ABSTRACT
Nineteenth-century cultural brokers in charge of promoting Belgium on the European scene as a unified, hence viable, nation, despite its inner linguistic and social divisions, had to find a way to handle these divisions. In the cultural domain, promoting Belgium amounted to the foregrounding of the latter’s history, art, architecture, literary, and legal monuments. Since the most prestigious and deployable texts of the past were in Flemish, the brokers had the choice between two options. They could provide direct access to these texts, that is, in Flemish, even though Flemish was assigned a non-official status in the Constitution of 1831. Alternatively, they could provide an indirect access, that is, in French, Belgian’s official language, which was also suited to fulfil an international bridging function. Nevertheless, the gaps between ancient and modern Flemish and French made the use of transfer techniques compulsory, including intralingual and interlingual translation and transfer, both being framed by an intra-Belgian scope. This chapter focuses on the different translation policies underpinning both techniques, as well as their evolution throughout the 19th century.
