Translating Translating Mrs. Dalloway : from German to Urdu, 1928-2024

From the time Mrs. Dalloway was first published in 1925, it has been a global novel. Within three years of its publication, it was translated into German, and through the decades the number of different translations has grown. By the hundredth anniversary of its publication, it was translated into 42 languages, with the latest, Urdu, in 2024. One cannot overestimate the crucial role that translators have played in making Mrs. Dalloway such a global phenomenon. Along with further describing its global presence via translations, I explore the vital importance of translators and the many dimensions of translation, especially in the context of Mrs. Dalloway alone. Woolf was interested in these many dimensions and undertook translations herself, even during the writing of Mrs. Dalloway. She was aware of the protean receptions of translations. Next, I trace some of the ways that the translations of Mrs. Dalloway in multiple regions and through the decades have been received. Translation, of course, does not function alone; it is part of a larger process that includes variables like paratexts and facets of the publishing industry. Translation itself is, of course, a complicated endeavor involving myriad vectors; to examine Mrs. Dalloway within the discipline of Translation Studies is to show the complexity of these considerations. Finally, examining some of the translations of Mrs. Dalloway is to show that there are issues peculiar to this novel alone, as the rich field of criticism on the translations of this novel shows.