Boekvertalers

In July 2003 I met Lex Jansen, the head man at The Arbeiderspers. Although he had a very natural interest in seeing a translation of Het woeden appear in the US, he warned me not to expect too much. He drew my attention to an article by Stephen Kinzer that had appeared in the New York Times a few days before. Its title: ‘America Yawns at Foreign Fiction’. Among its many sobering sentences was this one:

‘Writers, publishers and cultural critics have long lamented the difficulty of interesting American readers in translated literature, and now some say the market for these books is smaller than it has been in generations.’

And this one:

‘Several [publishers] said a decisive factor was the concentration of ownership in the book industry, which is dominated by a few conglomerates. That has produced an increasing fixation on profit. As publishers focus on blockbusters, they steadily lose interest in little-known authors from other countries.’

And these:

‘Some publishers said that they had no staff editors who read foreign languages, and that they hesitated to rely on the advice of outsiders about which foreign books might capture the imagination of Americans. Others mentioned the high cost of translation, the local references in many non-American books and the different approach to writing that many foreign authors take.’

Verder lezen The trials of literary translation, Dutch to English (part three)

Facts of publishing life in the UK…
Six years ago I had no conception of the barriers facing current non-English fiction in the English-speaking world. I hesitate to guess how many works of fiction are published in English annually – there must be thousands, contributed by UK, US, Canadian, Australian, New Zealand, South African, Irish, West Indian and other authors. Amidst this broad stream of literature, translated authors have a difficult time getting attention.
Verder lezen The trials of literary translation, Dutch to English (part two)

Six years ago, in the course of the CAANS meeting held at Laval University, I appeared in the guise of a novice literary translator. The paper I read then had the title ‘Maarten ’t Hart’s Het woeden der gehele wereld: Problems of translation in a multi-layered novel’. In it I told the story of how I came to translate this fine novel. Verder lezen The trials of literary translation, Dutch to English (part one)*