Translatology in Croatia and Serbia From the Beginnings of the Discipline to the Theory of Cultural Translation

The paper discusses the propensity of Croatian translation studies to a cultural approach (similar Serbian examples are taken into consideration as well). It seems that in the 20th century history of Croatian translation studies the case studies of plurilinguism in Croatian Renaissance literature have induced the scholars to treat the translated texts as a part of a larger system of cultural and political relations even when they defined their approaches as intrinsic, stylistic or linguistic (Svetozar Petrović, Frano Čale). It should not surprise then that the same Croatian-Italian history of translations has recently represented the main urge to an application of the new school of translation studies with a strong cultural orientation, including postcolonial insights, a revision of the discipline of comparative literature, the ethical issues regarding translation, and the reflection on the concepts of nation and cultural policies in the translation process (Iva Grgić). Even though in the meantime, both in the Croatian and in the Serbian translation studies, there have been important contributions to a linguistic, semiotic and communicative model of translation, today’s tendency of the discipline in these two areas is predominantly culturological. The paper will try to account for this trend. Particular attention is dedicated to Boris Buden, a provocative Croatian theoretician whose book on translation studies entitled The pit of Babel – is culture translatable?, written in German, translated in Serbian and published in Belgrade in 2007, represents at the same time a continuation and a break with the culturological approaches of nationally oriented postcolonial translation studies.