Independent publishers take translation prizes

[Eric]

See Guardian article:

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/art...284660,00.html

It's a good sign that smaller publishers are holding their own.

[Heteronym]

This leaves me very happy for Margaret Jull Costa (it's not an easy task to translate The Maias), Dedalus Books, whose online petition I was glad to sign, Eça de Queiroz, and the English readers who can now read his wonderful books.

Quick note: the journalists will have to learn it's not De Queiroz; No one calls him that in Portugal. It's just Eça

[Eric]

Calling him only "Eça" does avoid the problem of spelling reform and his surname. But how many British newspapers could be bothered with the cedilla in their reviews is another matter. Anyone for Eeker?

Next time I see an Eça book on my travels I'll buy it.

[Heteronym]

Ah yes, the old keyboard problem

The spelling reform is nonsense anyway. I have books by him that have the old and new version. I've always written Eça de Queiroz and no teacher ever corrected me. And I'm against any language reform that changes the names of people, the most intimate thing one can possess.

If you ever give Eça a try, start with his last novels; they're his best: The Mandarin, The Relic, The City and the Mountains.

[Eric]

To return to the original point of this thread, the fact that independent publishers are beginning to get a look in with translations, it is rather ironic that Dedalus, of all publishing houses, is picking up awards at the same time as the Arts Council dumped it.

[Heteronym]

Perhaps it's not that ironic. The jury may have intended to use the prize to denounce the Arts Council's lack of support. I'm sure Margaret Jull Costa made a great translation, but these prizes have always second meanings. If it helps raise awareness to the fact DB requires funding, then good. They have one of the most enviable catalogues of translated fiction in English.

[Eric]

Regarding Dedalus, I'm prejudiced, because of a vested interest. Which other British publishing house would offer me a contract to translate 16 stories from that "potty little language" Estonian? Not least when there is a mantra that many publishers repeat: books of short-stories don't sell.

As for the Arts Council of England (ACE), they have not yet come clean about why they allowed Arts Council East to dump Dedalus, and did not rectify matters at Central Office. Every time I've recently written an e-mail to Kate Griffin, the lady in charge of translation at ACE, I get an out of office reply, once she was in Syria, once elsewhere.

I'd like a dialogue with ACE about their policy, but the organisation seems extremely opaque, especially given the fact that it is, surely, run by the state. I never get any reply nowadays. To see what ACE is doing about translation, I've searched their websites using the ACE search facility for the word "translation" or "translated". Most of what you get is mentions of the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. And if you enter "translate", you get this: Sorry - no matches. Try something else.

They say in their literature policy statement:

"We want to increase the profile of international writing in this country by supporting those publishers committed to literature in translation."

Nice and vague. There is no separate section with a point by point analysis of what needs to be translated, and how funding will work. It's all huge generalisations about breadth, innovation and diversity. But they don't mention any countries, authors or books.