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Not sure how we missed this article by Jane Henderson in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about how “world literature thrives in translation” (especially considering that Three Percent is listed in the “more information” box), but I have to agree with Michael Orthofer —“thriving” is probably a bad word choice, especially when this is the evidence cited:
“I think it’s picking up,” said Douglas Kibbee, director of the School of Literatures, Cultures, and Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, which has a new Center for Translation Studies. “If you look at what’s reviewed in The New York Times Book Review, more translations are showing up. Now it’s rare to go a single issue without having a translated work in it.”
Even if the NY Times is covering a translation a week in the Sunday Book Review, that’s only 50 books a year . . . throw in a few extras for good measure, and at best they’re reviewing 70 title (this figure is probably way overstated). Which is fine—it could be a lot lower, and besides it’s their prerogative to review whatever they want—but I’d hardly reference that as proof that translation is thriving . . .
This is one of the problems with the U.S. publishing world—with a lack of statistical data about such issues, anyone can pass off “gut feelings” as fact. (Hell, I’ve done it myself—oftentimes that’s all you have to go on.) And like Orthofer said, the bar is so low that any slight increase is cause for celebration.
There really may be reason for optimism though . . . Translation isn’t really “thriving” per se, but over the past few years a number of things have developed—from PEN World Voices to Words Without Borders to a few new translation centers at various universities to the biennial Translation Conference going on later this month—that have helped to bring more attention and awareness to the issues and pleasures of world literature.
Nevertheless, when there are only approx. 400 original translations of adult fiction and poetry are published here on an annual basis, the majority of which get little to no review coverage, I think we have a long way to go . . . At least more people are talking about translations and looking for ways to improve the situation.
Reviewed by Peter Constantine
Now goddess, child of Zeus,
tell the old story for our modern times.
–(The Odyssey, Book I, line 10. Emily Wilson)
In literary translation of works from other eras, there are always two basic tasks that a translator needs. . .
Reviewed by Talia Franks
I Remember Nightfall by Marosa di Giorgio (trans. From the Spanish by Jeannine Marie Pitas) is a bilingual poetry volume in four parts, consisting of the poems “The History of Violets,” “Magnolia,” “The War of the Orchards,” and “The Native. . .
Reviewed by Brendan Riley
This review was originally published as a report on the book at New Spanish Books, and has been reprinted here with permission of the reviewer. The book was originally published in the Catalan by Anagrama as Joyce i les. . .
Reviewed by Kaija Straumanis
Hello and greetings in the 2017 holiday season!
For those of you still looking for something to gift a friend or family member this winter season, or if you’re on the lookout for something to gift in the. . .
Reviewed by Jaimie Lau
Three generations of men—a storyteller, his father and his son—encompass this book’s world. . . . it is a world of historical confusion, illusion, and hope of three generations of Belgraders.
The first and last sentences of the first. . .
Reviewed by Katherine Rucker
The Island of Point Nemo is a novel tour by plane, train, automobile, blimp, horse, and submarine through a world that I can only hope is what Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès’s psyche looks like, giant squids and all.
What. . .
Reviewed by Adrianne Aron
Mario Benedetti (1920-2009), Uruguay’s most beloved writer, was a man who loved to bend the rules. He gave his haikus as many syllables as fit his mood, and wrote a play divided into sections instead of acts. In his country,. . .
Reviewed by Jacob Rogers
Kim Kyung Ju’s I Am a Season That Does Not Exist in the World, translated from the Korean by Jake Levine, is a wonderful absurdist poetry collection. It’s a mix of verse and prose poems, or even poems in the. . .
Reviewed by Sarah Booker
Yuri Herrera is overwhelming in the way that he sucks readers into his worlds, transporting them to a borderland that is at once mythical in its construction and powerfully recognizable as a reflection of its modern-day counterpart. Kingdom Cons, originally. . .
Reviewed by Tiffany Nichols
Imagine reading a work that suddenly and very accurately calls out you, the reader, for not providing your full attention to the act of reading. Imagine how embarrassing it is when you, the reader, believe that you are engrossed in. . .
