Networking Women Translators in Spain (1868-1936) and their presence in Mnemosine Digital Library

From the research group La Otra Edad de Plata (LOEP) we present a workflow on one of the collections of the Mnemosine project. The Mnemosine project is a Digital Library of Rare and Forgotten Literary Texts (1868-1936) whose aim is to select, categorise and make visible in digital format literary texts belonging to a forgotten repertoire in order to allow the historical revision of the period; and the collection in question is entitled “Women Translators in Spain (1868-1936)”, which aims to be a field of international experimentation for the creation of interoperable semantic networks through which a wide group of scholars can generate innovative research and theoretical reading models for literary texts.

Studies on Spanish literature in the late nineteenth century and the first third of the twentieth century are evolving from research on canonical writers towards the study of "rare and forgotten" authors, themes and genres during what is now called The Other Silver Age. And in this approach to the margins of the canon, women’s writing and translation are fundamental: for long before the professionalisation of translation, some Spanish women saw in the task of translating a work that provided them with a livelihood and some public recognition for their collaboration with literature, bequeathing us magnificent translations of classics and moderns. The collection presented here rescues their names and in some cases their vital data; it also provides access to some of the resources located, giving an account of the works produced by women translators of The Silver Age: of them and of the authors who served as their source, of the originals and their translations, of the connections of these women in the world of culture.

This collection also fills a gap in critical studies on gender and translation. Thus, by locating and systematising women translators and their works, it is possible, on the one hand, to show how the translations of these women gave rise to valuable advances towards the awakening of a different female identity committed to her social and cultural environment, and, on the other hand, to reflect on how, throughout The Silver Age, women dignified their work as translators by developing professionally.

In short, if we make intelligent use of the potential of new technologies (macroanalysis, stylometry, topic modelling, etc.) for philological purposes, and, at the same time, we start from a specific data model such as Mnemosine, which provides the relational search of linked data for a more selective and better targeted retrieval of information, it is possible to demonstrate the richness of the translations made by women in Spain and their commitment to modern women; it is possible to reconstruct, digitally through the Mnemosine Digital Library, a forgotten literary history: The Other Silver Age.