Context
Translations, Part 5
John O’Brien
The chart below represents Dalkey Archive
Press’s attempt to get as accurate figures as possible on how many
works of fiction have been translated in the United States from a
variety of languages in the past six years. We included only novels and
collections of short stories, from the modernist period to the present,
but did not include re-translations of older works or anthologies. We
also excluded popular genre writing such as romance or detective
fiction. In short, we wanted to get a bird’s-eye view of what the
situation is in relation to how many works of contemporary, literary
fiction are being translated, using a representative number of
countries. The margin of error is, we believe, rather small
(we used the WorldCat database as our primary source), but we do not
claim, for instance, if we say a particular country had fifteen works
translated, that the actual number, if one were to dig even farther,
might not turn out to be sixteen, or that some previously translated
work hasn’t slipped in, and that therefore the number should be
fourteen. The point is to get a general idea of how many
foreign works are making their way to American readers. The now-famous
National Endowment for the Arts study in 1999 showed that only 3% of
the fiction and poetry published in the United States that year were
translations. The actual number was 197 books, which stands in sharp
contrast to the practice in other countries, where that percentage can
be as high as 50%. As useful as the NEA report is, however, it does not
isolate individual countries in order to reveal how little of their
fiction arrives on these shores. The numbers here are
staggering. As one might have guessed ahead of time, a few countries
lead the pack, particularly France and Germany. But even those numbers
look “high” only by way of comparison with those of other countries.
And for a few, almost the entire output consists of writers who have
been published several times before (this is true of the Dutch—if
Mulisch, Nooteboom, and Claus stopped writing, there would be few Dutch
writers left as far as visibility in the United States goes). Even
taking these previously published and translated authors into account,
only three Dutch works of fiction per year were published in the United
States between 2000 and 2005—though that perhaps compares favorably
with the 1.3 from Greece and the 1.2 from Sweden. The average number of
books published per year are worth noting and perhaps give the clearest
picture of how underrepresented all foreign countries are in the United
States. Even with French and German––and the enormous number of books
published in those languages each year––only a handful make their way
to America, and many of those are books originally published several
years ago. I will let the chart speak, more or less, for
itself, but will point out how poor a job both the United States and
foreign countries are doing. The only foundation in the United States
that has a program for supporting translations is the Lannan Foundation
in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Such giants as Ford, Rockefeller, and
MacArthur ignore the crisis. But foreign government agencies, with some
notable exceptions, do not do much to improve the situation either.
Finland and Estonia provide the most concrete, realistic support to
American publishers interested in those countries’ literature, but
several other countries do little that is of any practical use. And
yet, they seem to believe that they are doing a remarkable job! All
they have to do is look at the numbers below to see how effective they
are, at least in the United States. I have suggested in previous articles on
translations that much more focused help is needed on the part of
American philanthropy and foreign governments. There is a significant
interest in translations on the part of American publishers, especially
smaller, independent presses such as Dalkey Archive. Yet the smaller
presses do not have the resources to address the crisis, and foreign
governments do not do enough to help. It is not uncommon for
foreign agencies to feel that they are providing enormous support by
producing sample translations in English—of books they themselves
select—and then, if an American publisher is foolish enough to sign on
a book based upon such a small sample, giving a grant that covers only
about 50% of the cost to have the book translated, ignoring all the
other costs involved that are only rarely recouped. At the end of the
day, this means that the American publisher invests a significant
amount of money and time (much more than it would on a book written in
English) on a book that will sell, almost inevitably, far fewer copies
than a book by an American. In this case, the failure rests not with
the American publishers but with the foreign agencies and, as always,
with American foundations that seem intent upon keeping foreign
literature and other cultures out of America. The math here is not
difficult to grasp: the average cost for Dalkey Archive to publish a
translation is approximately $35,000-$40,000. Typically, a foreign
government will donate, let’s say, $7,000 towards the translator’s fee,
and first-year sales will generate approximately $14,000. That’s a loss
of nearly $20,000. Despite the lack of cooperation on the part
of foreign funding agencies, they are usually more than willing to
criticize American publishers for taking on so few books from their
countries! So, to the question, “Why don’t Americans do more of our
books?” the only answer is, “Because you make it so difficult to find
out what we need to know, and then scarcely help in allowing the
publisher to so much as break even financially.” Several thousand miles
separate us and there is no easy way of finding out about a country’s
literature and what’s really going on in it, short of actually going
there and meeting and talking with as many publishers and critics as
possible. A common response, however, is that “we don’t have such a
program,” at which point you are handed a catalog filled with the books
that someone somewhere thinks Americans will like. There is one
Latin American agency (dare I identify it as Argentinean?) that has a
program to bring a group of publishers over. An editor at Dalkey
applied but was eventually told that editors at other houses had been
chosen because the other publishers were much larger. The fact that
these other houses rarely publish translations made little difference
to the Argentineans. But I suspect that they will be pleased, feel that
they are doing all that they can, even when no new translations result. ___________________
IN LAST 6 YEARS
German
