The recent announcement that Herta Muller won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature came as a huge surprise to me as I’m sure it did to many Americans. While Muller has written twenty books, only 5, according to the New York Times, have been translated into English. The tiny percentage of Muller’s work translated into English is hardly an aberration. Rather, it is a sad symptom of a much larger problem. There has been a steady decline in the number of literary works translated into English, and in the United States the decline has perhaps been even more precipitous than in other English speaking nations.
The PEN World Voices conference in 2005, cited this disturbing statistic from an NEA study: “Out of the more than 10,000 works of fiction and poetry published in the United States in 1999, only 300 were works in translation.
UNESCO figures showed that while 50 percent of all translations published worldwide are translated from English, only 6 percent are translated into English. “Clearly,” the report concludes, “in the dialogue with the world’s non-English-speaking majority, we are not very good listeners.”
More recent statistics are no more encouraging. The on-line journal Publishing Perspectives predicts that “literature in translation will [face] a drop off this year – as much as 10%.” The same publication also found that while 117 independent presses published at least one work of fiction or poetry in translation in 2008, only be 95 such presses will translate a literary work in 2009.
Why does this matter — particularly to the United States? Speaking at that same PEN conference, Salman Rushdie put it this way: “It has perhaps never been more important for the world’s voices to be heard in America, never more important for the world’s ideas and dreams to be known and thought about and discussed, never more important for a global dialogue to be fostered. Yet one has the sense of things shutting down, of barriers being erected, of that dialogue being stifled precisely when we should be doing our best to amplify it. The cold war is over, but a stranger war has begun. Alienation has perhaps never been so widespread; all the more reason for getting together and seeing what bridges can be built. “
Or consider this excerpt from a poem called “Under this Same Sky” by Bangaladeshi poet Zia Hyder (translated by Naomi Shihab Nye and Bhabani Sengupta):
There’s an enormous comfort in knowing
we all live under this same sky,
whether in new York or Dhaka
we see the same sun and same moon.
This poem became the title poem for Nye’s beautiful collection of world poetry, Under this Same Sky. What a small but potent first step it would be if all people recognized each other as co-inhabitants of our planet. As Nye puts in the book’s final page: “Don’t ever believe what anyone told you about not talking to strangers. Talking and listening to ’strangers’ may be the most important thing you do in life.”
The Obama administration has promised to end an era of political and diplomatic isolation even as it oversees two wars. Has there ever been a better time to open our ears and our hearts to world literature? Is there any better way for every nation to appreciate the full humanity of all the world’s peoples than by sharing each other’s literature?
I agree. We need more work translated into English, but the four lines from Zia Hyder are banal. Is that the fault of the translator?
I wonder if maybe American English speakers should go on ahead and learn some other languages? Less translation and more education?
I think it needs to be both.
Some of us are already bilingual (at least). I’m fluent in Spanish (lived in Valencia for a year as a high school student) and would love to translate, but I’m a bit at a loss as to where to begin. What most needs translating? There’s so much to read in my own language, so much work is being published, and much of it worthwhile. How would I begin to discover neglected writers in Spanish?
Interesting and telling stats. Thanks for bundling it all up. Also interesting to speculate on what the changing circumstance means. I suppose it is possible that what has been taken for granted for maybe two generations, the flourishing art of translation, has been little more than a special circumstance. I’ve read more than one editor/translator to tip the hat to Pound in his capacity as translator or transliterator. It is probably true to say he has been like the patron saint of translators, and having opened up the field, taking it out of the hands of the experts. This is especially true of poetry. Certainly twenty years ago poets could make money by such work. So maybe we’ve just taken the art for granted. Something else has tickled the brain. The historical coincidence of the art of translation, viewed as commerce, and the rise in America’s imperialist ambitions and the Cold War. I have a brother, a historian, who, back in the sixties, got his doctorate in Russian Civ., paid for by none other than the Defense Dept. So the Cold War is long since over and perhaps the empire is starting to shut down or collapse. (Jeffers would be glad to hear that.) On the other hand maybe the falling off of interest in translation is an expression of a reemerging insularity, nationally speaking, what is always just below the surface of the national character. Call it nativism.
Then again who knows? Perhaps we will see a rise in the translations of works in Arabic and Farsi. Isn’t the U.S. Army spending big bucks teaching soldiers to speak Arabic?
Oh, and Wendy Babaic, you could start with flamenco poetry. If you can, find a copy of D.E. Pohren’s “The Art of Flamenco” first published in the early sixties. It is an encyclopedia of flamenco with a whole bunch of poetry included. Cante chico, cante intermedio, cante jondo. it is all represented. See if the stuff wets your whistle.
Terreson
Thanks for all this–fascinating. It’s suprising that more isn’t available in Europe–I would have thought more would be given the dominance of English as a means of communication in business, banking, travel, etc. The Polish translators I know translate literature in addition to teaching–they publish primiarily in the UK. If they wanted to make a living at translating, they would have to go into business, banking, etc. I agree, that American insularity & isolation play large roles in what is available here–it also makes me think about how the market place shapes culture.