1968 and Translation in Three French Reviews: Europe, Action Poétique and Change

Abstract This article discusses the role of translation in three French reviews active in the 1968 period in France: Europe, Action poétique and Change. It considers not only decisions made by the translators of individual texts, but also the choice of texts published, the status of the translator as writer, support for writers overseas and a new interest in France from the late 1960s in theories of translation. The reviews are read alongside the archive of the Union des Écrivains, founded in the wake of the Paris Events in May–June 1968, in which the reviews’ editors were active. Having identified values espoused by the Union on the basis of archival research, the article argues that the reviews’ translation practices informed Union activities and were influenced in turn by those activities. The article aims to demonstrate that the literary review represents an important, and previously underexamined, transnational dimension of the 1968 era.