Maps

Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre has been translated hundreds of times, by hundreds of translators, into more than sixty languages. Each act of translation brings not only losses but also gains and transformations. The Prismatic Jane Eyre project explored the ways in which we can understand this dizzying textual and linguistic proliferation, what we can learn from studying it, and how we can even grasp it, so that it can begin to be understood.

To begin to understand the global diffusion of Jane Eyre through translation, we need to map it. The relevant information can be gathered together in a list, but it is hard to grasp unless you can see where the book has been translated, and where not; where it was translated first, and where later; where it has been translated over and over again, and where only once or twice. The Prismatic Jane Eyre project therefore produced a set of maps designed to convey in different ways, with different exploratory approaches, the proliferation of Jane Eyre translations over time and across the globe.