Nadia McDonald
A successful Catalan writer has forbidden her latest book from being translated into Spanish.
Julia Bacardit, author, journalist and podcaster has said ‘she doesn’t want to contribute to the bilingualization of Catalan literature’ in an interview with ElNacional.cat.
The ban would see her latest work, Un dietari sentimental (Medusa), be published in other languages but not in Spanish.
On social media some have labeled the decision a ‘marketing campaign’ and ‘ideological radicalism’.
Her previous book, The price of being a mother, sold more Spanish copies than it did Catalan. However, the writer has highlighted that her previous work was more ‘journalistic’ than literary and therefore she didn’t ‘care’ that it was translated.
Bacardit explains that her latest book is much more personal and views the decision ‘to prohibit the translation into Spanish’ necessary in the face of ‘a very clear decline of Catalan’’.
The writer calls the ban ‘the only small thing that we writers can do for our language’.
She stresses that it’s not a case of moral or cultural superiority but rather something that is ‘very important to me, it’s personal and it really hurts me.’
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