Translating “A Noble Stranger”

This chapter examines intra-national poetry flows from Dutch to French in Belgium, a federal and multilingual country, during the second decade of the twenty-first century. Specifically, it explores how the work of Dutch-speaking Flemish poet Charles Ducal reached the francophone language community through a combination of three distinct initiatives: a national poet initiative, a translator collective, and a book series of translated poetry. The chapter highlights the various actors involved in the translation process—including translators, publishers, state agents, and literary civil society organisations—as well as their interactions within these initiatives. It reflects on whether these efforts can be understood as constituting a literary translation policy. Finally, the chapter contextualises this transfer within broader contemporary intra-Belgian poetry translation flows, illustrating how Charles Ducal's poetry anthology Lavis à l'encre (2016) forms part of a recent surge in poetry translations from Dutch to French.