Translation and the Publishing Industry

A few months ago, I was asked some questions by email by a student writing an MA thesis on translation. They are the kinds of questions that come up a lot in regard to the publishing industry, so I thought they’d be worth posting here. I just gave my own opinions – what do you think?

What do you think are the main reasons foreign authors get translated into English?

Frankly, it’s often the bottom line. An author (often of thrillers or other genre fiction) sells well in their native country, and publishers here see that and want to cash in on it. That’s one reason why we don’t see as many literary works translated, unfortunately. Another reason is the topic/genre/style – if one text does well, publishers jump on any similar ones.

Do you think the setting of the novel a deciding factor in publication?

Yes, it can be. There are trends in translation, as hinted at above. For the past few years, Nordic, especially Scandinavian, thrillers have been popular. Publishers have been publishing all sorts of Nordic thrillers (and there has been a lot of Nordic crime on TV too), some of which is of dubious quality. In research that I carried out, I found that most readers didn’t differentiate between, say, Iceland and Sweden, and didn’t really care where the book came from. In some cases, they didn’t even know they were reading translations. They felt that all those countries were the same, but they liked the fact that the isolated, often cold settings seemed to reflect the crimes and the criminal mentality. Such readers were willing to read any Nordic noir, whether the books were set in Helsinki or Oslo. So I think the setting matters in a general sense, but that readers may not care quite as much as publishers think they do.

Do you think foreign authors are marketed in a different way to domestic authors?

They can be. The covers often attest to that, showing that these books are from a particular country (i.e. Nordic thrillers often have snowy, barren settings on their covers). But I also think publishers try to hide the fact of translation to a certain extent. Publishers underestimate readers and think the general public can’t handle translated lit, so they might compare X foreign author to Y domestic author in order to make the work seem more palatable. Or they might keep the translator’s name in small letters.

How important a factor is the author’s nationality?

Clearly, certain countries/ethnicities are more accepted than others, and some languages are much more translated than others (French, German, and Spanish come to mind). I keep referring to Nordic lit and that seems much more acceptable to us in English-speaking countries, perhaps because Nordic people aren’t seen as too different or too foreign. Publishers seem to feel that readers might have a harder time connecting to characters in, for instance, China or Latvia or Venezuela. Again, I think the public is underestimated here.

The Joy of Invisibility

Sometimes it’s good for translators to be invisible. This article is about bad writing about sex, and it names and shames the authors and their books. However, the author (conveniently?) forgets that some works have been translated. So perhaps the translator should get some of the credit (or shame) too.

Good Ideas

I was reading Michael Rosen’s great new book Good Ideas – a book that is indeed filled with good ideas for parents, teachers, and anyone really – and he has a section on getting children interested in language or using language as a way of interesting children in the world around them (pp. 235-9). Looking at signs in museums or supermarkets, reading horoscopes in foreign newspapers, checking for English among foreign words, and so on are just a few ways. I recommend the book as a whole, but these pages in particular for those who want to start making their children aware of linguistic and cultural differences.

A Round-Up of Articles

It’s time for another round-up of articles!

I studied Latin when I was in grammar and high school and I’m so glad I did. This article discusses “taking an ancient language associated with the academic elite and reviving it as a remedy for the nation’s reading problems”.

This piece is on the word “literally”, which my students use way too often in speaking and writing. 

This article is on academic writing, which is often quite poor, I think.

Speaking of academia, this post explores the crazy hours many academics work (and some just purport to work).

This list of the best love poems is quite odd. They only list some poems as translations whereas quite a number are clearly translated, so something has gone awry there. What would be on your list? 

Finally, check out this cartoon about how works get translated.

No More 2%?

This article in the Guardian suggests that British readers are reading more translations these days. Do you think that’s true? What about in other English-speaking countries? (And yes, I’m quoted in the piece.)

Path to a PhD

I get a lot of emails from people asking me whether they should get a PhD in translation studies and, if so, what they should research for their dissertations. I’ve already written quite a bit about that on this blog (see Getting a PhD and What Can You Study When You Do a PhD in Translation?, for example).

One of the most common recent questions has been what path you need to take if you know for sure you want to get a PhD in translation studies one day. People ask me whether they should study languages, literature, linguistics, translation studies at the undergraduate or MA level, or some other topic entirely.

This is a very individual choice, and I’m loathe to tell people how to shape their lives and their careers. Obviously, to apply to and get accepted to a PhD program in translation studies, you need to show that you have the requisite level of skill in your chosen language/s and literature/s and other relevant subject area/s. You’ll need to prove that you have the scholarly background necessary for doing strong critical work in the humanities (i.e. a BA in sports science probably won’t help). You may also need to show your expertise as a translator, especially if you want to do a creative-critical PhD. But how you get these skills and how you show them in your application will vary.

Personally, my BA is in literature and creative writing and I have an MFA in creative writing. I also worked as a practicing translator for some years before applying for my PhD studies. That pathway worked for me, but I also know people who went for BAs and MAs in translation first, then directly on to a PhD, and still others who did undergraduate degrees in fields such as law or medicine and then switched to languages and translation for their MAs. Others focused on language at the undergraduate level and then came to literature and literary translation as MA students. There is no one right way.

So my simple advice is to consider what your interests are and where you eventually hope to end up. If you want to become a pharmaceutical translator, then an undergraduate degree in medicine might serve you very well. If you know you want to be an academic who researches the translation of opera, then studying languages and music as an undergraduate might be a good choice. And so on. Think about who you are and what will inspire you, and take it from there.