Smaller European literatures don’t necessarily come from geographically or numerically small nations, but they are generally clustered in what for, say, English, French, or German readers, are European peripheries like the Balkans, the Baltic, Central and Eastern Europe, the Low Countries, the Mediterranean and Scandinavia. They are written in less widely spoken languages, come from less familiar traditions and depend on translation to reach an international audience. A project called ‘Translating the Literatures of Small European Nations’, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, aimed to understand both the challenges and opportunities that exist for these literatures as they try to break into the cultural mainstream in the UK, and in June 2017 we finally published a report on our findings.
Our project brought together four academics from the UK who promote very different smaller literatures―not only through their teaching and research, but also through various kinds of public engagement and publisher collaboration: I work on Czech and Slovak at Bristol, Rhian Atkin on Portuguese at Cardiff, Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen on Scandinavian and Zoran Milutinović on South Slav at UCL. We sensed that we work quite similarly, in parallel or even in competition, without much opportunity to discuss how our smaller literatures perceive and promote themselves internationally and how they are received by readers. We suspected that this parallel, competitive experience applied more generally to other professional advocates of smaller European literatures, whether translators, publishers, literary agents or state and third-sector promoters.
A Time of Growth
Through our workshops and conversations with such advocates, we found that the situation for smaller European literatures in translation in the UK mirrors the situation for translated literature in general. It quickly became clear that the familiar ‘three-per-cent’ anxiety about quantity is now an outdated or at least unsophisticated way of thinking about published translated literature. In the UK over the past decade, many new independent presses specializing in translation have emerged, thanks to new technology, increased availability of funding, and a view that translated literature should be more widely available and, indeed, is an under-exploited commercial opportunity. A number of people behind new ventures have come not only from corporate publishing, but also from banking and finance, and have brought with them sophisticated strategies for identifying a market and creating a brand. For them, it was not ignorance or lack of interest on the part of readers, but the timidity of publishers and booksellers that limited the amount of translated literature being published. Most of these presses readily feature more neglected European literatures, and some make a particular geographical periphery their focus. The growth of social media, review sites, online reading groups and bloggers has transformed the crucial concept of ‘word-of-mouth’, while physical booksellers large and small have by contrast returned to traditional, ‘slow’ bookselling based on building relationships with customers and ensuring the availability of books.
Diversity Matters
Instead of worrying about the lack of translated literature, it seems more relevant to focus on whether its apparent growth is matched by an increase in the diversity of translated literature available, and whether it is also being more widely read. On diversity, we detected even among independent publishers a certain conservatism or residual timidity about choices of texts, which needed to be different but not too different from English-language competitors, distinctive but not too experimental, contemporary but not too contemporary. In this context, ‘difficult texts’ face marginalization, and smaller European literatures are often perceived to be ‘difficult’ regardless of their content or style because of their unfamiliarity to readers, which makes them harder to promote.
The rise in genre translation has unquestionably benefited smaller European literatures, most obviously the success of Scandinavian detective fiction, but also in areas like science-fiction and fantasy. Some people we spoke to feared that the emphasis on genre would limit publisher interest in works that are not easily categorizable, making the origin of a text irrelevant and suppressing the status of the text as a translation. On the other hand, even literary translators suggested to us that promoting a book as a translation was not commercially attractive. Others hoped that genre fiction might prove a potential ‘gateway drug’ that would normalize the reading of translated literature more generally, somewhat on the model of the recent success of subtitled series on British television.
By contrast, the practice (prevalent especially but not only among corporate publishers) of re-translating classics, which are less costly and easier to promote than new translations, disadvantages smaller European literatures, where few if any works have attained international classic status. Indeed, those that have (for Czech, I think of Hašek’s The Good Soldier Švejk) often come to stand for the national literature as a whole, permanently distorting reader perceptions and expectations of the literature concerned and shaping which other texts are likely to be chosen for translation.
Supply and Demand
The reality is that very few translations from smaller European literatures are published on a commercial basis, without funding from national ministries or quangos, or from an international or third-sector source. Their publication is therefore not motivated by an identified demand among readers, but by vaguer cultural or cultural-diplomatic imperatives.
We found from looking at national programmes and talking to translators and publishers that the amounts, precise motivations and selection criteria for allocating this funding vary widely between countries, institutions and organizations. We heard of cases where panels of literary specialists were bypassed by civil servants anxious not to offend the foreign publishers who were applying, and on the contrary, where the priorities of literary specialists were privileged over the prospects for international cultural promotion or commercial success. Some expressed concern that such processes are dominated by white, middle-aged and middle-class men, a lack of diversity that may then be reflected in the choice of texts/literary voices supported. Smaller European literatures certainly suffer from the same dominance of male over female voices identified in translated literature as a whole. While we heard some UK-based cultural attachés and national cultural centre staff―and publishers―plead for a more coherent national strategy for funding, many others were concerned that scrutiny of funding processes and calls for more precise criteria might result in governments questioning this use of national budgets.
This funding model only ensures that texts are published, not that they are read. Translators and presses often publish favorite texts simply to ensure they are available to English-speaking readers if they ever need them. We noted, however, the widespread practice in smaller European literatures of using funding to publish translations not for readers, but to attract the attention of major publishers. Those who use this method argue that it is better than just waiting for the appearance of a sufficiently influential English-speaking advocate for their national literature, and indeed often these ‘supply-driven’ translations from smaller European literatures are done by non-native speakers of English because of a lack of English-speaking translators for the language concerned. Others, however, doubted the effectiveness of this approach, and expressed concern that the proliferation of texts produced in the country of origin, with low production values and potential gaps in linguistic skill and knowledge of the target market, would at best go unread and at worst devalue the broader reputation of translated literature.
Competition and collaboration
Our experience as academics of working in parallel and even in competition is reflected in the literary translation industry, where small European literatures are often asked to compete against one another for funding, for literary reviews, prominence at festivals and book fairs, and so on. Each of our literatures would have been unlikely to secure research funding on its own, but our audiences consistently noted that the distinctive quality and points of interest of smaller European literatures came through far more powerfully when advocates of so many of them were brought together at our conference and workshops.
We also detected an understandable tendency for different types of professional advocates to cluster with others of their particular profession, which could lead to antagonistic relationships between people who ultimately have to work together to achieve their aims. I received numerous messages from both literary translators and publishers, each insisting that their part of the work was the more essential, self-sacrificing and under-appreciated, and cultural promoters also expressed their frustrations with both these parties for not understanding what was needed for events or publicity material. We sometimes encountered a concern that scholars brought too academic a focus to translated literature, putting off wider industry and the public, and hearing those perspectives was central to this project. Unsurprisingly, in practice, the success stories we heard about―where success might mean sales or simply the publication of a fantastic text―demonstrated the incomparable value of collaboration between a whole variety of intermediaries to ensure the best possible product and the best chance of visibility and sales.
‘Choreographing an eco-system’
During our events, we frequently discussed the possibilities of choreographing the process of bringing an original text to a wide English-speaking readership. The world of literary translation was also compared to an ‘eco-system’, permitting the survival at various levels of stability and prosperity of many different individuals, enterprises and genres. When looking forward, our audiences separated along a spectrum from those who favoured the preservation of this eco-system through minimal intervention, and those who saw intervention―above all in the context of funding―as essential to the future strength of translated literature. Beyond the points highlighted above, we found broad support, if not the capacity, for reaching beyond the perceived natural constituency for translated literature, beyond London, beyond thriving multi-cultural contexts, beyond the modern languages context, particularly through the school curriculum and other education contexts and online media. If there is to be a ‘globalization 2.0’ that reaches, involves and benefits far more people throughout the world, the varied advocates of literary translation, working together, will have a major part to play.
Rajendra Chitnis is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Modern Languages, University of Bristol. His core interest lies in Czech, Russian and Slovak literature since the nineteenth century, with a particular focus on twentieth century and contemporary fiction. He has published monographs on Russian, Czech and Slovak fiction of the post-Communist transition, and on the Czech Avant-garde novelist and dramatist, Vladislav Vančura, in addition scholarly articles on various aspects of Czech literature.
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