What Publishers Want

Translation Intelligence (Photo credit: englishpen)

Here’s another write-up of a seminar from the Literary Translation Centre at the London Book Fair in April.

Rather grandly entitled “What Publishers Want”, the panel was made up of Jane Lawson from Doubleday/Transworld, representing large commercial publishing; Chad Post of Open Letter Books, on the other extreme – Open Letter being a determinedly literary, not-for-profit operation; and Laura Barber of Granta/Portobello somewhere in the middle.

So, what do these particular publishers want in a translated book?

Jane Lawson said that she looks for voice, story and characters. A really good elevator pitch is important – can you catch her attention in one minute? She prefers authors not to be already published in the US. It helps if the author speaks English and if there’s already some kind of platform to base the marketing on. This might be that it’s won literary prizes, or have been banned in its original country, for example.

Laura Barber is looking for writing that will still be read in 10, 20, 100 years’ time. A book that she can publish to herself, then to her colleagues, then the sales team and finally the outside world. It is important to know the audience. (I’ve written down “multiples” but left it so long to write up the talk that I’ve forgotten what that signified. Oops. If anybody was there and can remember, do let me know in the comments!)

Chad Post on the other hand, working within the non-profit model, is looking for books that are unlike anything people would have access too if left purely to market forces. Open Letter books have a dedicated following, a brand loyalty, similar to And Other Stories or Peirene Press in the UK, so it is especially important to know how things fit in with what they have already published. They are also looking for 20th century books that have slipped through the net in English.

Meanwhile, speaking at the Becoming a Literary Translator I seminar, Meike Ziervogel of the aforementioned Peirene said that she is looking for books that read like they were written in English and generate the same audience reaction as the original. For her, the cover note is almost more important than a sample translation (which should be of about 1000 words). The note should explain why you as a translator love this book.

The point about being aware of publisher’s lists is of course vital, whoever you’re approaching. I’ve slipped up here a couple of times myself. It may seem obvious, but don’t take a novel of 1000 pages to Peirene when their page limit is 200, or to Comma Press, who specialise in short stories. However good it may be, and however annoying the label, literary presses won’t take genre fiction, and Bitter Lemon, for example, only publish crime.

The main point I took away from all this is that publishers make quick decisions so you really need to have a sharp focus when approaching them. Know your/their audience and tailor your pitch to their lists. And if you have any other tips or can remember the meaning of the mysterious multiples, do let me know!

The True Story of Humpty Dumpty

As well as the library, we end up with unfamiliar books coming home from school or nursery in the boys’ book bags from time to time. The True Story of Humpty Dumpty by Sarah Hayes and illustrated by Charlotte Voake (Walker Books, 1987) is a case in point. Part of the “Share a Story” series, it has an introduction from Michael Rosen and hints and tips on sharing stories with young children at the back. Given the publication date, it’s clearly been around a while but I’d never come across it before.

Did you know that Humpty Dumpty was a bad egg?

Find out what he was really like in this playful twist on a favourite nursery rhyme.

So says the blurb on the back, but it left me a little bemused. Humpty Dumpty invites various horses and various men to do various  tricks on the wall. Then he laughs at them when they fall off. The king is very cross when he sees all his horses and all his men injured and orders Humpty Dumpty down. Instead “he stood on one leg and juggled with bricks. He did cartwheels and headstands and all sorts of tricks”. And then, of course, he fell off.

And all the King’s horses,
and all the King’s men…
put Humpty Dumpty together again.
And Humpty said, “After such a great fall
I’ll never ever climb back on that wall.”
But he did!

We were all left rather baffled by this story – it’s certainly a twist, but rather an odd one Mari and I thought. Still, it’s beautifully illustrated – Charlotte Voake’s pictures are always worth looking out for – and it gave us an opportunity to talk about the unpleasantness of laughing at the misfortunes of others, so I guess that’s something. It’s back to school on Monday again so we’ll see what comes home next time.

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson

Life After Life by Kate Atkinson (Doubleday, 2013)

I had to join a very long waiting list to get this book from the library, having been awaiting it with feverish anticipation even before it came out, so I was thrilled to finally pick up a copy last week. From the advance reviews I read it sounded like a return to Atkinson’s tricksy, elaborate best. Don’t get me wrong, I quite enjoyed the Jackson Brodie books but to me they didn’t have the flair of Behind the Scenes at the Museum and Human Croquet. Emotionally Weird was going off the boil rather, so perhaps it’s as well that she left that kind of book for a while to come back to it now.

What if you had the chance to live your life again and again, until you finally got it right?

It’s a fabulous conceit – the story of Ursula, a baby born only to die immediately, choked by the umbilical cord. But what if the doctor had got there in time? Rather like Sliding Doors on a grand scale, Ursula lives life after life. In some of them, she dies in childhood, in some she dies in World War II. In others she survives it. And so on. The differences between these lives can hinge on the tiniest things, the slightest hesitation. Some of them are tragic, others are happy, but there’s a thread of sadness running through the whole book, as there often is with Atkinson.

She is also very strong on human relationships so it was never tedious to go back to the beginning and see Ursula and her family develop again. The dynamics of a large family and the class conscious society they live in are fascinating and handled well. The book is 447 pages and I whipped through half of it in one evening, completely gripped and enthralled.

It also left me with a very bad book hangover – I was living far too much in the world Atkinson had conjured up to settle to a new book just yet. I am also still mulling over much of what happened. Questions are running through my head. Ursula always has a strong sense of deja-vu – she knows that something bad is about to happen that must be prevented – and this can get her into trouble. But how has this developed by the later lives? Sometimes she seems to have a plan to change the future, or the past, but does she really know what’s going on and how much control does she have over it? What about the other characters in her family? Do they experience something similar? When Ursula goes back to the beginning, are their lives reset too? What about more tangentially connected figures? Do Ursula’s many lives affect them too?

I was slightly irked by one or two anachronistic phrasings (talk of a “train station” in the first half of the twentieth century, for example) but generally, the period seemed to me to be handled well. I’m no expert, but it gave me a completely new perspective on an era I’ve studied a little, while the sections of the book set in Germany were particularly interesting to me. A couple of other minor quibbles – I’ve never heard a southern British speaker refer to “washing the pots”, and the phrase “Time is out of joint!” seemed rather too Dr Who-like for my taste. The sprinkling of German was generally well done but erred slightly on the side of over-explaining, I thought. “‘Es regnet,’ she said by way of conversation, ‘It’s raining.’” (p. 14) But that’s nit-picking really.

If you want an explanation and everything neatly wrapped up at the end you’ll be disappointed but if you’re looking for an entertaining, stimulating, thought-provoking read you can’t beat Atkinson at her best. And to me, she’s on top form here.

Related articles

• Life After Life: An Interview With Kate Atkinson (omnivoracious.com)

Kipper’s A to Z

We’re all big Kipper fans in this house, and fils cadet has recently borrowed Kipper’s A to Z by Mick Inkpen (Hodder Children’s Books, 2000) from the library.

It features Kipper and his little friend Arnold, and an over-enthusiastic zebra who keeps wanting to know if it’s his turn yet. Told with Mick Inkpen’s usual charm, there are beautiful illustrations, a few typographical tricks, a lot of interaction

Kipper couldn’t think of anything beginning with K. Can you think of anything?

and a gnat who doesn’t belong on the N page. A cut above most alphabet books, it has a story, kept me amused as well as fils cadet and, unlike Dr. Seuss’s ABC, which is also excellent, it doesn’t rhyme, thus requiring a reluctant British reader  to say “zee”…

 

How to Promote Writers in Translation

In the Literary Translation Centre at this year’s London Book Fair although not the seminar in question

I’ve been meaning to write up some of the events I went to at this year’s London Book Fair ever since I got back, but life and work have been getting in the way. The Blogathon seems a good opportunity to force myself to do so, though, so here goes.

One of the first seminars I attended was on How to Promote Writers in Translation. Obviously, this was of particular interest to me in terms of self-promotion and self-publishing, but the focus was really more on conventionally published books. The panellists included the journalist Rosie Goldsmith and translator and blogger extraordinaire Susan Bernofsky of Translationista, while discussion ranged around the importance of collaboration, networks and partnerships, social media and events.

So, what can we translators do to promote our own work? For conventionally published books, it’s important to get involved and be an active participant in marketing. A translator can write something for the key facts sheet that publishers send out with review copies. We are, after all, the expert on the book, the author and the culture it represents, at least as far as the publishing house is concerned. If there’s to be a launch event, get involved with it. Make use of social media, but don’t only self-promote. Get into conversations, share other people’s work, talk to related bloggers.

There was a heated discussion around whether or not a translator’s name should be on the cover of the book. Rosie Goldsmith played devil’s advocate and suggested that leaving it off helps to treat a translation as a “normal book”, while Susan Bernofsky felt that on the contrary publishers and readers should be encouraged to celebrate translation and make it a selling point. That one will run and run…

Then we came to events. There’s the PEN World Voices Festival. There are translation slams – wonderful for raising awareness and showing how this mysterious process actually works. There are games such as Wordkeys, which Rosalind Harvey wrote about for me the other day. These are all well established, but what else could we do? Ros Schwarz, speaking from the audience, suggested pairing up with a similar translator to approach bookshops with suggested events. These can be reader-focused. Books go very well with wine. And food. Events could pair similar writers and translators, be around themes, pair English-language works with translation ones… (I remember from the ITD that Foyles set up tables of other Japanese literature to capitalise on the buzz around Haruki Murukami’s IQ84, for instance.) There could be a focus on culture. Or pop-up events, which have a novelty factor. Peirene Press specialise in those, with their Roaming Store around London.

There are plenty of other ways of getting discussion going too, of course. Media coverage. How could we get that? Would it be worth approaching the local press to review a book they might not otherwise come across? There are simple things we can do, such as having a link to our latest projects in our email sigs, for example, and more challenging ones. Do you feel up to running podcasts? I’m not sure I do, but other translators do very well at it. See the Business School for Translators, for example.

Another thing that I also want to set up in the near future is some kind of semi-regular “meet the translator” series on the blog. It could be Q&As or a guest post slot, so if you’d like to be involved, do let me know. It would be good to encourage cross-promotion in the translationy Twitterverse, blogosphere. There’s plenty going on already, but plenty of room for more… See all the lovely links at the side of this page, and below for a few more.

Useful links:

• Finnegan’s List
• European Literature Network
• Three Percent Blog
• Europe House
• @TranslatedWorld on Twitter
• @translatedwcaa – Translated World for Children of All Ages

Differences between literature translations for children and for adults, Guest Post by Aleksandra Milcic Radovanovic

Today is “guest post exchange day” on the Wordcount Blogathon, so I am pleased to welcome translator Aleksandra Milcic Radovanovic and her thoughts on the differences between translating for children and for adults. Do you agree? Let us know in the comments – we’d love to hear from you.

Meanwhile, you can find a post from me over at her blog: linguistblog.com

******************

There are maybe topics that can be discussed about literary translation, but they are rarely related to translation of children’s literature. If we accept the fact that children’s literature is a separate genre in its own right, than we must ask whether translation problems in texts written for kids and adults are the same and, if they’re not, in which respects they differ.

During the last few years, translators have seemed to agree that the translation problems in texts for adults and for children are, essentially, the same. In translation theory, they can be described using the same concepts and can be arranged in the same groups. However, some important features of children’s literature must not be ignored. First, the communicative nature of this literary genre requires an imaginative and creative translator who is always aware how special the audience is. Something else is also important: a translator of children’s literature must overcome concepts of disculturality and conculturality. Unlike translators of literature for adults, translators of children’s literature must constantly consider how far their readers can digest the experience of foreign cultures and other unknown facts. This struggle between keeping most of the original sense and regard for the intended readers is a fundamental concern and one of the greatest obstacles in creating high quality translation. In order to produce a final translation of a children’s book that will serve its purpose, translators must define characteristic of their target audience: their knowledge, level of experience, stage of emotional development, ability to adapt and learn new things. The translator’s role is to stay faithful to the original work, but also to incorporate additional adjustments while keeping the writer’s form and idea.

Most children’s literature translators stress that they are allowed (and sometimes even expected) to recreate the original text so it can easily fit in with the literary requirements of the readers’ country. That means that  it’s the translator’s job to deliver highly acceptable translations, because children will not tolerate as much strange and unknown facts as adults. Despite the fact that being able to alter a text makes the translation of a children’s book look simple, it is not an easy job. We must not forget the demands made by intermediary groups, such as parents or publishers. Of course, the translator must respect the standards of translation theory, linguistic rules, follow the main story line correctly and make sure that everything that was said was sufficiently precise and to the point because of children’s shorter concentration span.

In translation of adult literature, the translator can play with words and expressions, looking for the best way to convey the original message. In translation of children’s literature, translators must not be too free as they must keep the original tone and writer’s intention. Moreover, we must remember that children’s literature translators cannot follow Peter Pan’s advice and just think lovely wonderful thoughts that can lift them up in the air helping them to choose the best possible translation equivalents to describe  Neverland.

**********************

Aleksandra Milcic Radovanovic lives in Belgrade, Serbia. She has a BA in South Slavic languages and literature and an MA in Translation. She is currently working on her PhD thesis in Forensic Linguistics. She also works as an English to Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian freelance translator specialized in technical and medical translation. You can find her at her blog (linguistblog.com) and on Twitter as @_AleksM.

And the moral of that story is…

Fairytales are strange beasts, aren’t they? When I asked about people’s reactions to Not Now Bernard, Rosie Hedger replied via Twitter:

@fwdtranslations @andersenpress I don’t recall finding it anything near as scary as some of [the] more ‘traditional’ fairytales I was read!

— Rosie (@rosie_hedger) June 6, 2013

Fils aîné was given a boxed set of Ladybird fairytales for his birthday so we’ve been reacquainting ourselves with them. These are, on the whole, fairly innocuous retellings without too many of the gory bits so there hasn’t been much scariness to contend with. Fils cadet did veto Hansel and Gretel with the decided opinion that “I think the witch isn’t good!” but that’s all.

Obviously, these stories have been handed down through the oral tradition, embellished, retold, adapted to meet different needs and so they can’t be expected to have the internal consistency of a tightly crafted modern novel but they’re still perplexing. While mon mari has been heard to mutter darkly about the crazy economics and poor business sense of the Elves and the Shoemaker, I have mainly been reading Jack and the Beanstalk and Rumpelstiltskin to fils cadet.

Jack making a quick getaway… (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

So, Jack and the Beanstalk. A lazy boy gets tricked into selling the family’s last resource for some beans. As you do. He sets off on an adventure which involves theft, handling stolen goods and finally murder, making his mother an accomplice in all these crimes. But that’s OK because the giant had stolen all the family’s wealth in the first place…

Or what about Rumpelstiltskin? The stupidity of a girl’s boastful father sees her forced into marriage with an avaricious and capricious king. She makes a rash promise to the person whose skill has prevented her being killed by her husband for being unable to do the impossible, in the vague hope that she’ll never be called upon to keep it. But she is. She finds a way round it, Rumpelstiltskin stamps his foot through the floor in a temper tantrum. And they all lived happily ever after.

Huh? Yeah, yeah, I know I shouldn’t read too much into these things. But, huh? Why do we keep reading these stories to our children? It’s part of our cultural heritage, I know that. We love reworking these stories even as adults, as plenty of novels, films and TV series show, so there must be something to them. Perhaps it’s good to have a bit of moral ambiguity at an early age. A little safe scariness can be exciting and good always wins in the end…

What do you think? What’s the appeal for you?