Had it not been for translators and their work, much of the world’s most important literature would only have been accessible to readers with specialized skills in foreign languages. Furthermore, without translations and the people who wrote them, a country would have been deprived of the contrasts, reflections and inspirations from other literatures that are so essential to the life and spirit of its national literature. Nonetheless, translators are severely underexposed in a country’s literary history.

This obvious but often glossed-over fact has now lead the Danish Association of Translators (DOF) to the initiative of making an online encyclopedia of Danish translators. In order to avoid the complete historical effacement of translators in the slipstream between cultural anonymity and linguistic transparency, between mere bibliography and pure theory, the online database will present men and women who have enabled Danish readers (and Danish writers) to engage with other literatures from near and far – the men and women who have actively conducted the exchanges that allow Danish literature to breathe.

This initiative is intended to work on several levels, both as a frame of reference for the history of translation in Denmark and as a qualification of translation criticism. The individual entries will present a translator and his or her bibliography and literary career. They will also contain details of the individual translator’s linguistic background, technical methods, apparent strategies, particular challenges and literary merits in a critical perspective, etc. The encyclopedia will be continually expanded. The biographical and historical entries will represent deceased Danish translators of a wide variety of books from different genres, languages and territories. It may be regarded as an attempt by Danish translators to fill a gap in Denmark’s literary history that no other organization, institution or discipline can or wants to close, and a first, tentative step towards establishing a platform for further reflection, discussion and analysis.

For more information (in Danish), please click here (http://danskoversaetterleksikon NULL.dk/).