The University of Ottawa Press, Canada’s oldest French language university press and the only bilingual university press in North America, has just published Prof. María Sierra Córdoba Serrano’s work Le Québec traduit en Espagne: analyse sociologique de l’exportation d’une culture périphérique.

The book was selected by the publisher to be showcased at the 2013 ACFAS congress, one of the largest congresses in the Social Sciences and the Humanities in the French-speaking world.

In the book, Prof. Córdoba uses the study of peripheral cultures as a privileged observatory to examine the sociological relations that configure a corpus of literary works between Quebec and Spain (with a focus on Catalonia). In addition to this specific case study, Prof. Córdoba’s book sheds light on the different phases of cultural exchanges in general: from the initiation and selection of cultural products, to their international circulation, reception, and re-branding so they fit the logic of the receiving cultures where they are reinserted. It further examines the decisive but non-deterministic role of public institutions in forming translation flows, as well as the part other key international stakeholders (publishers, critics, translators, scouts, etc.) play in facilitating, and sometimes hindering, the international circulation of ideas. Beyond its theoretical interest, the book offers a definite applied dimension, as it critically examines specific public diplomacy policies (particularly the use of translation as a tool for national image-projection abroad), and evaluates their implementation and results.