What a tricky opening question. I’m afraid that to begin to answer it, I will have to highlight the complexity of a country like Belgium. On this small patch of land, there are three official national languages (Dutch, French, and German) and no fewer than six governments (including a federal one) that manage the country. Advocacy for culture is organized by language. The Flemish Government ensures that—through an organization like Flanders Literature—Flemish literature is supported and promoted. Another organization does the same for francophone Belgian literature. So there are some dividing lines and walls, but fortunately art does not care too much about them. When I think of artists who convey that specific “Belgitude,” Brussels musicians Stromae and Angèle immediately come to mind. They are conquering the world with their French-language pop music while transcending the divide between Flanders and Wallonia. Their message of unity appeals to a wide audience. Angèle, for instance, sings in “Bruxelles je t’aime”:
Et si un jour, elle se sépare et qu’on ait à choisir un camp
Ce serait le pire des cauchemars, tout ça pour une histoire de langue
J’ai vécu mes plus belles histoires en français et en flamand
Laat mij het zeggen in het Vlaams, dank u Brussel
Belgium also has a very rich tradition of comic book artists, and figures such as the Smurfs, Tintin, or Guust Flater are world-famous. The Comic Museum in Brussels attracts some 200,000 visitors a year. Today, it’s not uncommon to see quirky Flemish comics, especially graphic novels, causing waves abroad. Authors such as Brecht Evens, Sabien Clement, Joris Mertens, and Judith Vanistendael are widely translated or animated.
Describe the structure of your organization and its goal(s). How many staff members does it employ and what are their main activities?
Flanders Literature supports the literary sector in Flanders—from author to reader—on behalf of the Flemish Government and the Flemish Minister of Culture. It does so with grants for authors, translators, publishers, and organizers. In addition, Flanders Literature also plays an important role in bringing together the many players in the book sector. It encourages them to look beyond policy areas and borders and attaches great importance to working together on a rich and diverse literary landscape with a wide and inclusive supply of books.
As for our structure, Flanders Literature has twenty-five employees, working in different teams on different objectives. Our “inland policy” team (aka Team Flanders) administers grants to all the main players in the literary ecosystem, from authors and translators to organizers and publishers. Team International, on the other hand, helps put Flemish literature on the world map by promoting Flemish literature abroad and putting Flemish authors on international stages.
How much funding does your organization disburse in a year and where does the funding come from?
The Flemish Government gives an endowment to Flanders Literature every five years. For the policy period 2021–2025, this amounted to EUR 8,751,000. In addition, Flanders Literature receives project-based funds from policy areas spanning culture, education, foreign affairs, etc. We channel about 40% of that amount directly to major literary organizations, including ones that promote reading.
Including the one awarded in 2021, as many as five Nobel Prizes in Literature have been awarded to writers working in English in the past decade alone. Translation into English has also been a crucial factor for many of the other winners to receive consideration in the first place. In light of this linguistic hegemony, I imagine that there is an increased focus on translation into English, the costs of which can’t be met by market demand alone. Given your own institution’s limited resources, what criteria do you use to choose which authors to fund, and, given the sources of your funding, are there certain considerations factored into your selection?
Flanders Literature helps international publishers and organizers of literary festivals in their search for that one title or author who would fit perfectly into their lineups. At flandersliterature.be, visitors can also browse a selection of literary works from Flanders. They can search by (sub)genre, author, title, and whether or not a book has already been translated into a particular language.
The website does not offer a comprehensive overview of all Flemish literature but a curated list made by Flanders Literature for promotion abroad. That selection starts with consultation with the advisory committees across all genres on literary quality. The promotion team at Flanders Literature also tries to assess the chances of international acclaim for the selected titles. Then, we settle on a marketing angle (e.g., playing up an important literary prize) that sets the books up for success.
Indeed, translation into English is the dream of every institute! Unfortunately, the English market has not always been the most open toward translations. Nevertheless, we launch ten to fifteen translations into English every year. Together with French, German, Spanish, and Italian, English is among the top five target languages for translations of Flemish books.
Translations into English also act as a lever for translations into other languages. This is precisely why we have made this a policy priority in the coming years (until 2025) with the Flip through Flanders project—an initiative that promotes Dutch-language literature from Flanders in the UK and Ireland. Live events and workshops allow authors and translators to highlight the literary landscape of northern Belgium. We work together with the literary agency Modern Culture to create greater exposure for Flemish authors, to broaden authors’ networks, to give them opportunities to work on their skills, and to reach more publishers who wish to translate Flemish works.
A literary ecosystem not only includes writers and translators but also editors, reviewers, publishers, literary agents, and booksellers, all of whom play a role in fostering a vibrant literary scene. Bearing this in mind, how would you describe the state of the literary ecosystem in your country (e.g., is it healthy, in your opinion)? Does any part of your funding go toward supporting the wider literary infrastructure (as opposed to just writers and translators)? If there was a local equivalent of a magazine with a global focus like Asymptote, would it receive any ongoing support from your organization, for example?
Flanders—and by extension the Dutch-speaking language area—is not large, which makes the book trade a precarious ecosystem. Several links of the value chain are under pressure.
Because they are no longer administered at the Flemish level, but instead supported at the municipal level (with no guarantee of investment), libraries have less funding now for maintenance and operations.
Bookshops are under pressure due to a loss of purchasing power and commercial players such as Amazon or Bol.com.
Publishing houses were hit hard by the pandemic. The organization, Boek.be, responsible for the annual book fair in Antwerp—a decades-long tradition, attracting more than 100,000 visitors yearly—recently went bankrupt. Since then, publishers have been divided and it has been difficult to unite them.
According to European research, reading comprehension skills have been deteriorating year on year in Flanders. Fewer and fewer students are enrolling in language courses; in several cities in the Netherlands, departments of Dutch literature have already been scrapped. This is bound to have an impact at all levels.
The literary translator in and out of Dutch is an endangered species, it is sometimes said. The precarious position of this nevertheless extremely important link causes concern. Europe is alarmed about this, too, and is taking various actions to promote translations into and out of even small European languages.
While not able to reverse all these crises, Flanders Literature is committed to supporting the whole sector, from authors to readers, and all the players in between: from large-scale ones like literary organizations, publishers, literary professionals, literary magazines, and reading promotion organizations, to small-scale literary projects: we support around eight literary magazines, each with a different specialization, such as comics, international literature, experimental literature, and emerging authors. In recent years, we’ve disbursed anywhere between 11,500 and 37,500 euros per year to each of these publications.
Funding decisions can sometimes be controversial. Tell us about a funding decision by your institute in the past ten years or so that elicited controversy, describing the fallout and explaining both sides.
Some years ago, our government decided to terminate all trade agreements with Iran. This essentially meant that publishing houses in Iran that wanted to translate a title by a Flemish author would no longer be able to seek support from us. An economic boycott thus turned into a cultural one. We understand that our country makes decisions within a European and wider geopolitical context, but find it unfortunate that this halts cultural exchange with independent publishing houses in Iran since books can help to advance understanding between two cultures while also provoking change from within a country. What is particularly unfortunate is that these measures penalize the literary translator who has put years of work into his or her craftsmanship.
The sitcom Seinfeld was notably a flop in Germany. Similarly, authors who encounter success in one culture sometimes do not receive the same reception in another. What are some surprising crossover successes or failures you have encountered in your tenure with this institution and what do you think might have led to these outcomes?
Indeed, it is sometimes very difficult to predict whether a book in translation will be as big overseas as in its home country. Sometimes international success follows national success, as in the case of Dimitri Verhulst’s modern classic The Misfortunates, which has been translated into close to thirty languages. In this case, the very “Flemish” setting (read: a heavy drinker’s family in a small village) has resonated universally. But sometimes a Flemish bestseller does not find firm footing abroad, because of too specific a cultural context.
A good example of a book that did very well is the German version of Diane Broeckhoven’s De buitenkant van Meneer Jules (House of Books, 2001)—translated by Isabel Hessel as Ein Tag mit Herrn Jules (Rowohlt, 2005)—which spent weeks on the bestseller list there, and is still in print to this very day.
What leads to such success is not always easy to predict. Having a flourishing international network to pitch to surely helps. Flanders Literature is not only present at international book fairs organized by such cities as Frankfurt, London, Bologna, and Angoulême, it also organizes fellowships where international publishers are flown in for a weeklong visit for a deeper insight into Flanders and its literature. Some connections made during these visits can be very decisive for a translation. For instance, while accompanying publishers on a tour of Antwerp, the author Jeroen Olyslaegers talked up his book Will (De Bezige Bij, 2016), which had just come out. By the end of the tour, Spanish and Italian publishers had made an offer for the book.
What are some recent challenges you have faced advocating for your country’s literature and how has your institution adapted to meet these challenges?
Globally, the paper crisis has imperiled both the publishing and translation industries. To help them cope, we recently increased subsidies for international publishers wishing to translate illustrated books, and also removed the cap on the maximum number of translations per author that would be eligible for grants—a policy change that was very well received by all involved.
Tell us about your proudest accomplishments as an institution in the past ten years. I’d be particularly interested to hear about any campaigns that your institution conceived to advocate for your country’s literature.
Our joint guestship with the Netherlands at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2016 was undoubtedly a highlight for the international promotion of Dutch-language literature, with great impact. Closer to home, the aforementioned publishing tours have become a trademark of Flanders Literature. We have developed a unique program, featuring not only author meetings, readings, visits to authors’ studios, and meetings with publishers, but also city walks, boat tours, and visits to interesting cultural places. We don’t wish to brag—the Flemish are said to be a modest people—but many publishers have confided to us that they think our fellowships are the best in the world.
From the themes that occur most frequently in the book trade in Flanders, it is evident that diversity and inclusion are high on our agenda. Flanders Literature is fully committed to advocating for underrepresented voices, and has led the European project Every Story Matters for the past five years. Everybody has a right to discover literature and to create stories, irrespective of their socio-economic or cultural background, gender, sexual preference or mental and physical ability. Yet not all of us have an equal opportunity to do so. This is something that the project tries to change. We want to encourage the creation of more inclusive books for children and young adults, and to give book professionals (including publishers, librarians, and editors) the tools and the strategies needed to make diversity mainstream.
In his Nobel Lecture, Kazuo Ishiguro exhorted us to “widen our common literary world to include many more voices from beyond our comfort zones of the elite first-world cultures. We must search more energetically to discover the gems from what remain today unknown literary cultures, whether the writers live in far away countries or within our own communities.” Yet, in one crucial respect, this ideal of an inclusive world literature shares the same problem as the climate crisis or even the COVID-19 vaccine crisis: countries that have the means to do something about a global situation often end up looking out for their own interests. How do you think institutional advocates of a country’s literature might be better allies for world literature, if they might even play a role at all?
It is not surprising that literature policy often focuses on supporting one’s own literature and promoting it abroad. If every country could do this to the same extent, part of the problem would solve itself and there would be much more exchange of literature from all corners of the world. But of course, not every country has the same resources—let alone the political will to support literature.
The 2022 European report “Translators on the Cover” gave interesting recommendations on how to strengthen the European translation sector. Indeed, the report points out that exchange between smaller languages in particular is under pressure. For a start, fewer than one in four books published in Europe is a translation. And of all the translations, more than half are of English books. Books from the other languages (including major European languages like French, German, and Spanish) lag far behind. This Anglo-American dominance, by the way, occurs in other cultural domains as well, such as in music and film.
Literature policy should therefore aim to correct the market bias by favoring translations of books from less dominant languages. At the European level, Traduki best exemplifies such a policy. In addition, we should support all kinds of initiatives that focus on cross-pollinations between lesser-known literary cultures (from festivals, book fairs, and exchange projects, to translation workshops, publishers’ tours, and training courses). And of course we should also do all we can to nurture translators who have to master these less dominant languages (which is a complex challenge that also has to do with attractiveness of the profession in itself and thus also remuneration, working conditions, legal aspects, education, and training . . . ). Cooperation between literary institutions, book fairs, festivals, etc. could also be strengthened worldwide. But governments must be willing and able to contribute the necessary budgets for this.
Domestically, this also means renewed commitment to diversity and inclusion. New voices with roots in other parts of the world still get too few opportunities at the moment. If we want a literary landscape in which there is more room for literature that has been crowded out by dominant languages, the whole book chain—from reader to publisher, from subsidy provider to library, from translator to festival organizer, from educational institution to bookseller, from literary agent to reading promoter—must seek to make it happen. And institutions like Flanders Literature should take the lead.
