By Chad Post, Open Letter Books
Back in 2007, when Open Letter Books was being established at the University of Rochester, we talked quite a bit about what the press’s mission would be. As part of the university’s developing translation programs for undergraduate and grad students, the primary goal was pretty straightforward: publish good books in translation from as many parts of the world as possible. But that’s more of a mandate than a mission . . .
To back up for one second, I should explain that I had come over from Dalkey Archive Press to establish Open Letter. I had started at Dalkey in 2000 as a sort of “fellow” or “apprentice” who wanted to learn the nonprofit publishing trade. This was supposed to be a year-long program after which the “fellow” would be prepared to get a job somewhere else in the industry. Instead, I stayed and stayed, moving from the director of marketing to associate director for the press. And along the way, I developed certain ideas about what value a publishing house could have in today’s literary culture—value that’s more than simply printing and selling books.
To back up for one second, I should explain that I had come over from Dalkey Archive Press to establish Open Letter. I had started at Dalkey in 2000 as a sort of “fellow” or “apprentice” who wanted to learn the nonprofit publishing trade. This was supposed to be a year-long program after which the “fellow” would be prepared to get a job somewhere else in the industry. Instead, I stayed and stayed, moving from the director of marketing to associate director for the press. And along the way, I developed certain ideas about what value a publishing house could have in today’s literary culture—value that’s more than simply printing and selling books.
Like most presses, Open Letter’s official mission statement is simultaneously wordy and vague, pointed and diffuse, exacting and hard to pin down. Given the benefit of time, I think I can finally state what we want to do in a clear, meaningful way, possibly for the first time ever: Open Letter wants to improve all aspects of the literary translation field for all of the involved players. Full stop.
We want to give authors the opportunity to reach as wide an international audience as possible—especially authors whose works should be read decades from now. (AKA the authors who aren’t being hyped as the Next Big Thing.)
We want translators to be paid fairly, appreciated for their work, and given the space to work on their translation skills and theories. We want to learn about language and culture through nuanced editing that leads to a much deeper understanding of the work.
We want to provide booksellers and reviewers with necessary information about what books have been translated—and not just by Open Letter—so that they can get excited and help bring more of these titles to the attention of readers eager to experience new places, new literary styles. (The Translation Database that is hosted by Publishers Weekly and the Best Translated Book Award, both of which we established in 2008, are examples of this.)
We want readers to disabuse themselves of the “lost in translation” fallacy and instead embrace the richness and diversity of reading interesting, entertaining, intellectually satisfying books—no matter what language they were originally written in.
Even at the expense of being pulled in several directions at once—evaluating manuscripts, writing articles for the Three Percent website, producing the Two Month Review podcast to help readers approach “difficult” books published by other presses, entering data into the Translation Database and running tricky data analysis for various institutions, teaching classes to help train the next generation of readers and translators—I’m fully committed to our mission. You can’t change the world simply by publishing a translation that wins a prize; it takes a complete cultural sea change to reverse the dismissal and ghettoization of international literature that was dominant when Open Letter was founded.
At that time, back in 2007, the most prominent point of discussion when it came to translations was the “3% problem.” The fact that less than 3% of the books published in the United States were originally written in a language other than English was a rallying cry to get funders, presses, and tastemakers to pay more attention to international books.
If we could produce more titles every year, then there would be more work for translators, more books that might appeal to reviewers/booksellers/readers, a greater likelihood that a few would become megahits, and a belief that a few megahits would erode/destroy the general antipathy to “foreign” books.
Although Open Letter is one of the smallest organizations involved in this fight (and to be honest, all it would take is a Silicon Valley donor to put up $10 million a year to transform the entire field and make it sustainable), I want to believe that we played an outsized role in drawing attention to this and shifting the cultural needle . . . a bit.
I can say with certainty—as the manager of the Translation Database, the only public source in the world presenting data about how many books are being translated, from where, by whom—that the number of international texts available to American readers on an annual basis has increased substantially. We’ve gone from 360 new works of fiction and poetry in 2008 to well over 600 over the past few years. And that doesn’t even include the expansion of nonfiction and children’s books.
Translated literature might be entering into a new Golden Era. Not only are there more independent presses than ever focused on world voices (Transit, Deep Vellum, Restless, New Vessel, are all new entrants into this field), but the big corporate presses are getting more involved (such as HarperVia’s intent to do twenty-four translations a year).
The National Book Award for Translated Literature is in its second year and creating a great deal of buzz for international voices.
There are more university programs than ever where you can study translation—creating not just a new group of emerging translators, but a new set of savvy readers who want to devour books from all corners of the globe.
The American Literary Translators Association conference is larger than ever; Translation Bread Loaf receives more and more applications every year.
Booksellers regularly display international literature, instead of simply putting one copy of a translated book back in a dusty corner. Instead, they do staff picks, they stack their favorite Argentina author at the counter to handsell it to everyone, they start reading series to feature international authors and their translators.
So, what’s next? Here are my predictions: a coming together of all these various components in a more closely networked way similar to what happens in the UK; more books by women in translation; more funding for translations leading to more money for translators; the birth of new review outlets covering just as many translations as books written in English; and a world in which a reader stumbles upon a Croatian book and simply reads it—because their friends are, because it sounds interesting—and instead of questioning what they’re “missing” by reading a translation, they’re excited to have access the chance to read this book.
About Open Letter Books
Open Letter—the University of Rochester’s nonprofit, literary translation press—is one of only a handful of publishing houses dedicated to increasing access to world literature for English readers. Publishing ten titles in translation each year and running an online literary website called Three Percent, Open Letter searches for works that are extraordinary and influential, works that we hope will become the classics of tomorrow.
Making world literature available in English is crucial to opening our cultural borders, and its availability plays a vital role in maintaining a healthy and vibrant book culture. Open Letter strives to cultivate an audience for these works by helping readers discover imaginative, stunning works of fiction and poetry and by creating a constellation of international writing that is engaging, stimulating, and enduring.
Continue Reading…
Article originally Published in the October/November 2019 Issue “Read Global”