Recently, Open Letter Books published a wonderful e-book called The Three Percent Problem: Rants and Responses on Publishing, Translation, and the Future of Reading. Released to celebrate the fourth anniversary of the online journal Three Percent, which documents trends, major voices, and publishing issues having to do with international literature, this book presents a vision of the (sorry) state of literature in literary translation in the English-speaking world. I was recently asked to provide some comments about the book and the state of publishing for a small article, but I thought that I would share my full responses here.
1. What is your reaction to the release of The Three Percent Problem?
I was glad to see many of the posts that have appeared on the
Three Percent website collected in one place, easy to access and read. In the last few years, the Three Percent website has been one of the most important, articulate, and forceful voices arguing for the Anglophone world to pay more attention to literary translation and, by extension, what is happening outside of the narrow parameters of Anglophone literature.
While I am sure that English departments would shudder to hear me imply that English literature is a small field, the truth is that by comparison, it is. There is a staggering amount of literary production in the world, and only a tiny fraction of it ever reaches the United States, Britain, and other English-speaking nations precisely because literary translation and translators are so undervalued.
The Three Percent Problem dramatically illustrates how the industry of literature in translation devalues such works. The book is thus full of implications about the patterns and imbalances in the global circulation of knowledge.
In reading
The Three Percent Problem, I was surprised to read about the staggering numbers of books published each year in China. Meanwhile, Anglophone countries have translated not even the tiniest, minutest fraction of that production, even though the Chinese are busy reading enormous amounts of English literature in translation. These imbalances not only make us intellectually poorer; they cripple us by rendering most of what is happening in the world invisible.
The Three Percent Problem, by bringing together studies of literary production, reviews, and discussions of the literary landscapes of various countries, helps us see these crippling deficiencies and how they affect us.
2. How does a book like this help literary translators?
I think that this book and other publications like it benefit translators two major ways. First, it helps us understand where we—the small guys sitting at our desks and working on our nitty-gritty translation problems—fit into a larger, world-wide industry. That is not always easy to see from our position, since we often do not have much insider access into book fairs, publishing house board rooms, and other places where decisions are made about what and whom to translate. Still, I think that many of us have sensed the general indifference on the part of publishers who are not interested in reading works by authors with foreign names.
The Three Percent Problem helps us position ourselves within that larger world and understand (sadly) how small we are in it.
Second and perhaps more importantly,
The Three Percent Problem helps us as literary translators argue for the importance of the world of translation, thus giving us critical tools to begin changing the situation. There are a large number of literary translators, including myself, who work in university settings. Strangely, universities often do not value translation and do not count it as contributing to tenure and promotion. (Thank God, I work at Western Michigan University, which is an exception.)
The Three Percent Problem and other books like it, such as Lawrence Venuti’s books, point out exactly how critical our work is and how much it contributes to a global economy of knowledge, thus providing translators with important tools to argue for the value of our work.
3. As the publishing industry continues to change and evolve how does this impact literary translators?
I wish I knew more about the inner workings of the publishing world, so what I am about to say are just my impressions as an “outsider” literary translator. (I suspect that almost all literary translators feel like “outsiders”!)
It seems that as the American public turns to other forms of entertainment than reading, the big presses are not doing as well as they would like. As a result, they grow less likely to take on “risky” projects, such translated books by authors that are not yet well known in this country. Meanwhile, the internet helps small publishing houses proliferate by giving them the ability to publish more cheaply and market their own work. It only makes sense that given this climate, more and more translators turn to small presses and even online publications, but the financial consequences of doing so should not be ignored. A translator cannot expect much (if anything) in the way of royalties, and in fact, many small or online publishers can offer little more than an apologetically delivered thank you for a job well done. We certainly cannot blame the presses themselves, which operate on a shoestring budget and often are doing their work out of a profound love for literature, but it remains a sad, cold, hard fact that there are very few financial incentives to engage in translation.
In Japanese literature (my own field), I know of no one who lives solely off of literary translation alone, as there is simply too little money to be made there. Most of us supplement our incomes with jobs as professors, translators of “practical” material, or other jobs. Although there are a few superstar Japanese authors such as Haruki Murakami that have opened up some possibilities by drawing attention to Japanese literature, I fear that the situation will not change radically anytime soon, and that most of us will continue to translate largely out of love for literature and a sense of dedication to the field.
I sincerely hope that the rise of e-publishing and its relatively inexpensive modes of distribution will make publishers more willing to try to new things, including taking on projects that they might not have considered seriously in the past. Still, it is too early to know if this will happen, and what this might mean for literary translators.
