Edith Grossman, one of the most impressive of translators, has an excellent article in Foreign Policy about the crisis of literary translation, and what it means for our culture to mute the myriad voices of the world. She takes the dearth of literature translated into English (under the supposed presumption that readers "just don't like" translations, which is such a broad statement as to be meaningless) to be nothing less than a shutdown on the "basic reciprocity of thought" that is essential for a free society.
The statistics are shocking in this age of so-called globalization: In the United States and Britain, only 2 to 3 percent of books published each year are translations, compared with almost 35 percent in Latin America and Western Europe. Horace Engdahl, then the secretary of the Swedish Academy, chided the United States in 2008 for its literary parochialism: "The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature."
But this is no mere national embarrassment: The dearth of translated literature in the English-speaking world represents a new kind of iron curtain we have constructed around ourselves. We are choosing to block off access to the writing of a large and significant portion of the world, including movements and societies whose potentially dreadful political impact on us is made even more menacing by our general lack of familiarity with them. Our stubborn and willful ignorance could have -- and arguably, already has had -- dangerous consequences. The problem starts in the Anglophone publishing industry, where translated books are not only avoided but actively discouraged. They can be commercially successful (think of the cachet enjoyed in the United States by The Name of the Rose, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, or anything by Roberto Bolaño), and still most U.S. and British publishers resist the very idea of translation. Some years ago, a senior editor at a prestigious house told me that he could not even consider taking on another translation because he already had two on his list.
... we need to ask what we forfeit as readers and as a society if we lose access to translated literature by voluntarily reducing its presence in our community or quietly standing by as it is drastically and arbitrarily curtailed.
Grossman is right on all counts, of course, though I'd share the onus with readers who might take the initiative to be more adventurous in their choice of books. Don't take it to be your "duty" to free society or to Literature, any more than it would be nothing more than an "obligation" to travel to, say, Kenya. Take it as a joy. Be willing to risk amazement. Among the translated reads I've enjoyed more or less recently:
- Broken Glass Park, by Alina Bronsky. Trans. from German by Tim Mohr. Europa Editions
- The Best European Fiction 2010, ed. by Aleksandar Hemon. Dalkey Archive Press
- The Golden Calf, by Ilya Ilf & Evgeny Petrov. Trans. from Russian by Konstantin Gurevich and Helen Anderson. Open Letter. (See also Anne O. Fisher's version of the novel from Russian Life.)
- Death With Interruptions, by José Saramago. Trans. from Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa. Mariner Books.
- Nazi Literature in the Americas, by Roberto Bolaño. Trans. from the Spanish by Chris Andrews. New Directions.
- Brecht at Night, by Mati Unt. Trans. from the Estonian by Eric Dickens. Dalkey Archive Press.
- Chronicle in Stone, by Ismail Kadare. Trans. from the Albanian by Arshi Pipa. Arcade Publishing.
- My Bird, by Fariba Vafi. Trans. from the Persian by Mahnaz Kousha and Nasrin Jewell. Syracuse University Press.
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