Great untranslated literatures

[Bubba]

The publisher of a literary magazine I have recently done a translation for writes an interesting blog (The Republic of Letters) that I mention here not just because he discusses some of the writers discussed in this forum but also because in one of the blog entries he asserts that the great untranslated literatures are the Polish, the Portuguese, and the Italian.

What do you all think? I can tell that there's a lot of good twentieth-century Italian work that hasn't ever appeared in English (or perhaps in any other language), but what about Portuguese and Polish writing? What should be translated from these literatures? What other major national (or quasi-national) literatures are especially little known in English?

[Liam]

Originally Posted by Bubba

What other major national (or quasi-national) literatures are especially little known in English?

I wholeheartedly agree with the original blog-writer about Polish writing. It pains me tremendously that no comprehensive translation of Bolesław Leśmian's poetry (selected or collected, I don't give a shit) exists in English. To my mind, he was one of the greatest poets, in any language, of the 20th century.

Other relatively unknown and/or under-translated, under-promoted "great" national literatures:

- Irish Gaelic/Welsh

- Maltese

- Latvian/Lithuanian

- Finnish/Estonian

- Ukrainian/Polish/Czech

- Georgian/Armenian

- Japanese/Korean

- Indian (in a category of its own, with its multiplicity of languages and dialects)


And I'm sure there are many, many others.



L.

[Eric]

We must be careful when we use the terms "untranslated" or "under-translated" without qualification. "Untranslated into English, the present should-be world language", would be more accurate.

There are many European languages into which novels from neighbouring countries and further afield are translated. English just happens not to be one of them.

Take Lithuanian literature (which should really be examined separately from Latvian literature). Once Lithuania had been taken on board by the Frankfurt Book Fair some years ago as Guest of Honour, there was a whole spate of translations into German. Look at the Athena-Verlag page on Lithuanian books in German:

ATHENA Verlag - Verlag für Literatur und Wissenschaft - Literatur aus Litauen

I can count thirteen Lithuanian books there in German translation, all published within the past decade or so. How many of them have appeared in English, to introduce British and U.S. readers to Lithuanian literature? None that I can see.

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And for Latvian, the country next door, look at this webpage:

www.literatur.lv | Das Portal für Texte und Autoren aus Lettland

Again the Germans have published several works, even quite recently.

And Swedish. You can buy two Latvian novels by Inga Ābele, one by Nora Ikstena, plus an anthology of Latvian stories, all in Swedish translation. Nothing like this exists in Britain or the States, as far as I know.

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I agree with Liam about Lesmian. The scholar and translator Alexandra Chciuk-Celt went some way towards introducing him to an English-speaking audience, and there is indeed a biography of him by someone whose name escapes me (Rosanne Stone, I think). But indeed, his poetry, being much more neologistic than that of, say, Milosz, is much harder to translate successfully.

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So far, I've only mentioned three languages and a very few authors. But there are simply loads and loads of European authors whose work is available in e.g. German, French, Polish, and the Scandinavian languages, but not in English. Unless the USA and UK have a sea-change in attitudes to classic and contemporary European authors, works that have to be translated to access them, these two countries will remain ignorant of the wealth of European literature.

If educated and literature-minded Brits and Yanks could each read only two foreign languages to a level where they could read literature, a whole new world would be opened up to them. But a stubborn ignorance about, and indifference to, everything that needs to be translated in those two countries holds sway. Only a handful of publishers, mostly supported by university departments, or enjoying other subsidies, take the brave decision to have things translated (e.g. Northwestern, Dalkey, Open Letter, Dedalus, and a few others for prose, plus a few more for poetry).

[Bubba]

I certainly won't dispute that the Baltic states or Malta have interesting literature worth translating, but I asked about major languages, and I don't think anyone would argue that the Baltics and Malta and so on are anything other than minor (by which I mean no disrespect).

It's true that I wasn't clear about whether I meant translation into English (nor was the publisher whose views I was reporting), but is it not logical to assume that, on the whole, any literature that is underrepresented in English translation is likely to be relatively less common in most other languages as well? If, for example, Portuguese-language literature is underrepresented in English, does it not also stand to reason that it will be underrepresented in German, Spanish, French, Dutch, Italian, and so on? Even though, in absolute terms, there may be more translations from the Portuguese into those languages than into English?

A word about the literature from Northeast Asia (Japan, Korea, China); until very recently at least, and perhaps even now, publishers in the UK and the US have been bringing out more translations (it is the only region of the world for which they can make this boast) than publishers in continental Europe; in fact, when I go to the library here in France I often see Japanese writers from the sixties or seventies (Mishima, for example) whose books are translated into French from English.

[Eric]

I do object to the use of the word "minor". There are large and small languages. That is in no doubt (e.g. more than 80 million people speak German, while only one million speak Estonian, and 300,000 Icelandic). I accept all that.

But a sleight of hand is being played with the fact that only relatively few people speak a language, and whether they have a sophisticated literature. I have no idea whether Malta has a sophisticated literature, as their language situation is rather unclear, i.e. what the native tongue of most people is, and how many educated Maltese there are who could write a postmodernist novel in that language.

Whether writers are "major" or "minor" has nothing to do with the language they write in. Jaan Kross, an Estonian writer, is a damned sight more "major" than many amateurs and charlatans writing in German, French, English, Italian, Spanish, or Russian. Obviously, by writing in their mother-tongue, such people as Kross severely limit the number of readers they will get, unless translators come along and liberate them from their tiny number of potential readers in their mother-tongue. But the sagas were written by authors from that tiny nation Iceland, but no one would regard the sagas as "minor literature".

On the other hand there are languages spoken by tens of millions of people, but whether they have a literature that would be recognised as sophisticated internationally is a good question. Look at how many people nowadays speak Hindi, Mandarin or Arabic. And compare this with the number of novels translated into European languages out of these three. There may be works of genius being written in these three languages, but have they made their mark on world literature? They can only become part of world literature if translated. Is Chinese literature major or minor? We can't really tell, because we cannot read books written in Mandarin without translations. And translation means selection. How do we know whether the Chinese authorities are only letting through books that put China in a good light (although there are books written by exiles)? That's exactly how the Soviet Union worked with the Glavlit censorship apparatus. Undemocratic countries, especially when large, can smother the initiatives of individuals for political ends. Writers tend to be critical of authority; and authority doesn't like that. So the jury is out as to whether there are thousands of sophisticated Chinese authors, with things hidden in their desk drawers, or whether people in China simply don't write, for fear of prison or worse.

One important further thing: translations into the English language should not be used as a yardstick for whether an author is worthwhile or not, whether he or she is "major" or "minor". Britain and the USA have a lamentable record when it comes to translating works that are recognised as great in many other countries, but only appear in English decades later, if at all.

[Liam]

Eric, perhaps when people use the terms "minor" and "major" they mean those literatures that have had the least and the most impact on world literature in general?

So the Greeks would be considered major, while the millions upon millions of Amazon Indians--not so much. You know what I mean? Perhaps things are changing now, in the 21st century, but due to occupation, some countries didn't get a chance to produce much "influential" writing (including my beloved Ireland and Wales; and I'm talking about their respective native languages here, not Hiberno-English, etc).

I don't think the Estonians and the Latvians ever got the chance to influence anybody, whilst being influenced in turn by writers from France, Germany, England, and Russia. I dunno--what do you think?


L.

[hdw]

I'm afraid Stewart is probably the only member of this forum who could get to this event. I live in Edinburgh, and Edinburgh people don't go to Glasgow any more than they visit the dark side of the moon. Especially just now, with the unprecedented wintry weather making travel a nightmare and playing havoc with train schedules.

I've mentioned Donal McLaughlin before. A former lecturer in German, he was Scottish PEN's visiting writer in the Baltic countries a few years ago and stayed for a while in Riga, later editing a selection of Latvian literature in translation.

Harry


Dear PEN Members

For your information, please see email below for details of Donal McLaughlin's reading from his new book at the CCA, Sauchiehall Street Glasgow, next Thursday at 7.00pm.

Regards, Adean

On behalf of Scottish PEN
The Writers' Museum, Lady Stair's Close, Lawnmarket, Edinburgh EH1 2PA
Email: info@scottishpen.org Web: Scottish PEN | A Worldwide Association of Writers, Edinburgh, Scotland <http://www.scottishpen.org> Tel: 00 44 131 226 5590

Scottish Charity No SCO08772
*


SCOTTISH WRITERS' CENTRE: Events at CCA

The Scottish Writers' Centre will be holding regular events at the CCA in Glasgow from Thursday, 21 January 2010.

Full details of events between now and the Spring should be available later this week.

First up, on 21 January, is writer and translator Donal McLaughlin.

Donal will read from his recent book - an allergic reaction to national anthems & other stories (argyll) - as well as from his translations, which include the poems of Stella Rotenberg and an extract from the latest novel by Nobel prize winner Herta Müller. Donal has also translated over fifty Swiss authors for inclusion in various anthologies. For further information about Donal and his work, visit donalmclaughlin.wordpress.com <http://donalmclaughlin.wordpress.com/> .

In the second part of this event, those present will have the opportunity to discuss issues relating to translation, including working with a translator / interpreter and doing events abroad.

Please join us.

VENUE: CCA, 350 Sauchiehall Street, Glasgow

TIME: 7pm on Thursday, 21 January

ADMISSION FREE

The event will finish by 8.30pm - but discussions can continue in the bar.

Copies of Donal's book will be on sale.

Please note: The new website of the Scottish Writers' Centre will go live soon.

The Scottish Writers' Centre is grateful to the CCA and to Culture & Sport Glasgow for their generous support of its work.

[Eric]

I've been in contact with Donal, as mentioned by Harry, because I am enthusiastic about anyone who treats the Baltics seriously. He edited the Latvian issue of the Edinburgh Review:

Scotland's leading journal of ideas, the Edinburgh Review publishes essays, short fiction, poetry and reviews aimed at an educated reading public with an interest in critical thought. Since its inception in 1802, the magazine has balanced a strong Scottish focus with a keen interest in international intellectual currents. We are very glad that the Edinburgh Review 115 has been dedicated to Latvian literature. It has been mainly realized by virtue of the Scottish writer Donal McLaughlin, who has been particularly interested in Latvian culture and has done a great job for this to happen. He is the editor of the issue as well as the author of the introductory words. Seven Latvian folk songs , prose by Ieva Lešinska, Mārtiņš Zelmenis, Nora Ikstena, Inga Ābele, Andra Neiburga and poetry by Knuts Skujenieks, Māris Salējs, Liāna Langa, Edvīns Raups, Amanda Aizpuriete, Jānis Elsbergs, Kārlis Vērdiņš and Inga Gaile translated by Donal McLaughlin, Ieva Lešinska, Margita Gailitis, Vitauts Jaunarajs and Ilze Klavina Mueller have been included in the Edinburg Review 115.

Edinburgh Review 115
ISSN 0267-6672
ISBN 1-85933223-4

Pity I can't be in Edinburgh or Glasgow on 21st January, as I did get to Riga almost a month earlier than that, and Scotland is much nearer from where I live. But I note that both the Scottish Writers' Centre and Scottish PEN are active.

[Eric]

Liam, given the small number of translations into, for instance, English, you would get a totally distorted idea of "impact" if you were to rely on translations into English alone.

And we shouldn't focus too obsessively on the huge populations of countries, but on the literary value of their authors from our perspective. There is leeway, but ultimately, unless everyone is going to write Western-style books, we have to allow for the fact that continents differ. From a Western perspective, one Hindi Virginia Woolf, or Kannada Henry James is probably worth a good deal more than the thousands of people writing poems in these languages, thinking they are geniuses - or even being geniuses by local criteria.

However, as tastes can differ quite radically between continents, those regarded as poets of great subtlety on one continent may be shrugged off as boring / kitsch / hackneyed / incomprehensible / mad on others.

For instance, the poems quoted in Kader Abdolah's book say precious little to me, whilst an Iranian may marvel at their literary value.

Which brings me to a very big question: are there overall international, inter-cultural, and objective criteria for "good literature"?

[Raphael Lambach]

Great.....

[lenz]

Originally Posted by Raphael Lambach

Great.....

Keep trying, Raphael. Courage!

[Heteronym]

Originally Posted by Bubba

but what about Portuguese and Polish writing? What should be translated from these literatures?

Speaking for Portuguese literature, I think the world would benefit from discovering Agustina Bessa-Luís, Vergílio Ferreira, Miguel Torga, Aquilino Ribeiro, Mário de Sá-Carneiro, Almada Negreiro, Mário Cesariny, José Cardoso Pires, and Gonçalo Tavares.

[Bubba]

Originally Posted by Heteronym

Speaking for Portuguese literature, I think the world would benefit from discovering Agustina Bessa-Luís, Vergílio Ferreira, Miguel Torga, Aquilino Ribeiro, Mário de Sá-Carneiro, Almada Negreiro, Mário Cesariny, José Cardoso Pires, and Gonçalo Tavares.

Of the writers you list, Heteronym, I've read only Torga, and only a few stories at that. I read him because I saw a documentary on Torga's French translator and her work. I then checked out some of her translations from the library. I don't know why I didn't read more of his stories, because the few I read were very good.

The world might indeed benefit from discovering Torga, but I think Torga stands very little chance of being discovered by the world: not quite old enough to be a true classic, too long dead to be a new discovery, not flashy enough to catch the eye of the big city taste-makers. Torga's, in short, is precisely the kind of work publishers around the world neglect.

[Eric]

Heteronym, do you happen to know which of the Portuguese authors you mention have been translated into French, German, Italian, Spanish, and other larger European languages? There are people here who can read one or other of those languages, even though the authors you list are not available in English.

As I keep hinting, the world cannot discover authors without translations. But if their works are not available in English, the obvious way of discovering them is via another language, even if your mother-tongue is English.

[Eric]

Looking at whole literatures, versus looking at individual authors.

This is a difficult one. All authors live in a real national and international context. So, as I always maintain, you should know something about the country an author comes from, or wrote in for long stretches of his life. So you need to know something about the country and its literary tradition.

However, if you read too many authors from a particular country, you may end up reading things you don't like, simply because they belong to a country you do like.

The remedy is, surely, to know the context in which an author writes, but only to read those authors that mean something to you, not the whole list of "set books" from the country in question.

It's a question of balance. It's easier to maintain your own balance if you can read a couple of languages apart from your own, so you can have a freer choice of books in translation. Not everything from any particular national literature will automatically appear in English hence, I presume, the use of the word "untranslated" in the title here.

As for "great", this a meaningless word to describe a whole literature with. Great, in the sense of interesting and profound, authors exist in large and small literatures. Norwegian literature, for example, isn't automatically a "great" literature just because Ibsen wrote in that language. But there is also a temptation to list great authors from a particular culture, tot up the numbers, then say "look, French literature is greater than Finnish literature because I can count more great French authors than Finnish ones". I believe this argument is a non sequitur, only useful for national literary promotional agencies to boast about their big names. Even small countries write painfully long and undifferentiated lists of authors names, just to prove they're in the running.

[Raphael Lambach]

Originally Posted by Heteronym

Speaking for Portuguese literature, I think the world would benefit from discovering Agustina Bessa-Luís, Vergílio Ferreira, Miguel Torga, Aquilino Ribeiro, Mário de Sá-Carneiro, Almada Negreiro, Mário Cesariny, José Cardoso Pires, and Gonçalo Tavares.

In Brazil exists a wonderful writer called Cristóvão Tezza who has no work of yours translated to English or any language, anyway. He was chosen by Epoca Magazine (Brazil) one of 100 most influential brazilians in 2009. His most recent work is "Filho Eterno" (eternal son) that tells about Tezza relationship with his deficient son.

Cristovão Tezza |||
Cristóvão Tezza - Wikipédia, a enciclopédia livre

[Eric]

According to the following website, Tezza's works are being translated for the Australian and New Zealand market:

||| Cristovão Tezza |||

So there is a chance that his name will gradually emerge in Britain or the USA too.

[Bubba]

Originally Posted by Eric

I do object to the use of the word "minor". There are large and small languages. That is in no doubt (e.g. more than 80 million people speak German, while only one million speak Estonian, and 300,000 Icelandic). I accept all that.

But a sleight of hand is being played with the fact that only relatively few people speak a language, and whether they have a sophisticated literature. I have no idea whether Malta has a sophisticated literature, as their language situation is rather unclear, i.e. what the native tongue of most people is, and how many educated Maltese there are who could write a postmodernist novel in that language.

Whether writers are "major" or "minor" has nothing to do with the language they write in. Jaan Kross, an Estonian writer, is a damned sight more "major" than many amateurs and charlatans writing in German, French, English, Italian, Spanish, or Russian. Obviously, by writing in their mother-tongue, such people as Kross severely limit the number of readers they will get, unless translators come along and liberate them from their tiny number of potential readers in their mother-tongue. But the sagas were written by authors from that tiny nation Iceland, but no one would regard the sagas as "minor literature".

On the other hand there are languages spoken by tens of millions of people, but whether they have a literature that would be recognised as sophisticated internationally is a good question. Look at how many people nowadays speak Hindi, Mandarin or Arabic. And compare this with the number of novels translated into European languages out of these three. There may be works of genius being written in these three languages, but have they made their mark on world literature? They can only become part of world literature if translated. Is Chinese literature major or minor? We can't really tell, because we cannot read books written in Mandarin without translations. And translation means selection. How do we know whether the Chinese authorities are only letting through books that put China in a good light (although there are books written by exiles)? That's exactly how the Soviet Union worked with the Glavlit censorship apparatus. Undemocratic countries, especially when large, can smother the initiatives of individuals for political ends. Writers tend to be critical of authority; and authority doesn't like that. So the jury is out as to whether there are thousands of sophisticated Chinese authors, with things hidden in their desk drawers, or whether people in China simply don't write, for fear of prison or worse.

One important further thing: translations into the English language should not be used as a yardstick for whether an author is worthwhile or not, whether he or she is "major" or "minor". Britain and the USA have a lamentable record when it comes to translating works that are recognised as great in many other countries, but only appear in English decades later, if at all.

So I went to the library the other day and checked out Le Départ du Professeur Martens. A nice early scene--a scene, in fact, that made me realize how much I was enjoying the novel--takes place on board a train and involves a conversation in Estonian between the professor of the title and his nephew the revolutionary, a conversation witnessed uncomprehendingly by the professor's non-Estonian wife Kati. Here--in French translation, I'm afraid--is the professor's reaction to his wife's failure to understand his language: "En trente ans elle n'a pas appris assez d'estonien pour comprendre ce qu'a dit Johannes [...]. Tu pourrais tout de même t'intéresser aussi un peu aux langues insignifiantes."

I won't translate it, because I think even those who don't speak French can figure out what "langues insignifiantes" means!

[hdw]

To the French, all other languages are "insignifiantes", including English (especially), Latin, classical Greek ...

Remember that meeting of European politicians where some French delegate started making his speech in English and Chirac flounced out in a tantrum?

On the other hand, be you African, Arab or what have you, if you can speak flawless metropolitan French, your ethnicity and pigmentation will not be held against you. Whereas in Britain there's a lingering suspicion of foreigners who speak English too well. We prefer them to make mistakes so we can patronise them and snigger at their funny accents.

Harry

[Bubba]

Originally Posted by hdw

To the French, all other languages are "insignifiantes", including English (especially), Latin, classical Greek ...

Remember that meeting of European politicians where some French delegate started making his speech in English and Chirac flounced out in a tantrum?

On the other hand, be you African, Arab or what have you, if you can speak flawless metropolitan French, your ethnicity and pigmentation will not be held against you. Whereas in Britain there's a lingering suspicion of foreigners who speak English too well. We prefer them to make mistakes so we can patronise them and snigger at their funny accents.

Harry

I recall reading about the fit Chirac threw on that occasion, Harry, but I see I didn't make myself entirely clear: Le départ du Professeur Martens is not a frog's ribbit but the translation of a novel by an Estonian writer whose name is probably not entirely unknown to you. I read the novel in French translation simply because I live in France, and the local library's not likely to have a copy of the novel in English or in any other language I know.