Context
Translations, Part 3: The Finnish Know How To Do It
John O’Brien
One of the great obstacles facing a
publisher who wants to publish more translations is the difficulty of
discovering contemporary writers, especially if the publisher, such as
Dalkey Archive Press, has a highly focused aesthetic and wants to find
the writers in a country that belong to an innovative tradition. Even
in the age of the Internet, information about such writers is not easy
to obtain, nor is it easy to explain to publishers abroad via e-mail
what exactly a press like Dalkey Archive is looking for. Attending
conventions helps, but inevitably some publishers aren’t there, and
those that do attend are usually ?pushing? their latest books and those
that they think Americans will most relate to. All of which means that
the only way of establishing clear lines of communication with other
countries in order to find works to translate is to visit them, meet
with editors, writers, and critics, get advice, and then begin
the long process of reading and evaluating the books, making decisions
about what to publish, finding the right translator for a particular
book, beginning the seemingly endless process of editing the
translation, and then trying to find the brave book review editors in
the United States who believe that they should devote space to foreign
literature rather than “giving the public what it wants” (or rather
what the newspaper or magazine thinks the public wants). Travel
to other countries is the first step in a series of what must happen
for the translation process to start and, one hopes, succeed. In March of 2004, a Finnish government agency (FILI)
sponsored a trip to Helsinki for myself and another Dalkey Archive
editor to meet with a number of Finnish editors and foreign rights
directors, as well as critics, scholars, and government officials. FILI
made all of the logistical arrangements, and paid for the airfare and
hotel (and we had to shamelessly accede to the generous insistence of
everyone there to pay for our lunches and dinners, as well as to the
staff at FILI to guide us through Helsinki). In the course of five
days, we were able to meet with eight publishers, three critics, the
manager of the largest bookstore in Finland, Finnish government
officials, and a professor of American studies. In addition, FILI
provided us with anthologies of Finnish literature that are now out of
print, as well as samples of translations of authors that they thought
would be of interest to the Press. As is usually the case both in the United States and abroad,
the Finnish publishers at times had difficulty understanding that we
were looking for unconventional fiction that probably had sold poorly
even in its own country, never mind how it might sell in the United
States. Therefore, we spent a fair amount of time explaining again and
again the type of fiction we were looking for, that we were interested
only in artistic value rather than potential sales, that we did not
care whether the work was “too European” or “too Finnish,” and that we
didn’t care whether the work was recently published or published thirty
years earlier. All of these discussions took place amid the stark
reality that no Finnish fiction has been published in the United States
in the past forty years, though Grove/Atlantic has announced that it
will issue a Finnish novel this fall. Since our return from Finland, Dalkey Archive has purchased
rights to two Finnish works of fiction, and will be signing on two more
within the next few months. Further, we now have established the basis
for communicating with Finnish publishers that, with some effort on
both sides, will provide us with a stream of information and
suggestions which will permit us to publish even more Finnish titles.
The Finnish seem ready to set a pace that the rest of Europe should pay
attention to. They are intent on removing as many obstacles as possible
in order to have their country’s literature represented in English. Why do the Finnish understand that they should support such
efforts while so many other foreign countries don’t? Customarily,
foreign governments only partially support the cost of the
actual translation. From the American perspective, this constitutes
minimal help that might not even be worth pursuing. Typically, the
American publisher—for reasons I’ll explain shortly—may do a single
foreign title (oftentimes one that won some prize or another), and then
lose interest, especially in view of the stark financial realities of
how translations sell in the United States. The foreign publisher, as
well as the government agency, is baffled, and sometimes even resentful
that there is no further interest. I will offer two reasons for why the Finnish are “doing it
right” and why American publishers do not see help with translation
costs alone to be very helpful. FILI is headed by a remarkable person, Dr. Iris Schwanck, who
has a very pragmatic sense of how publishing works and what’s needed
for translations. She was responsible for arranging this trip and
itinerary, and she immediately understood the need to establish a
network if Dalkey were to be serious about publishing Finnish
literature. It was her passion and knowledge that made this “first
step” possible. But why isn’t partially paying for the cost of the
translation enough to encourage more translations from other countries?
Among American publishers, as I have said previously in this series on
translations, it is common knowledge that translations do not sell as
well as their English counterparts, and that they are usually
overlooked by reviewers. At the same time, the hidden costs of doing a
translation, especially in view of expected poor sales, are rather
staggering. Since American publishing houses are typically monolingual
and have no editor whose specialty is in a particular foreign country
or region, the publisher ends up hoping that the sample translation he
sees might bear some resemblance to the final work and to the reader’s
report that recommended the book. On the day that translation arrives,
more often than not it isn’t what the publisher was expecting. Nor is
the translation quite finished, which means that an enormous amount of
editorial time is spent trying to get it into an English that will make
sense to a reader. At Dalkey Archive, we have thirteen languages represented
among our editorial staff—from Spanish and Vietnamese to Russian and
Serbian—all for the sake of being able to read the dozens of books that
arrive here each week from foreign publishers, provide reader’s reports
on them, and then—when a translation is commissioned—to be able to edit
the translation once it arrives. Needless to say, such a staff is a
significant expense for the Press, and is a large part of the cost of
doing translations. This begins to suggest the hidden costs that few
want to recognize. In the past twelve months, in-house foreign language
editors at the Press have read nearly 400 works of fiction from other
countries, all in order to find the 21 that we have now signed on for
publication. When all expenses are taken into account, the cost of
publishing a translation is over $30,000, and typically, the cost of
the translation itself is only about 5–10% of that cost. When a foreign
government offers to pay for only part of the translation fee, that
means a grant of from $750 to $2,000 (though there are a few
governments that are willing to pay translators rather significant
sums, which still does not address the publisher’s expenses). That
leaves about $28,000 unaccounted for. And makes for a publisher
hesitant to take on yet another translation that will sell, on a good
day, 1,500 to 2,000 copies within the first year of its publication. The United States is very wealthy and well-educated, and therefore there is a vast readership for literary novels. The reality is that there is a vast readership for popular novelists in
the United States such as Stephen King, John Grisham, Nora Roberts, and
Scott Turow. For a literary novel, especially an experimental one,
there is a much smaller readership than there is in the country of
origin. American publishers have a duty to bring foreign literature to the United States. The reality is that all major publishers in the United States (Random
House, Harper Collins, Farrar Straus) have profit as their primary
responsibility and therefore translations are at odds with why an
American publisher would undertake a title to publish. •
Foreign governments must decide whether getting their countries’ books
published in the United States is important to them or not, and whether
they are willing to do whatever they can to make sure that American
publishers will be able to undertake translations. • Foreign governments must realize that, by subsidizing a
book at $30,000, most literary works of merit from their countries
would be published in the United States. • Foreign governments must come to understand publishing from the publisher’s point of view. • Foreign countries must realize that, if they were willing
to support translations at a realistic level with a publisher such as
Dalkey Archive Press, many publishers in the United States would be
willing to publish at least three literary books per year from these
countries. There is no point in talking on behalf of other publishers,
because there aren’t other publishers like Dalkey (what other publisher
devotes more than 70% of its list to translations?), but I can describe
what three steps are necessary for a particular foreign country to
undertake a serious translation program with Dalkey Achive: 1) Provide funding to bring two editors from Dalkey Archive
to meet with publishers, editors, and critics in order to begin to
establish a network by which Dalkey can have information and books
readily available based upon the specific interests that Dalkey has;
without such in-depth meetings, the publishers have no idea what kind
of fiction Dalkey is interested in and there is little means by which
we can find out what is being done; 2) Provide funding to support one to two graduate
assistantships for students from their country to attend Illinois State
University and serve as in-house readers for books from their
countries, do sample translations of appropriate books, and help edit
translations when they arrive; the cost for a graduate assistant per
year is approximately $8,000–$11,000; 3) Provide 80% of the costs associated with the translation
and publication of the book, which typically means a subsidy of
approximately $24,000 per book to pay for the author advance,
translation, editing, printing, and marketing of the book. For a
typical book, the costs are the following: Author advance: $3,000 With such funding in place, Dalkey Archive would be able to
undertake two to three books per year from a particular country. Short
of such funding, any publisher must face these two realities: 1)
translations will lose money; and 2) even with the best of intentions,
the translation and publication will not be done so as to ensure
quality and the largest possible readership.
Publishers are able to make a profit on the sale of translated titles. The reality is that an American publisher—unless through some very
strange series of coincidences (e.g., Umberto Eco)—will sell
approximately 2,000 copies of a contemporary novel from a foreign
country. This means that the publisher will receive about $12,000
through sales for a book that cost $30,000 to publish.
• Foreign governments could greatly influence what gets published in
the United States, especially among such nonprofit literary publishers
as Dalkey Archive Press, if they were willing to subsidize the true
costs of publishing a translation.
Translation: $4,000
Editing: $4,000
Production, Design, Printing: $10,300
Marketing: $6,900
Operating: $2,700
