Celebrating International Translation Day in London
London - Sep 29, 2016
featuring Laura Barber, Adam Freudenheim, and Deborah Smith in a panel chaired by Jonathan Ruppin. View photos here
Summary
On September 29, Asymptote friends and readers returned to Waterstones Piccadilly in London to celebrate International Translation Day, surrounded by one of the city’s biggest collection of literature-in-translation and world literature. Speaking to a sold-out room of 70 (in fact, the Waterstones staff had to get creative with seating in order to meet demand) our stellar line-up featured Deborah Smith, founder of Tilted Axis Press and co-winner of the 2016 Man Booker International Prize, Laura Barber, Publishing Director for Portobello Books, and Adam Freudenheim, Publisher & Managing Director of Pushkin Press. The panel was moderated by Jonathan Ruppin, Literary Director for Orson and Co and founder of the English PEN Translated Literature Book Club.
There was no shortage of noteworthy figures among the audience too, with Dr Nana Sato-Rossberg and Grace Koh from the School of Oriental and African Studies, along with a gathering of SOAS students, Nicky Smalley from publisher And Other Stories, Goldsmiths’ Dr Sarah Maitland and her students, Found in Translation 2015 award winner and UCL professor Ursula Phillips, and eminent translator and professor of linguistics Peter Sherwood.
Setting the scene, Jonathan provided the audience with some of the latest statistics on translated literature and its performance in Anglophone book markets. Translated literature has been doing well despite a stagnating market and punching above its weight, providing 5% of total fiction sales and 7% of literary fiction sales in 2015. Citing the launch of the Man Booker International prize as a sign that translated literature has ‘arrived’, Jonathan went on to ask each of the speakers what it was that originally drew each of them to translation and how they ended up in publishing.
For Laura, taking a leading role in bringing new and exciting literature-in-translation to western audiences was a natural choice: “[Translated literature] didn’t seem to me to be a separate genre or niche interest; they were simply the books I loved to read.” This was a sentiment that Deborah readily endorsed, stating that her passion for translation and her new publishing venture Tilted Axis were not mutually exclusive, but rather a continuation or extension of one another. In her mind, however, she would always consider herself primarily as a translator: “I am first, and foremost, a translator, and I jumped into the role of publisher with the same kind of passion and determination.”
For Adam, his career had two significant milestones: the first was working at Penguin Classics and having the opportunity to commission translations of literary and cultural landmarks; the second was becoming a father, and discovering his children’s appetite for stories from around the world. “I would come home from work and read them a passage before bed”, he explained, “and they would be clamouring to hear what happened next. That’s when I knew that there was a whole world of children’s literature that was being grossly overlooked.”
Taking up this thread, Jonathan revived his earlier remarks about translated fiction seeing a boom in sales across the world. Despite Brexit and its ongoing repercussions weighing heavily on the minds of our audience and panellists alike, his subsequent question was the closest the evening got to overtly mentioning the European question: “With translated fiction comprising 50% of book sales in Italy, 30% in Germany and now, 4% in Britain, up from only 3.5%, is there hope for growing sales of translated fiction in the UK?”. Deborah and Laura both averred that the past year had shown, particularly with the success of The Vegetarian, that there was a keen demand in Britain for new voices and realms of experience. “If you had told me”, quipped Deborah, “that there could be a mass-market appeal for a woman writer from Korea last year, I might not have believed you. But now we’re seeing that some of the most exciting work being produced has just been put on the map.” She then cited Hwang Jungeon as an author who has benefitted from the sudden exposure that the Man Booker International has provided for translated literature.
Adam then remarked that while championing authors from around the world informed much of what Pushkin does, it is not about ticking the boxes on an atlas of literary translation: “80% of our titles are in translation, and we publish in 16 languages…but where they come from isn’t the key factor, it's about what stands out to you, what you find exciting.”
The speakers then fielded questions from the audience as well as Asymptote readers from around the world. One asked why publishers didn’t make more of the fact that translated literature can often be considered better than the original; that in the act of translation the text is somehow ‘perfected’ and improved upon. Demurring on making any such sweeping assertions, Adam cited the example of Umberto Eco’s Il nome della rosa as anecdotal evidence of the questioner’s point, which by the author’s own assertion was merely a good novel in Italian but a ‘great’ novel in English. Deborah quipped that a translation can only ever be as good as the translator is a writer—echoing Walter’s Benjamin’s assertion in his essay ‘The Task of the Translator’ that translation is essentially a creative act, not merely transcription from one language to another.
Another question pondered whether there was any particular region that seemed underserved by translation. The panel was almost unanimous in selecting Africa, with its wide variety of languages and nations, as a literary region that enjoyed little demand from British and American readers. Jonathan mentioned Senegalese literature in particular, with numerous texts that he considered to be masterpieces either no longer in print or with authors unable to find translators. Deborah added to this the strange case of India, where numerous English translations of India’s literary gems exist but seldom (if ever), make their way to Western audiences.
Wrapping up the questions, our speakers revealed who they were most looking forward to reading, with Wioletta Grzegorzewska and Scholastique Mukasonga being two names that all of them cited .
Both the team and our speakers were delighted to see such a high turnout, and as the event wound to a close it was great to see our speakers mingle with attendees and such a high uptake on the translated literature selection provided by Waterstones.
—David Maclean
Photos
