The creative process of multilingual writers and translators

Why and how did this project come about?

This international collaboration project follows on from the project we developed over two years within my research team, ‘Multilingualism, Translation, Creation’ at ITEM (UMR 8132 CNRS/ENS)¹. Since its creation in 2012, the team has been studying the creative process of multilingual writers and translators. Building on this experience, we wanted to explore a new issue that had been little or not at all studied until then, namely the ‘creative process’ of multilingual women writers and translators. Although several members of the team were already interested, individually and independently, in female corpora, we had not, until then, focused our attention on the particularities of ‘female’ creativity, nor had we undertaken any collective research in this specific field. The aim was therefore to join forces to raise the profile of these female creators, who are confined to the status of ‘minor’, “peripheral” or even ‘marginal’ authors. As for the creative process of women translators, this field of research also remains relatively unexplored, even though women make up 70% of those working as translators. In both cases, the aim is to make ‘visible’ those whose work often remains, even today, ‘invisible’.

After two years of study, the time has come to broaden the linguistic and geographical scope to include new corpora. We have therefore had the opportunity to give this project, which was initially developed within a team, a second lease of life by bringing in colleagues from the University of Oslo and the University of Stockholm as part of a tripartite Franco-Nordic programme. The synergy created between the three teams will further highlight this theme in the hope that it will transcend the boundaries of the academic world and raise public awareness of the role of women in creative fields. Indeed, colleagues from the two Nordic universities will make an important contribution by introducing new corpora (namely female writers and translators from Northern and Eastern European countries), some of which have never been explored from a multilingual perspective.

How will you study the creative process of these women?

The methodology that will enable us to unlock the secrets of creation is a key point. In order to do this, we are relying on ‘genetic criticism’, developed by the Institut des textes et manuscrits modernes (ITEM), a joint laboratory of the CNRS/ENS. This methodology allows us to study the creative process through a creator's working documents (drafts, notes, scripts, correspondence, etc.), in other words, through archival documents that preserve traces of the creative process. Indeed, the drafts of a written work or a translation offer this remarkable opportunity to identify traces of the creative process. For multilingual writers, working documents make it possible, for example, to identify the impact of the different languages they master on the development of a work that, in most cases, will be published in a national language. However, when studying writers' archives, we often find that beneath the national language in which their works are published, there is often bilingualism or even multilingualism. When working with archival collections, this is not a matter of speculation: the genetic approach offers a rigorous scientific method that studies empirically observable written traces.

As for the work of translators, archival documents can reveal, for example, the true identity of a person who translated a literary work, as this identity may have been intentionally concealed or altered. Archival documents provide a valuable counterbalance to editorial paratext, which can sometimes be vague, imprecise or even erroneous. Thus, self-translated works by bilingual authors, such as Anne Weber, are often presented as originals by both editorial fields (French and German), even though in one of the two cases it is necessarily an authorial ‘translation’ of a work that already exists in another language. The only way to understand the true creative process is therefore to explore the archives (when they exist), because drafts never lie.

For those who are not used to working with these materials, I would like to point out that archival research is particularly time-consuming and demanding: it is a true scientific vocation! On the other hand, it is often rewarded with wonderful discoveries that advance scientific research and understanding of phenomena.

How did the role of women writers and translators evolve between the 19th and 20th centuries?

In general, if we look at the presence of works/collections by female artists in private and public collections and archives, we see that it is very limited in the 19th century and begins to increase slowly in the 20th century. The time has now come to shine a light on these women, who have long been forgotten and invisible.

The second half of the 20th century and well into the 21st century have given rise to numerous female writers who either write in several languages or have chosen a non-native language for their creative work. There is a possible trend, which should be confirmed by further studies: whereas previously multilingual authors sought to conform perfectly to the national literary canon, 21st-century writers no longer hide their plural identity, whether in terms of their personal origins or their linguistic expression. In the latter case, they allow traces of their mother tongue to appear in works published in the national language, as is the case, for example, with the Russian language that shines through in Polina Panassenko's novel Tenir sa langue (2022).

Has the place of women authors and translators within society differed between the countries covered by your study?

‘Invisibility’ is certainly a common feature of multilingual writers and translators, regardless of their country of origin and language of expression. Several multilingual writers studied as part of the project also have in common the fact that they were intensely involved in translation, thus becoming mediators between languages and ambassadors of cultures. They have also often contributed, through their writings and personal contacts, to the development of intellectual and cultural networks between different countries. Consequently, their role, which is mostly overlooked, in the circulation of ideas and texts is absolutely fundamental. If I may, I will approach your question from another angle and mention a few countries that are particularly interested in women's writing and translation. In the recent resurgence of interest in women's creativity in the world of research, a number of international initiatives and advances can be identified. Examples include the five volumes of The History of Nordic Women’s Literature, which also led to the creation of a digital platform of the same name², and the remarkable research programme at the University of Luxembourg, which for several years focused on Les autrices francophones du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg comme précurseures littéraires (1900-2020) (French-speaking women writers in the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg as literary precursors (1900-2020))³.

Another recent initiative worth mentioning is the creation of a digital portal, LEDL-Letteratura delle italiane, which lists Italian women authors from different periods through biographical, critical and bibliographical entries⁴. Finally, research on women and their archives is gaining momentum on the other side of the Atlantic, in Brazil, where there has been a proliferation of collective initiatives in the field of research on women's creativity. One example that comes to mind is the Cartography of Women's Archives⁵ and the creation of a major Network of Researchers on Women's Archives⁶. All these initiatives, to which we also wish to contribute through our Franco-Nordic project, will raise awareness among the public and institutions of the importance of research on women creators and the preservation and exploration of their archives.

What actions are planned as part of this project and beyond?

Work on women's corpora, which cover different linguistic and geographical areas, is punctuated by scientific meetings. The first of these was the international symposium L’étude du processus créatif des écrivaines francophones plurilingues aux XX^e et XXI^e siècles (The study of the creative process of multilingual French-speaking women writers in the 20th and 21st centuries), held in June 2025 at the Royal Swedish Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities (KVHAA) in Stockholm. This event, which brought together researchers from several countries, revealed the secrets of the creative process among multilingual women writers in the 20th and 21st centuries. It was an opportunity to analyse the different creative modalities of authors who have chosen French as their language of expression: writing in several languages or in a non-native language, self-translation, collaborative translation and even translation. All these activities are closely intertwined and must be understood from a global perspective. Other meetings will be scheduled in Paris and Oslo to continue exploring the ever-growing corpus of female writers. Finally, we hope that this two-year project will lead to a broader research programme. Indeed, a partnership with other institutions and foreign researchers interested in this subject would help to establish and strengthen this field of research. ‘Writing and translating as a woman’ is a subject that deserves significant human and financial resources in order to create an international programme with a broader scope in terms of time, geography and language.

1. The team aims to study the creative process of multilingual writers and translators: http://www.item.ens.fr/multilinguisme/
2. https://nordicwomensliterature.net/welcome-to-the-history-of-nordic-womens-literature/
3. https://feather.hypotheses.org/
4. https://letteraturadelleitaliane.it/
5. https://sites.google.com/view/mapatrama/mapa
6. https://redearquivosdemulh.wixsite.com/website-2

Winning project for the 2024 Franco-Nordic programme

Article published in the third issue of the FMSH Journal.