Yes, the title of this thread has been made deliberately eye-catching. There is a reason. There is too much focus on literary translation, instead of actually reading the fruits of this activity.
Where I live, in the Netherlands, novels tend to be mixed in. Ones written originally in Dutch are often interspersed with translated ones on the shelves of bookshops. That's how it is in British bookshops too - except that if the 3% statistic is true, there are very few translations available, across the board.
I read somewhere that we shouldn't have translations rammed down our throats. I agree entirely. It would be nice if books that happen to have been translated are read for the author's skill, not for the fact that they were written in English, or not. Such literary apartheid is not necessary.
Whether we like to read novels, poetry, essays or non-fiction, it would be nice if people stopped, as a reflex action, wondering whether the book was translated. The Bible, the Koran, the Communist Manifesto, and all those 19th century European authors that have become classics, were translated. If English-speaking people could approach contemporary literature in the same way, i.e. forget they were translated, this would expand horizons.
Where I live, in the Netherlands, novels tend to be mixed in. Ones written originally in Dutch are often interspersed with translated ones on the shelves of bookshops. That's how it is in British bookshops too - except that if the 3% statistic is true, there are very few translations available, across the board.
I read somewhere that we shouldn't have translations rammed down our throats. I agree entirely. It would be nice if books that happen to have been translated are read for the author's skill, not for the fact that they were written in English, or not. Such literary apartheid is not necessary.
Whether we like to read novels, poetry, essays or non-fiction, it would be nice if people stopped, as a reflex action, wondering whether the book was translated. The Bible, the Koran, the Communist Manifesto, and all those 19th century European authors that have become classics, were translated. If English-speaking people could approach contemporary literature in the same way, i.e. forget they were translated, this would expand horizons.