Readers' interest in foreign language books translated into English

[Aomame]

I recently experienced it several times that I recommended books to English speaking people but there is no translation available.
After a bit of researching, I found out, that less than 1% of fiction published in the US/UK market is a translation (compared to France: 14%, Germany 8%).

So I am asking myself (and you), if readers here are not so much interested in other cultures (I equalize language here with culture)? Or is it simply because there is no offer, so the books are not discussed and advertised and people do not even have a chance to start being interested?

Has anybody been in this situation before too?
And, very interesting to me: In books from which culture would you be interested?

Looking forwards to your answers.

Aomame
(I am not working in publishing or any related field - I am just curious)

[Chris OConnor]

This is a really good question and I'd love to see this thread get some traction. As a rule I'd say American readers are going to be less interested in other cultures than the people in Europe that find themselves in a nation nestled between a wide variety of other cultures. We have Canada to the north, and they speak English, and Mexico to the south, and they are not exactly producing much in the way of cultural contributions at this point in history. There is a great incentive to learn other cultures when you're surrounded by them. But I sure would love to see this change.

So are foreign books available in the US translated into English? Where do we find them?

[Aomame]

Hm, this statement

American readers are going to be less interested in other cultures than the people in Europe that find themselves in a nation nestled between a wide variety of other cultures

is sad, as I have seen so many Americans traveling in e.g in France and Italy, and almost all of them were attached to the different lifestyle and culture - so I kind of refuse to believe, that they are not interested in the literature. I (want to) see it more as an issue of the publishers and their marketing departments

There are some translations at the stores, but the number is pretty small and normally not on big table when you enter the stores - more like in the dark corners between the weird stuff and the janitor's room (joking). I was trying to remember where I got the impulse to buy foreign books from and despite the classics or big award winner (e.g. Nobel Prize) , it was always my trusted (heavily missed) bookshop owner, that came up with the interesting stuff - with everything in it: Iceland, Cuba, France, Italy, Laos, Japan, Russia. A lot of them were just amazing. I would not want to miss the reading experience.

The big question is: How to help people to discover these pearls? An idea could be to have regions/countries promoted e.g. one per month and ask the BT members to introduce their favorite (translated and maybe even not-translated) books out of that region.

Thoughts?

[Chris OConnor]

I agree that it is sad but it is what it is. If you live in Switzerland you are nestled between 5 different countries. Get on a train and you're in Germany or Austria. Learning to communicate with your neighbors is not always the sign of high culture. It is a necessity and essential to survival.

The more people learn about other people the more peaceful this world will become. When you start to understand that we're all more similar than different you become less likely to take up arms against your neighbor. Perhaps this fact contributes to why the US is so quick to go to war. We're the good guys and they're the bad guys that we just can't relate on the other side of the ocean. Yes, sad and dangerous.

I'd love to get some foreign books on the menu here at BookTalk.org for group discussion.

[Aomame]

Very well said!

Although knowing about other countries and cultures is not a warranty for peace (just think about Europe' history), the understanding of why people/nations react a certain way, is bigger and as a consequence the interaction is less confrontational. Books could be a great help to understand other cultures - present and past.






[Edited and added last sentence]

[youkrst]

When you start to understand that we're all more similar than different you become less likely to take up arms against your neighbor. Perhaps this fact contributes to why the US is so quick to go to war. We're the good guys and they're the bad guys that we just can't relate on the other side of the ocean. Yes, sad and dangerous.

so straightforward, but what a profound point!



YES! it would be so good if say (for a start) five or ten of the "best works" or "most loved works" from each language were translated into each language. i'm imagining a kind of "project mankind". a literary human genome.

all of it put up on a website so anyone with an interest could feast to their hearts content.

the crazy thing is it could all be financed for the cost of a stealth bomber or two.

imagine that, instead of dropping bombs that rip limbs off and kill family members you could give people a free website to learn and bask in the heritage of your fellow humans. naaaah let's kill 'em all and steal their shit!

while we're waiting for our illustrious leaders to do something good with our money

http://www.thebookbag.co.uk/reviews/ind ... In_English

[Aomame]

What a great idea. Wouldn't it be nice to go to that page and look up on Mali (just read the news), a country I know really nothing about?

I would even go a bit further and not only publish the best works (in two categories: Classics and Contemporary) but allow people to suggest and vote for books to be translated into other languages because they consider them valuable.....

Let me have a coffee before we start

[youkrst]

[Chris OConnor]

YES! it would be so good if say (for a start) five or ten of the "best works" or "most loved works" from each language were translated into each language. i'm imagining a kind of "project mankind". a literary human genome.

all of it put up on a website so anyone with an interest could feast to their hearts content.

the crazy thing is it could all be financed for the cost of a stealth bomber or two.

imagine that, instead of dropping bombs that rip limbs off and kill family members you could give people a free website to learn and bask in the heritage of your fellow humans. naaaah let's kill 'em all and steal their shit!

This would indeed be an awesome project and "Project Mankind" suits it well! So who is now going to get this ball rolling? Heck, just discussing it here has value so don't think I'm saying, "You're all talk and no action." A massive project like this would be a lifetime endeavor for someone with a real passion for world literature.

[Aomame]

After my coffee - as announced (wink wink), I started to crawl through the web. Here are some findings:

Wikipedia has different lists put together by different organizations. I find one of them very appealing http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_100_Best_Books_of_All_Time for how it was chosen (highlights done by me):

"The World Library is a list of the 100 best books, as proposed by one hundred writers from fifty-four different countries, compiled and organized in 2002 by the Norwegian Book Club. This list endeavours to reflect world literature, with books from all countries, cultures, and time periods. Eleven of the books included on the list are written by women, eighty-five are written by men and four have an unknown author.

Each writer had to select his or her own list of ten books.

The books selected by this process and listed here are not ranked or categorized in any way; the organizers have stated that "they are all on an equal footing," with the exception of Don Quixote which was given the distinction "best literary work ever written." The following list organizes the works alphabetically by author."

I really like this list! It represents way more regions than the standard "Best of...." lists. This could be a start for the classics.

Furthermore I looked up some Literature prices, but did not find the results very satisfying - a lot of the books are so literary that they do not sound very appealing to me (very subjective statement, I know). I looked at price Goncourt (France) and Deutsche Buchpreis (Germany). I have not done any research in South America or Asia in this field.

Last but not least I had a look at amazon.fr, amazon.es and amazon.de. I can assure you that the shades of grey are pretty high on all of them.

So the tough part is definitely the literature of the present. To find good literature, it will take time. So I am coming back to the idea of a featured country or region per month. If announced upfront, people will have time to research, follow links, crawl through books introduction articles, talk to friends etc.