Texts and Translations

The purpose of this blog is to post materials for the MPhil in Literary Translation Texts and Translations class.

Tuesday, September 12, 2017

Cultural diversity? A pipe dream

Rüdiger Wischenbart gives a quick overview of the realities behind book translation.

At 8:11 PM, Unknown said...: I agree with the general gist of this article, that works in the English language are translated disproportionally into other languages. But as a former social scientist, I notice that some of the statistics used do not help paint an accurate picture.

In describing the United States and Canada as two English speaking nations, compared to, say, Serbia and Finland -- we forget that the US and Canada comprise the continent of North America.

If we compare, say, books being published in Rhode Island or Arkansas that are being translated into Serbian and vice versa, we would get a very different picture.

A more accurate statistical comparison might take into account the population or number of books published in each country, too. Because in some countries, issues of literacy, and censorship on the publication of books limit the literary output.

This is a complex issue, also because of the colonial burden and immigration history of these English-speaking first-world nations -- they tend to be racially and culturally diverse domestically. So for instance, in the U.S. there are many, say, Asian American authors who write in English, but about foreign places, cultures and experiences. This is true in the UK as well. They are not homogeneous literary cultures by any means.