"The Facsimiles Project: Translation and the Diaries of Anne Frank" 

The creation of facsimiles of the diaries of Anne Frank constitutes a complex and controversial process of translation, undertaken not only to adapt one representational form to another but also to capture the emotion of the circumstances under which the diaries were written.  

Sixty years have passed since the first edition of the diary, heavily edited by Anne Frank’s father Otto Frank, appeared. Given that the manuscript diaries exist in several forms and that scores of editions have been published, an analysis of the processes of translation, based on a study of Anne Frank's diaries in facsimile, raises as many questions as it answers.

My objective is to assess how various perspectives mediate among the numerous versions of the diaries.  I am studying the facsimiles, housed at The Anne Frank Stichting in Amsterdam, alongside manuscript versions and published editions of the multi-volume diary.  My project involves exploring the nature of the project as well as issues linked to its stated objective: “Facsimilize means to replicate; to make an exact and detailed copy. In the case of the facsimilization of Anne Frank’s diaries, this meant to copy as closely as possible objects affected by handling and age.” [ “Anne Frank's Diaries in Facsimile.”  --The Anne Frank Stichting.  http://www.annefrank.org/content.asp?PID=184&LID=2  ]

In addition, my research involves interviewing Yt Stoker of the Collections Department at the Anne Frank Stichting as well as David Barnouw, the Director of the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (NIOD), which houses the original diaries.  Both Ms. Stoker and Mr. Barnouw explain that a key reason for the production of the facsimiles, along with NIOD’s publication of the first and second critical editions of the diary, is to demonstrate the diary’s authenticity and to put to rest rumors that it is a highly successful hoax.

----------------------------------------------------

Biographical information:

Suzanne L. Bunkers, recently named a Distinguished Faculty Scholar at Minnesota State University, teaches and researches women's writing and diaries, survivors' literature, autobiography, memoir, literary theory, and American literature. She has edited Diaries of Girls and Women: a Midwestern American Sampler (2001), "All Will Yet Be Well": The Diary of Sarah Gillespie Huftalen, 1873-1952 (1993), and The Diary of Caroline Seabury, 1854-1863 (1991). She is the author of In Search of Susanna (1996), the co-author of Good Earth, Black Soil (1981), the co-editor with Cynthia A. Huff of Inscribing the Daily: Critical Essays on Women's Diaries (1996), and the co-editor of Out of Chaos (2006).