Nobel Prize Literature Translated to English

You’re listening to A Way with Words, the show about language and how we use it. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

You ever notice how often they’ll announce the Nobel Prize winner for literature, some of the greatest literature in the world?

And you’ll think, who the heck is that?

I mean, if you’re like most Americans, you might not even know how to pronounce their names, much less be familiar with their work.

And of all the books published in this country every year, it turns out that a tiny, tiny percentage of those works are translated from other languages.

Which means that the Franz Kafka’s and the Leo Tolstoy’s of today’s generation, the great South American and African writers of today, probably won’t be discovered until long after they’re dead.

Because the translation is not happening.

Yeah.

And so this audience can’t read them.

Yeah.

And we are one of the biggest book buying audiences in the world.

Yeah.

Right?

And that’s partly because there’s not that much incentive for translations.

You know, it’s not the kind of thing that’s rewarded so much in the academic world.

And, of course, there’s the extra expense.

Of hiring a translator. I mean, if you get a great translation, you’re really, really fortunate.

But I can’t help but wonder what I’m missing out on.

I feel the same way. And yet, having worked in book publishing, I know that altruism can’t really come into it.

You can’t just translate and publish an author just because they’re the best in their time and place.

There has to be a market for the product.

But I do feel that sometimes it’s a little inverted that they’re not ever going to have the market unless they start translating the books and taking a chance again and again and again to build up that history of great translations of great world authors.

I think one thing that is helpful is the fact that there’s the magazine Words Without Borders, which you can find at wordswithoutborders.org, which publishes a lot of new literature in translation.

In fact, they just published a bunch of graphic novels translated from other languages, which might be a great place to start.

Yeah, that sounds really great.

I’ve checked that out and I’ve added a few things to my reading list.

And it’s really rewarding if you can find the time for it.

If you’ve read a book in translation that you think is really, really great and we should know about it, call us 877-929-9673 or tell us about it in email.

The address is words@waywordradio.org.