Translating History or Romance? Historical Romantic Fiction and Its Translation in a Globalised Market

Popular romance literature has long been neglected and underestimated in the global literary context and little research on the translation of this genre has been carried out so far. Even taking into account its “popular connotation”, romantic fiction seems to occupy the lower shelf in the literary polysystem compared with other popular genres. The discrepancy between the importance of this genre in the publishing industry and the scarce attention given to it by traditional scholars means that little is known about the textual practices and processes that accompany its production and circulation, including translation. In this paper, we deal with the issue of translating romantic fiction, focusing on the specific translation of historical romances, one of its most popular subgenres. In particular, through the analysis of a specific case study, the novel Outlander by American author Diana Gabaldon, we suggest that the double filiation of historical romances, i.e. their connection to both popular and canonical traditions, may have consequences at the textual level as when such books are translated, their ambiguous generic labelling tends to be resolved, favouring either the romantic or the historical component, thus resulting in a stronger generic identity.