Translation support policies vs book industry practice in non-English settings

In her last book, La langue mondiale: Traduction et domination (2015), world literature scholar Pascale Casanova deals with the fact that her native language of French is no longer the dominant one in the world republic of letters (reviewers of her breakthrough book, La République mondiale des lettres, 1999, accused her of an implicit triumphalism when it came to her view of French as a dominant language). Insisting that there is always ‘a world language’ (‘une langue mondiale’) at the centre of the global literary field, she claims that this position has been taken over by English. It would be fair to say that Casanova’s realisation comes rather late. For a number of years, several scholars have pointed to the overwhelmingly strong position of the English language. In fact, ‘central’ has not been regarded as strong enough a word to describe this position: English is said to be ‘hyper-central’ (Heilbron, 1999). Some see this as a problem, raising awareness of an alarming ‘angloglobalisation’ (Sapiro, 2010). In La langue mondiale, Casanova too claims that cultural and linguistic diversity is under threat from this globalisation, and on the very last page of this her last book, she encourages her readers to fight with all means possible against ‘linguistic domination’ (‘il faut lutter, par tous les moyens possible […] contre la domination linguistique’) (Casanova, 2015, p. 130).

The so-called ‘angloglobalisation’ is a consequence of profound changes that the global literary field has seen since the 1970s. Ever more agents in the field have also become aware of what has been called an increasing commoditisation of literature, seen as an effect of the centralisation of power to a small number of Anglophone literary hubs. This has been reflected, among others, by policymakers on both national and supranational levels. In the 1980s, the French state launched a number of reforms to create a ‘counter-strategy’ in order to defend diversity on the literary market, especially concerning translations from peripheral and semi-peripheral languages (Casanova, 2015, 1999; Sapiro, 2012, 2010, 2008). At the same time, and especially since the 1990s, policies for the support of translation export have become commonplace not only in (semi-)peripheral European countries and regions (see the contribution by Vimr in this issue) but also world-wide, including China, South Korea and Japan. Supply-driven translation has become a widely accepted practice of cultural diplomacy and book industry, compensating for the lack of demand on the target side while integrating source system policy-driven agenda and market logic (Vimr, 2020).

Much of the research into the logic and practice of translation in the international field of exchange (Heilbron & Sapiro, 2007) presupposes and develops a centre–peripheral concept that assumes and accepts the hyper-central position of English in the field (Heilbron, 1999). This strand of research seems to overemphasise the importance of the export of less central and peripheral literatures into English. Despite repeated efforts to bring attention to target languages other than English (cf. for instance Branchadell & West, 2005; Roig-Sanz & Meylaerts, 2018), the argument of global literary circulation is still much too often reduced to the issue of penetrating the English language book market (Akbatur, 2016; a number of essays in Chitnis et al., 2020; Van Es & Heilbron, 2015). In this special issue of Perspectives, we look more closely at what is happening outside the English domain. We aim to discuss the design and effects of the ideologies and policies that drive global literary circulation in non-English settings. We are especially interested in the decision-making processes in publishing (small-scale and large-scale distinction, the role of acquisition editors), translator agency as well as genre-specific situations (crime fiction, children’s literature).

We bring together a geographically variegated and balanced selection of essays featuring a mix of qualitative field research and quantitative analysis, covering topics such as links between translation support policy and book industry practice, local vs global impact of policies, the impact of one-off policy-supported projects such as the Guest of Honour status at the Frankfurt Book Fair, the impact of literary field-related events such as literary prizes, analysing, visualising and contextualising international literary flows and highlighting the impact of translation policies. With the exception of Kvirikashvili’s contribution, earlier versions of all papers in this special issue were presented at the 2019 Congress of the European Society for Translation Studies (EST) at Stellenbosch University, South Africa. We would like to take this opportunity to thank the organisers of that conference.

In their analysis of the translation policy of the Chinese Foreign Language Bureau (FLB) in 1949–1999, Jianfeng Jiang and Huijuan Ma explore a prime example of supply-driven translation. While the Bureau was China’s key official publisher producing foreign-language books and translations for export, the paper reconstructs its translation policy and offers a bibliometric analysis of its production over a span of fifty years. Applying a translation policy model proposed by Gonzáles Núñez, the researchers focus on three translation policy aspects: translation management, translation practice and translation beliefs. This approach makes it possible to expose the dynamic transformation of the translation policy that reflects both the domestic social, political and cultural developments as well as China’s foreign policy and shifting global allegiances. Some of the transformations are matched in the bibliometric analysis that investigates the fluctuation of specific topics in FLB’s production, including politics, Maoism, economy, art, literature, history and geography. Despite some wild oscillations, there is an overall trend showing that translation was initially valued as an instrument of political and ideological propaganda, culminating during the Cultural Revolution, moving towards a more broadly conceived cultural diplomacy in the last two decades of the twentieth century.

Ana Kvirikashvili explores the Frankfurt Book Fair and its Guest of Honour function as a nexus of translation export policy. While investigating the challenges that globalisation poses to a small post-Soviet culture such as Georgia’s, the paper develops the perspective of nation-branding. The presentation of Georgia’s literature at the book fair is supposed to contribute to redefining the image of the country as well as reviewing its geopolitical relevance. Moreover, the status of the Guest of Honour at Germany’s most important book fair is perceived as a political statement that demonstrates the pro-Western aspirations of the country. These two aspects can help explain the choice of key authors presented at the fair, demonstrating openness and links to Germany as well as the uniqueness of Georgian literature and culture. Furthermore, the paper shows how the book fair Guest of Honour experience may inform domestic policy changes and a reinvention of the institutions related to production and promotion of books both domestically and internationally, thus contributing to the individualizstion of emerging literary fields and – from a broader perspective – the process of nation-building.

The contribution by Olga Castro and Laura Linares provides another take on the pivotal status of the Frankfurt Book Fair in the translation and promotion strategies in the European context. Their case focuses on the export policies supporting the translation and dissemination of literatures of stateless cultures in Spain, including the Basque Country, Catalonia, Galicia and Valencia. Following a descriptive comparison of the respective policies and institutions, they employ an ethnographic approach, including on-site observations and interviews, to analyse how thenstituteions stage their participation at the book fair. The Catalan case stands out as far more successful than the other three. Castro and Linares convincingly demonstrate that, if the objective of the funding body is to increase international visibility of a literature written in a less-diffused language, the allocated financial amount is only one of the variables. Grant design, overall priorities and execution are equally important. Also, there seems to be a tendency to translate into the dominating language of the region or the state language (Spanish in this case) with a prospect of using this more centrally positioned language and culture as a relay language for global diffusion.

Cecilia Schwartz and Chatarina Edfeldt compare the source-country translation support provided by Italy and Portugal and analyse whether Swedish translation of books from these countries benefited from such support during the period 2000–2018. While most translations and publications of Portuguese literature received source-country subsidies, this is not the case in Italy, where only 18% of translations were supported. Consequently, the results do not support the hypothesis that all translations between non-central languages require financial support. There are multiple reasons for the stronger and financially more independent position of Italian literature in Sweden. These include the past symbolic capital and a wide portfolio of translated and published genres. It also goes hand-in-hand with the fact that translations of Italian literature are published by a larger variety of Swedish publishers, including large and mid-sized publishers, while Portuguese books are mostly published by micro and small presses.

Ondřej Vimr explores the impact of translation subsidies on decisions of publishers in smaller European countries from a comparative perspective. Based on a number of interviews with a range of publishers in the Czech Republic, Norway, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Sweden, Vimr develops a typology of publishers based on their size, scale and publishing profile and explores to what extent and in what manner the individual types of publishers rely on translation and publishing subsidies. The type of the publisher in connection with the risk these publishers are willing to take are closely linked to whether subsides have any impact on their publishing decisions, and which types of subsidies they may rely on, be it target-country, source-country subsidies or any type of supranational scheme. Apart from increasing visibility, subsidies seem to have two other major functions. They increase the diversity of publishers who decide to publish the translations of the given source literature, potentially increasing the diversity of the target audiences. Furthermore, subsidies help build and develop the capacity of translators, the lack of whom is one of the major obstacles publishers in small target countries face once they decide to publish a translation from a similarly small-source literature.

Jana Rüegg examines the Swedish publishing of six Nobel Prize laureates, 1970–2016, that all have a connection to an African country: John Maxwell Coetzee, Nadine Gordimer, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, Doris Lessing, Naguib Mahfouz and Wole Soyinka. Using the Nobel Prize as a tool for selecting high prestige literature (i.e., consecrated and canonised literature) and by examining all Swedish editions of the chosen laureates, Rüegg is able to study publishing practices of high-prestige literature in the Swedish semi-peripheral language space. She identifies Wole Soyinka as especially interesting, as he was introduced in Swedish by the independent publishing house Cavefors förlag; very important for the publishing of African literature in Sweden and also invested in African politics and African societies. Cavefors was able to stabilise their financial situation thanks to the Swedish state financial subsidy for translated and literary valuable fiction, introduced in 1975. All these aspects, Rüegg shows, play an important part in understanding the mechanisms activated by the Nobel Prize and its consequences for the publishing of translated high-prestige literature in the Swedish context.

As should be clearly shown by these short summaries, the six contributions are tied together by several overarching topics, questions and conclusions. Most prominently, of course, the papers engage with the dynamic between translation support policies and book market practice, especially in cases that include non-English settings. This dynamic can be viewed and valued in a number of different ways. For example, support policies and state subsidies might be regarded as ways to try to overthrow the capitalist logic of the free market of books. On the other hand, they might be seen as selective efforts aimed at a specific segment of literature, such as works by consecrated and canonized authors, or by other authors who, for different reasons, are having a hard time passing the threshold of the international book market. Also, support policies might be motivated by a spectrum of different concerns, and with different cultural or political agendas. These include soft power and cultural diplomacy for the benefit of a specific state and its government bodies (Kvirakashvili), the willingness to achieve a more multifaceted publishing landscape within a specific language sphere (Rüegg) and in order to further the causes of a political system (Jiang and Ma). The goal may be to achieve visibility for a specific source culture (a linguistic or nationalistic goal), for a specific kind of literature (literary) or for a specific ideology (political).

Support and subsidies may be channelled in many different ways, using specific venues, such as the Frankfurt Book Fair (Kvirikashvili, Castro and Linares), and cultural institutions such as the Italian Cultural Institute and the Camões Institute for Portuguese culture in Sweden (Schwartz and Edfeldt). Most often, however, subsides are aimed directly at publishers of literature in translation, who act as the key gatekeepers of the intercultural dissemination process: they buy translation rights, hire translators and manage the production and promotion activities. Without publishers there would be no translations in the bookshops.

This brings attention to the link between the supporting institutions and their schemes on the one hand and the translation publishers and their acquiring editors on the other. Although each supporting institution has its own agenda, there is a distinction regarding where the subsidies and support comes from, whether it is the source region or country (Castro and Linares, Schwartz and Edfeldt), target country (Rüegg) or a combination including both varieties as well as supranational schemes (Vimr). First, in case of smaller and stateless nations seeking to export their literature, the source country funding bodies seem to have a limited choice of potential target languages and publishers which, in turn, curbs the capacity of the funding bodies to steer the literary flows in their preferred direction and restricts the impact of the schemes (Castro and Linares). Second, target country schemes may favour publishers who opt for translating high-brow literature and consecrated authors (Rüegg). Third, the profile of the target language publisher plays an important part because many schemes seem to give preference to contemporary literature and publishers who seek to promote works as well as their authors, hoping to increase the overall visibility and market impact. Furthermore, research indicates that subsidies have little to no direct impact on large-scale publishing, while a significant proportion of interperipheral translations require no subsidies, especially when the symbolic capital of the source literature or the economic capital of the target publisher is involved.

Although this collection of papers explores translation in non-English settings, the question of English as a pivotal language for the dissemination of smaller literatures resurfaces in multiple contributions. English is the most frequent source language in literary translation globally nowadays. Yet the role of English for the mediation process between non-central languages is not straightforward, and other languages may do a better job as bridging languages in numerous contexts. A translation into a bridging language may not only serve as a source or relay translation in case a direct translation is not an option, but also as a reference for publishers in other courtiers, both in terms of accumulating symbolic capital and as a reading copy for acquiring editors not capable of reading the original language. Spanish may be the most viable bridging language option for the stateless languages of the Iberian Peninsula (Castro and Linares) while German seems to be the first-choice entry point to the wider European market for both smaller European languages and globally (Schwartz and Edfeldt, Vimr, Kvirikashvili). From the perspective of global literary studies, this points to a poly-centric model of global literary circulation that is based on circuits of connectivity between literatures, with an interplay of geography, cultural and linguistic affinity as well as economic, social, ideological and practical aspects.

As literary scholars and sociologists of literature, it is not our place to heed Pascale Casanova’s call to arms against ‘linguistic domination’. Nevertheless, we have found ourselves inspired by her proposition to look beyond ‘the world language’, onto the ‘non-English settings’. Casanova’s book also shows us that dominant languages come and go. For centuries, the French language was safe in this position. This is no longer the case. The realm of English is strong. But will it always be? Research on world literature should always dig deeper, to uncover new possibilities for the future. This special issue of Perspectives has been our contribution.

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Notes on contributors

Andreas Hedberg

Andreas Hedberg is associate professor of literature at Uppsala University, Sweden, and administrator of research and outreach at the National Library of Sweden. Among his research interests are publishing studies, processes of literary canonisation and the critique of modernity in nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature. In his most recent projects, he has focused on world literature, especially cultural transfer and the sociology of translation. Between 2016 and 2021, he participated in the research programme Cosmopolitan and Vernacular Dynamics in World Literatures, based at Stockholm University. Hedberg’s latest publications include Northern Crossings: Translation, Circulation and the Literary Semi-periphery (Bloomsbury, 2022) and ‘The Othering of Others: Domestication and Foreignization in the Reception of Swedish Literature on the French Book Market 1945–2018’ (in Multilingualität und Mehr-Sprachlichkeit in der Gegenwartsliteratur, 2019).

Ondřej Vimr

Ondřej Vimr is a researcher at the Czech Academy of Sciences (Institute of Czech Literature), the Scientific Secretary of the Czech Literary Bibliography Research Infrastructure and the head of its Global and Digital Literary Studies Lab, coordinating its computational literary research activities. His research interests range widely within the history and sociology of translation and publishing, especially focusing on the circulation of ‘less translated’ European literatures since the middle of the nineteenth century. His most recent and current projects include the investigation of the impact of literary translation policies on the decision-making processes in publishing across several European countries, and the mapping of the global dissemination of Czech literature during the past 200 years using computational approaches to literary studies. He has published widely on translation studies topics, including a book on the history of translators’ agency.