Translations, Part 5

Context N°19

by 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.

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