Context N°15
by John O’Brien & Tim Wilkinson
Tim Wilkinson, a translator living in Amsterdam, responded to my modest proposal in the last issue of CONTEXT for how to get more translations published in the United States. I should mention that his was not the only response. Among many others, one from New York said that there were already far too many translations; another (from New York as well) said that the proportion of translations here as compared to other countries was just about right because it seemed obvious to this person that there must be far more books published in English than in the rest of the world’s languages put together: in fact, English-language trade books represent only 16% of all books published, and of course the total English-language population is a far smaller percentage. Three cheers for American Enlightenment!
In any event, Mr. Wilkinson makes a number of interesting points, not all of which I agree with, but more on that later. First, his response:
John O’Brien is to be congratulated for dissecting so forensically the stark commercial realities that I and probably most other translators of, and commentators on, foreign-language literature come up against on a regular basis: a devastating lack of will on the part of most publishers (even the wealthiest) to entertain thoughts of publishing anything more than homeopathic doses of works that involve translation, because this is axiomatically loss-making.
It is hard to argue with his conclusion that foreign governments should wade in and bridge the funding gap; though in my limited experience, even willingness to do that does not perceptibly alter the picture. For the best part of a decade, it has been possible to obtain funding for at least the translation costs of putting out Hungarian literary works in foreign languages, including English, from the local book trade organization, the Hungarian Book Foundation (website: www.hungarianbookfoundation.hu; enquiries to Dora Karolyi). Publishers still have to cover the actual publication costs (that strikes me as reasonable) and the agreed grant is only payable on actual publication (likewise a reasonable precaution that publishers don’t simply pocket money and run). So, not a free ride, but you might think it would remove the only significant add-on cost of putting out a translation, as opposed to an ‘original’ English-language work. The fact is that this has not made the least difference to a decades-long pattern whereby the American and UK book industry combined manage to put out just one or two titles deriving from a work originally written in Hungarian—as often as not a dead Hungarian author in the bargain.It is hard to believe that the USA and UK between them cannot muster the few thousand readers that would be needed to make a book break even (if funded on the above basis), so I am just wondering if it is not more a case of a wider lack of will to take a leaf out of CONTEXT’s book in helping generate the publicity and awareness that would nurture these admittedly minority readerships (and they may well be language-specific). Some enlightened pump-priming at the receiving end, then, may be another necessary component. One always hesitates to suggest that the state become involved in anything; however, it is a longstanding failure of ‘the education system’ to promote understanding of foreign languages and cultures that leaves the Anglo-Saxon world nowadays even more foolishly monoglot than it was fifty years ago. It may save money in the short run, but the long-term consequences have been painfully evident on both sides of the Atlantic in recent years. That was the true sense of the sign-off sentence in my own recent article: “We are the poorer for it.”
I will disagree with a few of Mr. Wilkinson’s points, while acknowledging that almost all of what he says makes impeccable sense. But the disagreements:
1. Is subsidizing the translation enough in order to offset the costs of doing a translation? Simply put, no. On average, an editor (if he or she cares at all about the book) must spend two to three times as much time working on a translation than on a book originally written in English; most editors I know have argued, at one time or another, that they—rather than the translator—have translated the book, given how much rewriting the translation requires. So, that is one of the extra costs. But a second extra cost is the nearly inevitable low sales of a translation. Without getting into the why of this, let’s just say that, on average, a very good novel from another country will sell fifty percent fewer copies in the United States than a rather mediocre novel written by an American. This appalling fact must also be entered into the equation. Mr. Wilkinson’s suggestion that foreign governments also provide funds to help promote the book would, to a large degree, help to alter this situation, though probably not entirely solve it.
2. Mr. Wilkinson limits his comments about government funding to Hungary and its practice of paying for the entire cost of the translation. Well, this practice is not universally shared; more important, perhaps, are the ways that most countries implement their support. While Mr. Wilkinson thinks it reasonable that publishers be compensated only after publication (for fear that they will take the money and run), it has been my experience (to name names here, always a risky business) that the Spanish government awards a subsidy but does not then ever pay it! We at Dalkey Archive had to play a cat-and-mouse game with them for years (they, by the way, won the game) whereby we would request a check for the support they had promised, but then they would say that they never received a copy of the book. We would then send yet another copy, even by registered mail, only to have them claim again and again that they never received it.
But, rather than focusing on this rather bizarre experience, the more typical practices are just as risky. Most foreign funding requires that there be signed contracts with the copyright holder (usually the foreign publisher) and the translator, even to apply for translation support. Sometime after the publisher has made financial commitments to both the copyright holder and the translator, the Ministry of Culture—or some such government agency—will decide whether the book will be subsidized. The French, for instance, try to decide whether the book will sell well in the United States (!!!!) and therefore whether the book should be in need of a subsidy; it has been my experience that the French have a very strange and uneven sense of what will sell well here. Even if the subsidy is awarded, it is usually awarded for significantly less than what the translation costs. Most government agencies function in ways similar to the French—only partial support for the translation.
3. I am somewhat (but only somewhat) less skeptical about the possibilities of government support for translations. The National Endowment for the Arts in the United States, despite being used as a political football over the years and having a budget that is less than it was a decade ago, has always been a source of enormous support for Dalkey Archive and literary publishing in general. Since there is one sole national foundation in the United States that funds literary publishing—and it’s not Ford, Rockefeller, Mellon, MacArthur, Wallace or Pew—I doubt that we can expect foundations to lead the way in an effort to support translations by working with nonprofit presses; however, what would be interesting to speculate on is whether the NEA couldn’t enlist foundations in this country in a joint undertaking with government agencies in other countries to create a fund for translations that would take into account all of the publication expenses rather than just the cost of the translations. Such an endeavor might work in very interesting ways if the needs of publishers (i.e., how they run their own houses, how they select books, where they select them from, etc.) is taken into account rather than having an outside system imposed (e.g., a committee or panel decides what will be translated and then publishers must line up to see if anything at all fits their aesthetic or whether they will be forced into doing books they would otherwise not do if they are to qualify for support).
An area that neither Mr. Wilkinson nor I have previously mentioned is foreign support for travel to countries in order to begin the process of making contacts with other publishers, critics, scholars, and writers. As most of us know, book conventions provide a very limited opportunity to make these contacts, though they help. Yet, nothing quite takes the place of being able to meet a wide range of people in a week or ten days, many of whom would not be at the book conventions. Some foreign countries are much better at helping with the expenses and logistics of this than are others, and this would seem to be a rather minimal investment on the government’s part, especially with American presses that have a clearly defined history of doing translations. Inevitably, Dalkey Archive winds up doing books from countries where the editors have visited, with France leading that list. This year, the Finnish Literature Information Centre, funded by the government, is bringing two Dalkey Archive editors to Helsinki for six days to meet with a range of publishers, authors, critics, and scholars. This investment, we believe, will yield considerable results in terms of Finnish publications and is a necessary step in finding the writers and works that are appropriate for Dalkey Archive. Unfortunately, most countries do not provide this level of support.
