This past weekend, Pat Reardon featured Dalkey Archive Press, Northwestern University Press, University of Illinois Press, and University of Chicago Press in an article for the Chicago Tribune about how the State of Illinois is one of the centers of translation in the country.

Translators are unofficial ambassadors, negotiating the meeting of two cultures, says Willis Regier, director of the University of Illinois Press.

And, although little recognized locally, one of the major centers of this sort of literary diplomacy is Illinois, home of four publishing houses with strong translation programs, responsible for some 50 translations each year.

Put together, these four presses are pretty impressive—Northwestern’s “Writings from an Unbound Europe” series alone is pretty remarkable and includes a ton of impressive authors.

It’s also worth noting that Reardon is talking about all translations, not just fiction and poetry. (For instance, the bit about U of I Press mentions that they specialize “in non-fiction works by scholars and great writers, such as Simone de Beauvoir and Ludwig van Beethoven.”) In terms of fiction and poetry, a small segment of Brooklyn would compete with Illinois in terms of translation dominance . . . In Gowanus and Dumbo alone one can find Ugly Duckling Press, Archipelago Books, and Melville House, three of the top publishers of literary translations in the country.

Personally, my favorite part of this article is John O’Brien’s quote that “This area is translation territory.” It calls to mind images of Illinois as the wild west of international writing, where roving editors carry around bilingual dictionaries . . .

Shortly after arriving in Rochester with the goal of creating Open Letter, I was flipping through the Ray-Gude Merlin Agency rights list and came across Horacio Castellanos Moya. I immediately e-mailed Nicole Witt only to find out that New Directions had already purchased the rights to Senselessness.

As a publisher I was disappointed for being late to the game . . . As a reader I was thrilled that this book was going to be available in the near future, and based on the description in the rights guide, I knew this was going to be an amazing book.

The year is only half over, but so far, this is my pick for the best translation of 2008. It’s a stunning book that’s been praised by the likes of Roberto Bolano and Russell Banks. Even more exciting (disappointing from the publisher angle?) is the fact that New Directions is going to be doing more of his works, including She-Devil in the Mirror, which is Francisco Goldman’s favorite.

Anyway, I didn’t give this much of an objective review, but there’s not much to criticize about this book. Personally, I think the long quotes in the review speak for themselves.

This is the fifteenth Reading the World 2008 title we’re covering. Write-ups of the other titles can be found here. And information about the Reading the World program—a special collaboration between publishers and independent booksellers to promote literature in translation throughout the month of June—is available at the official RTW website. There’s also a podcast discussing RTW available from World Books.

Although a couple of Elias Khoury’s other books were published in English a number of years ago, it was Archipelago’s edition of Gate of the Sun that really brought him to the attention of American readers. Frequently compared to One Thousand and One Nights, Gate of the Sun is a sprawling, epic novel. (And is now available in paperback from Picador.)

Yalo, on the other hand, is a different sort of book. From Jeff Waxman’s review:

Elias Khoury’s new novel, Yalo—out earlier this month from Archipelago—is a deep examination of truth and memory set against the gritty backdrop of post-war Lebanon. The book’s premise appears to be simple: in the first pages, it becomes apparent that the title character has been arrested for rape. Rape is a simple crime, with simple motives. In this story, however, nothing is as simple as it first appears. Yalo’s greatest crime may not be rape, Yalo may not be guilty, and Yalo may no longer even be Yalo.

Even better than this positive review is the opening of the book itself:

Yalo did not understand what was happening.

The young man stood before the interrogator and closed his eyes. He always closed his eyes when he faced danger, when he was along, and when his mother . . . On that day too, the morning of Thursday, December 22, 1993, he closed his eyes involuntarily.

Yalo did not understand why everything was white.

He saw the white interrogator, sitting behind a white table, the sun refracting on the glass window behind him, and his faced bathed in reflected light. All Yalo saw were hallos of light and a woman walking through the city streets tripping on her shadow.

Yalo closed his eyes for a moment, or so he thought. This young man with his knitted eyebrows and long tan face, his slender height, closed his eyes for a moment before reopening them. But here, in the Jounieh police station, he closed his eyes and saw crossed lines around two lips that moved as if whispering. He looked at his handcuffed wrists and felt that the sun that obscured the face of the interrogator struck him in the eyes, so he closed them.

The young man stood before the interrogator at ten o’clock that cold morning and saw the sun refracted on the window, shining on the white head of the man whose mouth opened with questions. Yalo closed his eyes.

Yalo did not understand what the interrogator was shouting about.

There’s also an interview conducted by Bill Marx with Elias Khoury on the PRI’s World Books webpage.

I was poking around Dubravka Ugresic’s website today, and I came across something I thought you all might find interesting:

Jasmina Lukic of Central European University lectured about Dubravka at UCLA last December, and they’ve been good enough to put the lecture up on their website here. Lukic talks quite a bit about Nobody’s Home, using one of the essays from the book as a jumping off point to understanding Dubravka’s work.

Anyway, the reason I was poking around Dubravka’s site was because I was thinking about making “microsites” for our authors: something along the lines of what ReadySteadyBook! has done, but more interactive, maybe with an editable wiki page where people can add information of their own.

For someone like Dubravka, who has quite a bit of information online, it may not be as useful, but I think it might be a good way to make more English-language information about someone like Ricardas Gavelis available.

Is this something you would find interesting? Would you participate? Is it just unnecessarily reproducing the work that could just be happening on Wikipedia? Is this the kind of thing you’d like to see on a publisher’s website?

Jeff Waxman brought my attention to an article in the June issue of Commentary by Hillel Halkin entitled “The Translator’s Paradox.”

It’s primarily about the relationship between Hebrew and Jews, about how translation is aided the demise of Hebrew as the primary language of Jews:

Matti Megged and I were, unwittingly, at the front edge of a wave that has changed Diaspora Jewish life, preeminently in the United States. But the change has not been all for the better. It has contributed to the loss of Hebrew as the international language of the Jewish people. [. . .]

English has become the new international language of the Jews because it has become the international language of everyone. But it has been aided in its displacement of Hebrew by Jewish assimilation, which has deprived millions of Jewish children of the Hebrew they once acquired as part of a religious upbringing. Although a functional literacy in Hebrew was very far from universal in traditional Jewish communities, it was the defining mark of a Jewish education and the aspiration of every Jew.

In terms of translation, Halkin sees both sides of this practice:

Translation is double-edged. It is the great go-between of humanity, the international hawker of cultural wares, the oldest and most powerful of all globalizing forces. But it is also a golden calf, a false representation. It reveals and thus conceals. It clarifies and so obscures. It betrays our secrets to mankind.

Living in translation has its advantages for the Jewish people: it facilitates communication among them, disseminates Jewish culture, creates a new Jewish literacy to replace the old one that has been lost. Yet it dilutes the culture it disseminates, weakens Jewish distinctiveness, puts Jews at a remove from themselves. It makes them vulnerably transparent to the outside world. A people’s language is its private home; in it, it can pursue its own business, conduct its own quarrels, make its own jokes, let down its hair; it can be itself without fear of eavesdroppers. One can argue in a Jewish language about Judaism, about Zionism, about any aspect of Jewish life, but one argues in a language, not about it; the language itself belongs to all. Precisely because it is neutral, language has always been the strongest of communal bonds, the magic circle that no interloper could cross.

Some of his claims might be a bit broad, but on the whole, this is pretty interesting. (As is his comment that “it is not uncommon today for leading Israeli writers to sign translation contracts with American or European publishers even before they begin work on a book.”) This piece echoes some of the sentiments in Esther Allen’s essay in To Be Translated or Not To Be, although Halkin puts more emphasis on the process of translation than I think she would.

Michael Orthofer has a great rant over at Literary Saloon about “how not to publish translations.” His piece centers around Serbian Classics Press, a press that I’ve personally never heard of (neither had Michael, so I feel like my ignorance is excusable), but one that is bringing out Mansarda, Danilo Kis’s first novel.

The book seems to have been released . . . well, as if printing and binding it were all there was to it. The publisher is Serbian Classics Press, and with their mission of: “publishing classic and contemporary Serbian fiction, biography, literary criticism and reference works in translation, as well as original English language works by authors from the Serbian diaspora” they sound like exactly the kind of outfit we should know about. Except, of course, that we didn’t. That happens — we’re constantly learning about new publishers. But what can we learn about them and their offerings ? Yes, they have a website, but the catalogue-page doesn’t seem to have been updated in years [Ed. note: since 2004!], and we couldn’t find any information about the Kiš-title on it. [. . .]

Which leads to the second problem: not only is there no information at the publisher’s site, this book is not listed at any of the English-language Amazons. (Or Barnes & Noble.)

Really.

Imagine that, in this day and age, where every print-on-demand title is listed at every online bookseller. Here’s a book, published in New York in 2008, which you can’t buy through Amazon.com.

One of my big gripes is the way in which small and independent publishers have a tendency to sabotage their best intentions. SCP is a pretty extreme example of how not to do things—although there are others . . .

SCP’s website is incredibly embarrassing. The fact it’s four years out of date is horrendous and the presentation is totally amateurish. Really too bad. The five books listed there sound pretty interesting (as does the Kis!) and there are even excerpts! Of course, there’s no sign of distribution (which is the number one problem in independent publishing right now) and the order form is awesomely outdated—it’s a pdf you have to print and mail in along with a “check or money order.” C’mon guys, today’s world is premised upon the ability to use credit cards for everything.

Putting them aside for a moment, this is a much larger issue that missing an opportunity with a new Kis and being technologically inept. A couple years ago, I moderated a panel at the London Book Fair that included Daniel Soar from the London Review of Books. At the beginning of his bit, he admitted that he was embarrassed by how few works in translation the LRB had reviewed over the past 6 months or so. (If I remember it was something like 3-4 titles compared to 50+ from English.) One of the reasons he gave for this was the lack of context for these books. Most translations published are by authors he’d never heard of and arrive on his desk with nothing more than a two paragraph press release and a reference to author X being the “James Joyce of country Y.” Of course, I’m paraphrasing here, but it sounded like a lot of these titles looked interesting, yet without more information, it was difficult to figure out what to do with them.

Based on the relatively few books that we get in for review (some of which are devoid of jacket copy), I can see how this is a major problem for large, influential publications. It’s much easier to decide whether to review a young American author who has been appearing in lit mags and anthologies, who has been talked about by other editors and reviewers, and who may have even shown up at a number of literary events and gatherings—the context for who this author is already exists. But a book by a relatively obscure international author needs some additional information. That’s one of the reasons publishing literature in translation costs so much—you have to spend a lot more on marketing than you do for an author working in English.

The more savvy publishers become with creating websites, generating buzz, figuring out creative ways to introduce these authors to the reading public, producing informative overview essays that place an author within a broad literary tradition—the better these books will be received and will find their voice. And the more one success will help other titles. I don’t agree with it, but I understand why Barnes & Noble has a thing against literature in translation. For years they stocked translations from a handful of presses that never figured out how to best market their books. When return rates are in the hight 70% range, one starts to generalize that translations don’t sell . . . (On the flip-side, our Icelandic book—The Pets by Bragi Olafsson—will be widely stocked due to the success of Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses. And yes, I know these are different countries, types of books, etc., but in addition to credit, our book culture is all about trends and duplication.)

I hate to pick on SCP, but this is a disservice to Kis. He actually has a following, one that could be tapped and cultivated. Instead these readers are lucky to find out that Mansarda (MAO has a few things to say about that title as well) is available.

E.J. set up the Open Letter page on Facebook this afternoon, and so far we only have one lonely fan . . .

The Korea Literature Translation Institute (KLTI) started a two-year project in 2007 to evaluate published English translations of Korean literature. In the first stage of evaluation work. 41 novels in 72 editions from 721 books that had been translated and published up to 2006 were evaluated. The second stage of the survey will focus on poetry and be completed by the end of 2008.

...

The results of this project will be used to estimate the level and problems of Korean literature translated into English and for establishing an important database for its improvement.

A lot of countries have book offices which promote the translation of their national literatures, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen anything like this. They’re studying all of their works that have been translated into English to determine the quality of the translations!

So far, they say only 10% of the translations they’ve evaluated merit a score of “high readability”. I’d be curious to find out what these books are, although I can’t imagine the lists would ever be released.

I wonder if they’ll release some kind of analysis of their findings at the end of the study…

(via LS)

I think it’s pretty clear that we like to reference Lost whenever possible, and the new Lost Book Club, is a perfect example of why we’re obsessed with this show.

This very elegant and slick site is supposed to be the “home to any and all literary references made on the show—from Stephen King to Kurt Vonnegut.” (Or Adolfo Bioy Casares to Vladimir Nabokov.)

According to the note from Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof

Over the first four seasons of LOST we’ve managed to incorporate more than 40 books into the show. [. . .] We can’t promise you any of these books will lead you to answers about Lost, but we can promise you’ll be enriched for having read them.

It’s fun to scroll through all the titles listed here, especially because there are a ton that I don’t think anyone noticed. (Like The Stone Leopard.) All of the books can be purchased through the ABC store and there’s a forum where fans can discuss all of these titles—hopefully this will generate even more interest in the literary aspects of Lost.

In last Sunday’s Washington Post, Jonathan Karp makes some interesting statements about the future of publishing in his article Turning the Page on the Disposable Book

He starts with an accurate assessment of the immediacy of publishing and its ramifications:

Like most publishers, I want multitudes of readers to buy our books. Moreover, authors prefer publishers who believe in the broad appeal of their work and are committed to selling as many copies as possible. Most authors want their work to be accessible to a typical educated reader, so the question really isn’t whether the work is highbrow or lowbrow or appeals to the masses or the elites; the question is whether the book is expedient or built to last. Are we going for the quick score or enduring value? Too often, we (publishers and authors) are driven by the same concerns as any commercial enterprise: We are manufacturing products for the moment.

Among major publishing houses, the impetus to meet annual profit targets is a fact of life — the basis of budgets, salaries and bonuses. Publishers do what typical executives do: They plan. They forecast. They develop strategies for growth. Unfortunately, these attempts at producing consistent results don’t work particularly well in an endeavor that is only slightly more predictable than a game of blackjack.

This points to one of the big differences between corporate publishing and a nonprofit. Corporations need financial results. Increases in profit, which inevitably lead to producing more books, or books that they believe will appeal to a larger audience. Nonprofits have the advantage of being able to supplement their sales revenue with grants and donations, which should help these presses to fulfill their mission. (Such as receiving a grant to give away copies of a book at a reading, thus connecting more readers with a particular author.) Since nonprofits don’t rely strictly on sales revenue, they can stay away from the “bigger, faster, better” mentality that infests other publishing houses.

Enough about that though, what’s really interesting to me is the way that Karp connects the speed of publishing with its pressure on authors:

Books of this ilk [Ed. note: trendy ones that he described in prev. paragraph.] have always existed. But in the past, they’ve been balanced by substantive books, crafted by monomaniacal authors who devoted years to the work. I can’t prove it empirically, but when I talk to literary agents and fellow publishers, they acknowledge an unarticulated truth about our business: Fewer authors are devoting more than two years to their projects. The system demands more, faster. Conventional wisdom holds that popular novelists should deliver one or two books per year. Nonfiction authors often aren’t paid enough to work full-time on a book for more than a year or two.

There’s no guarantee that a book will be better if an author spends more time writing it, but years of research and reflection often provide a perspective that offers readers a kind of wisdom and authority they can’t get anywhere else.

This is a bit scary, and feels true. And makes me glad that we deal with a totally different sort of book and author.

Karp ends with a sweeping vision for the future of publishing that ends in an odd counterpoint:

The barriers to entry in the book business get lower each year. There are thousands of independent publishers and even more self-publishers. These players will soon have the same access to readers as major publishers do, once digital distribution and print-on-demand technology enter the mainstream. When that happens, publishers will lose their greatest competitive advantage: the ability to distribute books widely and effectively. Those who publish generic books for expedient purposes will face new competitors. Like the music companies, some of those publishers may shrink or die. [. . .]

Consequently, publishers will be forced to invest in works of quality to maintain their niche. These books will be the one product that only they can deliver better than anyone else. Those same corporate executives who dictate annual returns may begin to proclaim the virtues of research and development, the great engine of growth for business. For publishers, R&D means giving authors the resources to write the best books — works that will last, because the lasting books will, ultimately, be where the money is.

Maybe. I do think that things are changing and the publishing industry is going to go through a period of upheaval over the next few years. (Christ, how long can an industry that pays Emily Gould $250K—or thereabouts—for her “memoir” continue functioning?) And I do truly believe that there is a core group of readers (like everyone who reads this blog) who care about great literature and want to read works of art, not the latest whatever.

But I wonder if this “return to quality” will come from the corporate sector, or if readers will realize that there’s a ton of high-quality books coming out every year from independent and university presses. In other words, I wonder which will happen first, a paradigm shift at a commercial house away from overpaying for mediocre books to slowing down and publishing good books; or, if readers will start to turn away from these sorts of entertainment books (they can get their entertainment fix from the internet, or TV, anyway) in favor of “works of quality.”