booklab

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Knapp neun Prozent aller Neuerscheinungen in deutschen Verlagen sind Übersetzungen. Davon entfallen etwa zwei Drittel auf die Belletristik. Zwei von drei Übersetzungen stammen von englischen Originalen ab, weitere rund zwölf Prozent aus dem Französischen. Das bedeutet, dass Übersetzungen aus allen anderen Sprachen insgesamt gerade einmal ein Fünftel aller Übersetzungen ausmachen.

Außerdem nimmt die Zahl der Übersetzungen ins Deutsche im langjährigen Durchschnitt kontinuierlich ab. Weitgehend unbemerkt hat Deutschland auch seinen Ruf als wichtigstes Übersetzungsland in jüngster Zeit an Frankreich abgeben müssen. Diese und ähnliche Daten deuten auf ein vertracktes Problem hin.

Stellt man sich die kulturelle Kommunikation zwischen unterschiedlichen Ländern und Sprachräumen als überaus komplexes Nervensystem vor, dann gehören die Übersetzungen von Büchern klarerweise zu den Hauptsträngen der Kommunikation. Komplexe Ideen und komplizierte Geschichten reisen meist nur über Sprachgrenzen hinweg, wenn sie auch als Übersetzungen angeboten werden. (…)

Die ganze Geschichte hier.

Books allow ideas and stories to travel, and translations are the vehicle of choice. Oddly enough for such a fundamental mechanism at the core of culture and cultural diversity, we have little precise knowledge, and certainly no data based analysis about the patterns formed by those flows, and even less about the forces driving or hindering the exchange.

After having tried to map the flows of translation across Europe at the most general level in the “Diversity Report 2008”, the present analysis has the ambition to break down those general observations to the level of individual (fiction) authors and their work, and track how they move across languages, or how they do not. Metaphorically speaking, we try to get from a general physical map of the European landscape of translations to a road map.

Findings include:

1. Books translated from English represent on average about one third of the bestselling authors and titles across the continents, with only Sweden being significant exception;
2. The UK bestseller market is by far the most averse to translations.
3. As one consequence, national preferences show a much wider variety of – particularly domestic – authors and books, representing on average another solid third of the top segment, to the effect that countries’ reading preferences seem to be much more diverse, than ‘homogeneous’ across Europe;
4. Only a small group of authors writing in ‘other’ languages than English or the respective local majority vernacular succeed with translations of their work in a larger number of markets and countries, with some like Larsson and Zafón out-competing their Anglo-Saxon peers;
5. The very top segment in bestseller lists is a very narrow segment indeed, propelling just 2 or 3 authors in their own category for each country, with the singularity of this high peak marking a significant distinction between markets, and remarkably, it is the UK and Sweden, or two markets with a particularly high percentage of domestic authors on top, where the entire curve of the bestselling authors is considerably flatter than in countries with lesser impact of domestic authors;
6. At least for the past few years, a recognizable number of European, non-English writing bestseller authors evolved and found a broad mainstream readership across markets and languages, yet exclusively authors from “Western” (or “old”) Europe, forming an exclusive club which is almost impossible to access for authors e.g. from CEE.This West-East “one way street” described above is the only pattern where West & East forms meaningful categories, just as “big” and “small” languages and markets of origin seem to play a far smaller role than often assumed;
7. While in EUWest, no systematic distinction between a (‘high’) literary elite and eventual access to the top bestselling segment across Europe through translations seems to prevail, this is clearly the case for authors from CEE who made their way to the European literary ‘elite’, but as niche authors, not as authors found access to the European mainstream book readership.
8. The diversity in fiction bestsellers in terms of treated topics, background of the authors, tonalities and styles is huge, and many of the most successful authors are initially ‘made by readers’, and not planned, contradicting, in the initial career of authors and their successful books, the popular notion of bestsellers being engineered and homogenous.

These findings come with a few provocative insights.

• The market for rights and licenses which is currently the core driver for translations, does not take in the full spectrum and diversity of what is on offer from authors across Europe, nor what seems to be reader’s preferences. Instead, only a limited set of authors from a restricted set of backgrounds are given the full access to the European reading markets, despite the fact that the recent careers of European non-English writing authors provide strong indications that an appreciative readership for such a wide diversity may exist. The funding policies for translations lack the information and the tools for a realistic assessment of their efficiency.

• The data compiled and, at least partly, analyzed for this report suggest that a more differentiated and realistic picture of the cultural dimensions of the European book and reading markets can actually be developed;
• The ambivalent role of English as a bottleneck and as a driving force:
  All general translation data show the evidence of how little is translated into English, if compared to other target languages; and yet more of the ‘elite’ authors are available in English than what is generally assumed. English therefore plays a significant role as a transfer language (together with French and German), a factor of growing importance as the readiness of reading literature in certain foreign languages (most often this means: in English) seems to spread. In many markets, English reading of books written not only in English, but in any language seems to expand, and new digital technologies will drive this development forcefully in the near future.
• For policy makers, this brings up the critical question of either continuing to focus on translations between the many languages, or to also emphasize lead programs of translations into English.
• The potential for innovation by digital:
  As digital distribution currently picks up momentum with electronic reading devices and most new titles being rapidly available not only in print, but also in digital formats, there is a strong likeliness that books in translation as well as in their original editions (or in one transfer language, notably in English) will spread much more easily than in the past; this aspect has the potential to develop into a “game changing” mechanism for all kinds of niche reading, hence for literary translations, within a relatively short period of time.

The full “Diversity Report 2009” is ready for download at www.wischenbart.com/translation .

Following up on the very successful and fruitful debates at last year’s „On Translation“ conference at the Vienna book fair Buch Wien, we prepare for a next move with the “On Translation” conference and “Diversity Report” 2009 and want to encourage your participation and involvement.

Presentations and debates will focus on reliable information sources and professional tools for analyzing and better understanding translation markets, and on the relevance of publishing to cultural diversity.
A new “Author’s and Publisher’s Exchange” will link between the general debate and the requirements of publishing professionals.

The goal is to have, with the conference, a professional platform for organizations and for publishing professionals interested in translation and cultural diversity, while the report is meant to provide data and insight as a starting point for a well informed debate.

When? November 13, 2009
Where? Buch Wien 09 Messe Wien
Full details, registration and preliminary program: here

More about Buch Wien 09: here

As for the “Diversity Report 2009” please find a detailed preview here.

Please circulate the information about both the conference and the upcoming report and/or link to www.wischenbart.com/translation from your website, blog or twitter!

See you in Wien in November

Last week I had the pleasure to spend a few days in Ljubljana, Slovenia, and Zagreb, Croatia, talking to publishers and writers on a trip with book people mostly from germany, to prepare (a) next year’s Leipzig book fair where Croatia is the guest of honour, and (b) next year’s brand new Vienna book fair BuchWien where I have the pleasure and duty to prepare for a Central Europe / Tranlsation / Cultural Diversity program.

Being pretty familiar with Zagreb for a long time, which looks a lot like my native town of Graz, I was struck at first by the massive monuments (I had just forgotten about them, but to be frank, they are very much similar in Graz - apologies

Anyhow, the point is how a bit more than a decade after the wars of secession within collapsing Yugoslavia, Croatia seems ready (and ambitious) to become one more normal ’small’ country and culture, yet it is still struggling to impose that normalty as opposed to the shadows of the past.

A major breakthrew, politically, was when former general Gotovina was seized for trial at the Hague tribunal as of last year, after long behind the scenes negociations - while oddly enough, at the beautiful Dalmatian coast, where Gotovina fans and nationalists are strongest, the tourist industry started to really take off.

I asked a publishers friend of mine about this oddity of political geography, and he shrugged, saying that he just does not know. Along the coast, where, aside from Dubrovnik and Split, little war fare had occured, people voted ‘national’ (just as in those provinces of Slavonia, where indeed Serb had committed the severest war crimes), while in former Krajna,  in ever disputed Istria, and, well, understandably, in urban Zagreb, most non-nationalist votes were cast.

One writer had become famous from Croatia recently, telling about the war in Bosnia, Miljenko Jergovic, but he does not appear in public anymore. Instead, I met Zoran Feric, who has been translated recently, in a beautiful club run by a couple of women (booksa).

We’ve also been introduced to several of the local literary publishers, to Nenad Popovic of Durieux, an old friend indeed - who, walking us to Booksa club, had shown us the villa of former icon Tilla Durieux after whom he had named his publishing company (in the 1990s, when people just had forgotten that she had been with partizan resistance - what an absurd twist and irony in those Tudjman years of Croatia), or Fraktura.

Earlier that day, we had walked into a really great and huge book store, Profil - and almost, being a group of almost 20, driven out all regular customers - with a really substantial foreign language section (I still can’t manage my picture upload button, but promise to show a few photographs of all this soon).

Oh, and we had lunch and dinner with 2 rivalry publishers’ associations, learning from György Dalos, our Hungarian guide to Croation book country, that in Hungary they had successfully founded 8 (!) competing book associations by now (and I admit, such things are among my favourites), so I promise that I will tell you more about all of this soon, and bring pictures for testimony as well.

As we screen and analyse international bestseller lists for several book trade magazines month by month, we were puzzled by that the new book of Robert Fulghum, author of many essays, notably All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten (1986).

His new collection of notes, essays, and observations, titled “What On Earth Have I Done”, hit the Czech charts as of last month - while the English original is announced only for next fall. months before its publication in English. Surprised by such a strange routine, I wrote to Robert Fulghum – and got back a wonderful story that says a lot about why sharing information on interesting books from many places makes a lot of sense and a lot of fun to many people indeed. So I share that story with you in its entirety down below. 

This is what Robert Fulghum wrote:

“In partial answer to the question to you raise, I’ll tell you a nice story. All of my books have been published in Czech over the years as a result of the interest of one person, Eva Slamova, the editor-in-chief of Argo. When I began writing a novel, she wanted to see it. My own American editor didn’t want me to write fiction and wasn’t encouraging. Eva, on the other hand, published the novel as I wrote it - in three volumes and beautifully - and it has had great success. THIRD WISH is the tile. Now it has been published in Slovak and Hungarian. A radio adaptation was made for Czech Radio, and a theater piece has developed from it.  My entire contract for the novel said, “Publish it well and send me some money if you make some.” They did and they did. Nice, yes? 

And so, when I finished my new book of essays and stories, I wanted the Czechs to publish it first, in appreciation for Eva’s faith in my writing. Some critics wonder if the novel and the essays are somehow not good enough to be published in the states, but they don’t understand. It is a real honor to be published first in Czech - theirs is a long and distinguished literary tradition. My American editor and publisher find this confusing, but the

USA is not at the top of the heap in many respects these days, and it takes some getting used to. Mostly American publishers think of the sales to European countries as stripping the cow - just extra income - without much respect for the readers outside the

USA. Who cares what the Czechs and Slovaks and Hungarians think and read? Well I care very much.

 My new book of essays, What On Earth Have I Done? will be published by St. Martin’s Press in the

USA in September, and the novel is being considered now by three publishers here. Meanwhile, I am very happy to continue to have my books launched in

Czech.

 There’s more to the story, but that’s a beginning. So far, nobody has really noticed this except you. Come to the Czech or Hungarian book fairs and see first hand what’s going on.  With thanks for your interest and warmest regards, Robert Fulghum”

PS: In the mean time Fulghum has arrived in Prague, just in time for the local book fair, Prague Book World”, and enjoys the fair, the books, good company - and good Czech beer, as he told me on the phone.