The United States or the United Kingdom?

[Bubba]

I've noticed in many of Eric's posts about translation the apparent conviction that publishers in the U.S. are more receptive to translations than are publishers in the U.K. I'm not entirely sure this conviction is well founded. I myself haven't ever published a translation in the U.K. (things have fallen though after initial expressions of interest, and not always was it completely the fault of the publisher), but in my rather limited experience publishers in the U.K. are less likely than their American counterparts to give one the brush-off. And it's only logical that publishers in the U.S., with its large population, should publish more translations in absolute terms than do publishers in the U.K.

Where the U.S. is definitely more vibrant is with its many university presses (only a small handful of which publish translated literature) and its literary quarterlies (many of which will pay modestly for short translated pieces); in the U.K., there don't seem to be nearly as many literary magazines, even adjusting for its smaller population, and some of the best-known ones, such as Granta, are American for all intents and purposes.

For me, the English-language publishers that are really remiss are those located in such countries as Canada, Australia, and maybe New Zealand. They seem never to publish anything but work of strictly local interest and work their parent companies from the former colonial rulers pass on to them. By taking an interest in translated work, publishers in these countries could surpass those in the U.S. or from the seat of the old Empire.

[Liam]

In America, publishing is, above all, a business. Why would a business risk releasing a product that is not guaranteed to sell? Americans do read, but mostly American classics as well as contemporary novels, etc by young American writers like Franzen and Foer. I think Eric's complaint is more about the lack of contemporary translation, not about translation per se. If you consult the New & Notable section of the American Amazon, you'll see that many books get translated on a month-to-month basis: but many of them are world classics already existing in other translations or established contemporary names like Bolano.

As far as Eric's complaint goes, OK, feel your pain, but why should a business risk publishing some 900-pp Latvian novel about a young Latvian chick texting her friends back and forth (or some such) in modern day Riga, which maybe fifteen people in Latvia have bought and read (or not read)? I sympathize with your craft and all, but if I were a publisher I'd care more about staying in business than about chasing after the latest Baltic fad that may or may not pay off in the long run.

I wouldn't be surprised if Vilnius Poker, which has been translated into English a couple of years ago, sold exactly 8 copies...

[Bubba]

Publishing is a business everywhere, not just in America. And the point I've tried to hammer home on so many of my posts on WLF is that profit-seeking publishers in the Anglo world are missing great business opportunities by 1) ignoring tremendously appealing work from abroad, while 2) far too often choosing badly the few titles they do bring out in translation, many of them merely faddish books such as Liam's hypothetical Latvian novel, or that French thing everybody has already stopped talking about, mere weeks after its heavily hyped release.

I know a bit about publishing (electronically, of course) and selling (not very well, of course) translations, as I do it myself; for the curious, a list of the authors whose work (above all short stories, but plays, novels, and miscellany, too) I've translated and published is here. I believe that I've sold at least one title by every author in the list, but I'm not at all sure that I've sold one of every title. The Istrati and the Svevo, followed perhaps by the Stendhal and the Eça, probably do the best, but not by much. On the way are longer works by Gérard de Nerval (a biography of Rétif de la Bretonne) and Marivaux (a play).

I bring my experience up not just to toot my own horn (forgive me) but also to make it clear that I understand all too clearly, in my pocketbook, the obstacles to publishing work in English translation. But when I see publishers getting behind badly flawed but faddish foreign books (which of course flop and make it even harder to publish translations in the future) and pushing them on readers and reviewers the English-speaking world over, it becomes clear to me that there is much more to the problem than the meager expected return on translated work. There is, above all, an utter failure to be discriminating.

[Liam]

Yeah, but you also have to take into consideration how small a place Europe really is, with all these tiny countries sharing borders and being each other's neighbors and being in each other's hair throughout all of history. This breeds animosity, to be sure, and political involvement, but also avid interest in the cultural heritage of your neighbors on the other side of the fence. Most Americans don't feel this way about Europe. We don't share a border with them, and very few of us are as interested in European countries as European countries seem to be interested in each other.

So yes, while publishing is a business everywhere, and most certainly in Europe, the fact remains: there have always been inter-cultural networks working both ways between the North of the continent and the South, East and West, the center and the periphery; but America is very far away from all this. We read British literature b/c we share our language with the Brits, and also books by Canadians and Mexicans, b/c we share our borders with them. Both Atwood and Bolano have been on American bestselling lists at some point in their lives (for Bolano, posthumously?)

The only selling point I can think of to sell all this European shit in the USA is to call upon certain cultural groups to rediscover their heritage, if you're Finnish, read some Finnish literature; but I'm not sure this would work, most Americans have lost this connection with their old countries and feel simply American. And the eager interest in Europe, which Europeans naturally feel about their continent (after all they live there) is altogether absent here.

[Eric]

There are various interesting issues brought up by Bubba and Liam here.

First of all, it is indeed a smallish number of university presses that publish the translations in the USA. But I've been lucky with Dalkey and Northwestern, and have also had contacts with Open Letter Books. I imagine that the typical bookstores in the USA are as much of a translation desert as the bookshops in the UK. I've not yet examined the quarterlies in the USA with regard to translations. Publishers in the UK seem often to get interested in translated literature when it's a question of novels with a topical political theme, such as women's rights in Iran, or the persecution of gays, or Christians, in Egypt or whatever. They rarely seem to home in on literature that is written with a view to literary value. Or if the novel is not linked up with a topical political them, it's tied in to a forthcoming film.

With regard to Europe, it may be small geographically, a mere patch on the map compared with the other continents, but it is very concentrated with regard to literary production. Even the total population sizes are worth examining. The USA has about 312 million inhabitants. But Germany has 80 million, which means about 100 million German-speakers if you add in Switzerland and Austria, Italy, the UK and France are around 60 million each, Poland nearing 40 million, the Dutch-speaking part (Netherlands, Flanders) around 21 million, Spain around 47 million. And if you add in all the other countries, you reach a figure that exceeds that of the USA, even disgregarding Russia, which is not entirely European, either geographically or character-wise, but has a further 120 million people nonetheless. And because the languages and cultures are so diverse, it seems perverse that the UK especially ignores the contemporary literature of these nations.

[Eric]

I posted the last posting before I had really finished, for fear of losing the text, as I had some problems earlier.

Anyway, the sexy-texty Latvienne (with or without big tits). This is a problem, as the irony of it is that we already have too many pieces of 900-page lightweight junk among the chick-lit and similar in the UK and USA. I suppose there's also lightweight cock-lit involving endless hulks and appealing to ladies and gays. Dangle away, is what I say.

But if these publishers had a modicum of cultural sense, they would plough back some of the profits, not into making another monster novel about Jane Austen's zombie sister, but importing things of more import from Europe. Instead they seek more bestsellers, crime novels, etc., to make even more money, while the rest of us are supposed to be living in a recession.

I do think that British, and no doubt American, publishers often feel totally inadequate when tackling European literature, not least because the tuition of languages at British universities at least is dwindling. This means fewer younger people who know languages when they get those powerful decision-making publishing jobs.

And another myth is that woman play no part in publishing, so it's all the fault of the men. From my experience, the publishing world is crawling with women, and these are not merely lowly editors, but decision-makers. Look at at, for instance, Sigrid Rausing who owns Portobello and Granta and seems pretty hands-on. Yet there are still smaller publishing houses that are set up specifically to "give women a voice". And these women seem no better than the men when it comes to excluding European literature.

The fads are often very shallow, and therefore don't last long. As the Brazilians are forking out lots of money to support their literature at present, you see what that has done to Granta. There's money behind that decision. Otherwise they could have chosen, for example, Argentina, which has a similarly serious and large literature. Curiously, despite all the fanfares, Chinese literature just doesn't seem to take off in the European, British, American, etc., mind. Lack of translators, or lack of real, in-depth interest beyond the politics of sucking up to China so we can sell them things?

[Liam]

Well, Eric, sometimes it is very hard to interest people in their own culture, let alone the culture of others. What do you suggest we do about this problem? Translation is not the answer. If people keep translating things but no one reads them, eventually translators and publishers will give up. I'm not sure how many Brits have made it through a single Shakespeare play, cover to cover, so isn't it a bit too much to ask them to care for modern Latvian, or Finnish, or German writers? I mean, why should they? (I'm playing devil's advocate here, because obviously I wholeheartedly believe that people SHOULD care; I myself enjoy reading foreign literature as I enjoy reading American literature; and I like learning new languages whenever opportunity presents itself; but how many people out there are of the same philological persuasion?)

[Eric]

You don't need to play Devil's advocate, Liam. I would be the first to agree that we don't need "translations" if this means a special table with a few assorted novels at the back of a bookshop with about 5,000 English books.

Education in your own culture and literature starts at school. I would probably never have read any Shakespeare if the school hadn't had some of his plays on our exam syllabus. Even my rudimentary knowledge of the Bible came from scripture lessons. When you are a teenager, you tend to revolt against discipline and tradition. So when you're that age, teachers who themselves have some education are needed most. At my grammar school, quite a few teachers knew enough about quite disparate subjects to teach strange combinations, e.g. physics and scripture, maths and rugby, physical education and fine art. And within the languages, one teacher could teach French, Russian, and German. This was in the 1960s. Nowadays, I wonder how much some younger teachers know about their main teaching subject, let alone a secondary one.

In a sense, you have to remind people, even force people, to take note of their own culture. That is part of the remit of school. All the laid-back educational theories by Ivan Illich and others mean that you tend to avoid what you think is boring. There are school subjects I regret not tackling more systematically at the time, but I was a teenager like everyone else around me (barring the teachers). I can't imagine that I would ever have read, or enjoyed, Chaucer either if he had not been forced upon me at school. And my introduction to German literature and to Thomas Mann was when that three-languages teacher as mentioned above, did "Tonio Kröger" with us.

[Bubba]

I'm not sure Europeans, including the British, are inherently more aware of or interested in their neighbors than are Americans. I've had couriers in France, for example, call me to tell me I have a package from "Italy," but when they deliver it I see it was mailed in, say, Pamplona. This is the equivalent of a letter carrier in Louisiana's thinking that a letter posted in Galveston came from Mississippi rather than Texas. It's a degree of ignorance to be expected, but hardly likely to be more prevalent in the U.S. than in Europe. On the other hand, if Liam is correct that Europeans are more interested in their neighbors, then my first point--that British publishers are at least as receptive to work in translation as their American counterparts, if not more so--is bolstered.

European readers, in my experience, are no less slaves to fashion than are American ones, but where they do better, if I may lapse into cliché, is in the way they are keenly attuned to their own pleasure, however cheap that pleasure may be. It's little wonder, then, that the fad for Scandinavian thrillers was nowhere more overwhelming than in Britain; and though you might well deplore the highly unimaginative ways English-language publishers have responded to this fad and though you might think some of the authors who have profited from it are sanctimonious bores, it was probably a good thing that many people were reading translations while probably being only dimly aware that the books they were reading didn't originally appear in English--these books were entertainments just like any other.

In the U.S., by contrast, the relatively well-off, educated people who publish, review, or just talk about books seem to have a more pronounced puritanical streak; they are scolds. "Eat your vegetables," they're always telling us. "They're good for you." In some ways, this attitude is inevitable: reading many of the translations championed in the U.S. requires such effort, such endurance, that there's no way anyone would buy and read them otherwise. My point, I suppose, is that if publishing translations is ever going to be viable no one outside of school should be urged to read work in translation for his own edification; better yet, more of the books published in translation should be of the kind (and there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of such untranslated books) that will convince readers, on their own, that translations can be fun, moving, and even, without setting out to be, instructive. It doesn't have to be tens of thousands of readers, either; most publishers of translations would be thrilled with sales of three or four thousand copies per title (Liam, I imagine, was joking when he mentioned a particular book might have sold eight copies, but for many titles his estimate, discounting a few dozen sales to libraries, probably isn't too far off).

To return, somewhat circuitously I admit, to my original point, I'll bring up the Ukrainian-Italian Giorgio Scerbanenco, some of whose often excellent crime novels are being translated (or maybe retranslated) into English more than forty years after they first appeared in Italian. These translations are being published in Britain. No American publisher, I don't think, would have touched them.

[Eric]

Ignorance of neighbours is endemic. The only two times I've been to Scotland, I marvelled at the names of Scottish writers brought together on the same stack and wondered how easily I would find such books selected as Scottish in an English bookshop.

Nor do the Swedes know very much about the literature of Norway and Denmark, except for the usual very famous authors (e.g. Ibsen, Vesaas, Borgen, Sandemose, and a few others). This is partly because Sweden relies on translations, while Danes and Norwegians read Swedish books in the original language. The Scandinavian literary playing field is not level. Part of the way Knausgård (Knausgaard) has become so famous in Sweden is because he lives in Malmö (i.e. Sweden) and his books have been translated into Swedish.

European readers are not all of the same ilk. Remember the large differences between cultures (e.g. Scandinavian, Balkan, ex-Soviet Bloc, Latin countries, etc.). These differences are much larger than the ones in the United States, I would imagine, where everyone has a grandparent from Europe, but few people know much about the literature of that continent. The differences are accentuated by the different languages used.

The Nordic Noir (aka Scandinavian crime novel) fad in the UK is, in my opinion, totally artificial, where the publishers have created the demand by heavy hype. Plus the tie-ins with, for example, TV series like the Mankell Wallander one.

When I translate, I am very aware that Estonia had a complex history, but that the books in which it is referred to must be readable, palatable, not lectures.

Looking at my royalty statements, sometimes eight books can happen. For instance, the earlier Jaan Kross novel I translated "Treading Air" sold more copies in Australia than in the UK. This is, I think, directly attributable to the fact that there are quite a few people of Estonian descent living in Australia.

I'm convinced that the older, more genteel and less bloody, type of crime novels will enjoy a renaissance. When people get fed up of the umpteenth description of sadism and detailed gruesome deaths, they will return to the puzzle aspect of the crime novel, where they get the murder over with quickly, but it is the solving of the case that generates the interest.

[Hamlet]

Interesting thread, all ... this whole geography thing is a strange one, although the UK is much smaller than say, the USA, it's very much a divided up country, you can travel very little distance and be listening in to a new dialect, but the 'size' of landscape may be a red-herring. The USA has around 4 times the population of the UK, but the middle, the Great Plains and other vast stretches is largely given over to farming, many cities are on the coast or by the Great Lakes, there seems to be -- to an outsider -- a more or less North/South division, still, and East/West Coast split.

Another interesting link is the New York/London relationship, so here, you have London, with old publishing links to NYC but which also as a huge financial centre (or did!) , and undertakes so much business and is so intimately linked to NYC that you sometimes think, those two cities share a culture which gives them more in common than some parts of the UK have to London. Many Americans come over and work in London. And visit.

Space and geography is a strange creature, I only have to consider the differences on a superficial level between say, local villages close to me and how they associate and/or divide up.

or,

If you consider NYC with it's large immigrant population, it's been said that it would grind to a hault if a sizable chunk of the illegals working there were suddenly ousted... how many new cultures are mixed in there who haven't become Americanised, yet, we have the same issue here, even after many years. I've just heard it debated today, by N Ferguson.

There's a lot of cultural complexity behind those last two snippets, or examples of course ... but yes, there's a common British culture, or American culture, and Britain is closer to America in many ways, this is known, we follow American culture and vice-versa, but at times, I've also heard it said that we share more in common with the rest of Europe. Confusing?

We're also known as being a little zenophobic, historically we don't like "foreigners" -- but I think people see what is front of their faces, their own lives, economic struggle and instant pleasures rule over most people's lives. I think people everywhere are like that regardless of culture, BUT, re all things literary, briefly, the Scandinavian crime fiction has become big both here and in the USA, I understand, on the screen and as the written word, so it's a funny one, some things travel well; perhaps good literature is the only key or 'test'?

One point, many Brits know next to nothing about the history of the Low Countries, or countries like Finland, or Sweden, and only a little bit more, mostly due to WWII about France and Germany, or the French Revolution which is often studied at school. However, if you are being scrupulous, people do read, and I think you are often surprised, many graduates for example will be immersed in Literature or History, or such like. it's whether they read across disciplines.

It's just not everybody however, so we still don't understand one another as much as we could, only the highly educated and well travelled seem to get close to that ideal!

[Eric]

Just to keep discussions on keel, let's keep the population statistics real:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of..._by_population

Size of population is by no means the same as world influence. Otherwise Bangladesh would be just under half as influential as the USA, and indeed equal to Russia in world influence. Where is the Philippines in importance to the outside world, compared with Germany which has some 10 million fewer inhabitants? Canada is only half the size, population-wise, of the Democratic Republic of Congo. But which is more important on the world stage?

Nor are square miles a criterion. Greenland is a vast country, with only 56,000 (not 56 million!) inhabitants. Iceland only has some 300,000 inhabitants, but is large and in the news every few months. And while Egypt and Libya are both large, one has 80 million inhabitants, the other only six million.

[Hamlet]

Hmm, but it's not just about "world influence" Eric, methinks, to open a small can of worms, let's say or assume that some countries are impervious to world literary influence. I'm sure a survey of literary tastes across the globe would be interesting. One example, China accused the UK of not having enough knowledge of Chinese Literature, at a delegation some of our literary greats were praised. Does this mean that English Lit was perceived as having more influence, or just that we think it does?

I've heard stats closer to 70 million for the UK recently btw, I'm not sure which is right, I don't entirely trust Wiki but it's a good guide.

[Eric]

I haven't yet heard any convincing arguments that modern mainland China has any literature worth translating. If they have, they could surely manage to get examples of it out to Europe, wíthout having to use writers controlled by the régime to make it look good?

Given the way that the Chinese government seems to be run by control freaks who constantly censor the internet, this does not bode well when it comes to promoting true, genuine Chinese literature.

Most of the authors promoted by the Soviet Union during the Cold War have been quietly forgotten, because the Russian authors we know are either 19th century classics, or a handful of dissidents such as Pasternak, Mandelstam, Bulgakov and similar. A healthy literature has a balance between style and content, introversion and extroversion, political and apolitical, contemporary and classic, and so on. But totalitarian régimes soon start to sponsor and manipulate, because they know full well that the really honest, wholesome and talented writers won't work for them.

[Hamlet]

Yes, I'm sure you're right Eric, Totalitarian regimes and creativity don't really fit, there's the poet, who's name escapes me, who is always being locked up in China, I'd read his work, he looks like a good moral sort of individual in that way you can just see with some people, even via a TV screen.

[Liam]

Well, if you consult the Chinese Literature thread, I think I have put a couple of upcoming titles on there that are well worth reading: novels and poetry both! However, not having read them myself, I can't really recommend, one way or the other, but since they're published by respectable presses, they have to be... minimally good, don't they?

[Eric]

I just can't get worked up about Chinese literature. Whether it works in translation I do not know, and you never see many names except for Jung Chang (who isn't so young any more) in newspaper reviews, not only the introverted English-language ones, but European ones too. Thanks to that jolly old British Empire, writers from the Indian subcontinent can do things via English, even if they write their things in local languages (Hindi, Gujurati, Kannada, Tamil, etc., etc.). But in China, British-style English language tuition only occurred in Hong Kong. I don't fancy learning a whole language and culture, i.e. the Mandarin Chinese one, only to find out after five years of slog that there's little worth reading or translating because the Communist authorities keep a lid on any negative portrayals of reality, any modernism, and anything else that smacks of liberty and freedom of expression.

So I'm sticking to smallish languages spoken in Europe, for the most. There's enough literature written in such languages, plus English, to last me for the rest of my life, either as reader or translator.

[Flint]

(I have moved this post to the thread Varieties of English and translation)

[Eric]

Flint, are you on speed? Slow down and take your questions one by one. You may have valuable things to say, but you take too much material on board in one gulp.

[Flint]

Many names but only one question