Oh, those innumerate Swedes!
As most have read elsewhere (galleycat’s coverage has been pretty entertaining), Horace Engdahl, the permanent secretary for the Nobel prizes for literature, has slammed American literature as too insular, whining that we “don’t translate enough” and “don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature.”
This complaint that the American market doesn’t translate enough world literature is an old one, but the numbers that are usually cited aren’t quite as clear-cut as they might at first seem. Thing is, the lion’s share of books translated into other languages are translated from English—American and British authors—and are big bestsellers. John Grisham. Stephen King. Sue Grafton. Maeve Binchy. Frank McCourt. J.K. Rowling. Lemony Snicket. Etc.
These books aren’t translated because the publishers in France and Turkey and Poland are keen to engage in an international dialogue with American literature. These books are translated because there is a market for these books, and because these books sell, and sell well.
The real test is to ignore translations from English, and for someone to examine how many books each market translates from a more obscure source. South Korea, say. Or, heck, let’s say Japan. Big country, big body of literature. I’d wager that the numbers will be awfully similar.
Part of Horace’s job is to draw media attention to the Nobel Prize in the week prior to the award being announced, so he does tend to come out with something radical. He is a very clever fella.
Anna
3 October 2008 at 6.08 pm
True, true. Perhaps this is all a clever ploy to piss off the few Americans who actually give a damn about books so that they pay attention to the Nobels. Could well be.
And thanks for the comment. (I am very fond of the Swedes in general. xx)
mikalroy
3 October 2008 at 6.13 pm
Over on galleycat, someone named “Luder” has added his two cents:
“One the whole, Stearns is wrong. Dead wrong. European publishers may bring out ungodly numbers of American bestsellers–many of them superior to the country’s “literary” fiction, which they also publish a lot of–but I’m sitting in a library in Nice, France, right now, and here in this mediocre library I can find in French translation entire bodies of work of any number of major writers from Latin America and from other European countries. Most of these writers have one or two books published in English. Or maybe none at all.
“I think Engdahl is right in a lot of ways, too. Contemporary US literature (at least the New York-Connecticut-New Jersey stuff that gets all the publicity) is pretty frivolous fare. But it’s also a textbook case of the pot calling the kettle black: the Swedish Academy awarded the Nobel to O. Pamuk, the author of “Snow,” a dumber book than which you’d be hard-pressed to find.”
mikalroy
4 October 2008 at 9.32 am
I don’t see how anecdotal evidence about one library in Nice really helps make the case that Americans are insular, “frivolous” illiterates.
Plus, anyone who thinks “Snow” is the stupidest book ever written must have been reading something else by mistake, but even if they weren’t, making inflammatory remarks is different from making a point.
conrad
13 October 2008 at 2.17 pm