Tammi Olsen and Dr. Cindy Brewer, Germanic and Slavic Languages
Until recently, the body of work represented by German women writers has been sadly neglected. The Sophie Project is an ongoing research project involving both professionals and students that makes these works readily available. It is, however, difficult to come by English translations, which limits the usefulness of the website. My project was intended to expand the translation section of the Sophie site, making this literature equally available to non-German speakers, and allow literature classes beyond the German department will then be able to study these works.
My contribution to the website, though not yet completed, will be a list of available English translations. This list is compiled from library and internet searches, as well as contributions from professors in other universities across the United States. Unfortunately, the Vienna portion of this project, which was to include research at several European libraries, did not come to pass, but I was still able to conduct my research here in the States. The majority of this was done on the computer and in local libraries.
There was a surprising number of English translations to be found here, even in the Harold B. Lee Library on BYU campus. I limited my search to women publishing between the years 1775 and 1850, and who already had German works on the Sophie site. I did not, however, limit myself to translations of the specific poems or stories found on the site, but instead included English translations of anything they might have written. There were approximately 50 of these authors, and I was able to find translations for about 30-40% of the women.
My methods included doing web searches, both in online search engines and online library catalogues. The general web searches proved much more tedious and difficult, as most of the websites were simply biographical information, and/or were written in German. Searching in libraries was more fruitful. I performed name-by-name searches of each of the authors in each of the libraries searched, eventually compiling several lists of English translations and the publications in which they are found.
Among the information that will be submitted to the Sophie website will be a catalogue of available translations, along with a separate listing of the works available here at BYU in the HBLL, and of any additional titles available through inter-library loan. This part of the project is not quite completed, as there are still more online library catalogues that I wish to search.
A second element of my project is to invite professors in German departments across the nation to submit any translations of which they are aware, or even translations that they have done themselves. This invitation should also serve to increase awareness in the Sophie project, and hopefully, increase future involvement in building an online library of works by German-speaking women, both originals and translations. Methods used here included drafting a letter and mailing copies out to other German departments.
When completed, I will submit my results to the Sophie website, either for direct publication or simply to be used as a jumping-off point for building up the online collection, according to the discretion of the coordinating professors. In any case, future student workers and volunteers of the Sophie project will be able to use this listing to more easily find and transcribe these works. Having performed the initial footwork, I have hopefully helped to provide an easier path for future work in this area.
This project has been rewarding to me in that I feel like I have contributed to something greater than myself and my own limited, selfish interests. The amount of information that I found is rather encouraging, as it shows how much more will undoubtedly be available beyond the limited range of years that I concentrated on. Until then, however, the list that I have compiled should provide a great deal to work on now.