
Translators from Asia are translating a German-language novel into their respective native languages. During the process, they meet in a closed digital forum and work on their translations by interacting with one another and engaging in a close discourse with the author. An e-book platform with social functions has been used which allows the users to make marginal notes in the text of an e-book as well for the translators and the author to follow up on each other’s comments.
Additional translators outside Asia are being invited to participate in the Social Translating discourse through partnerships with German publishers who provide books for the Social Translating Projects.
The Merck Social Translating Project 2018 was developed by the Goethe-Institut Korea in partnership with Merck Korea.