Last night I was doing my weekly (sometimes bimonthly) check to my university email account (there were 30 pages of spam to clean up) and I found a link to a great article from The Guardian in the U.K. in one of my academic listservs. It is titled "Lost: Translation" and discusses the fact that less and less translations into English are published while the opposite happens around the world: countless books written in English are translated to every single language. One of the scariest statistics cited in the article was: "Ninety-six per cent of the world's languages are spoken by just four per cent of the world's population." It was also the first time I heard the expression "eco-linguist," referring to David Crystal (whose work is really fascinating). Another thing that surprised me was the fact that many writers from other countries are actually moving to anglophone countries and learning English so they can write in this language and have more readers. Wow!
Anyway, this issue is actually one of the subjects of my dissertation (I really want to blog more about it, but I'll wait a bit more until after the defense, etc) and I decided to do an informal survey with my blog readers since I know most of you are voracious readers (I'm looking particularly at you chicagomama :).
QUESTION: In the past year or couple of years, how many books which were originally published in another language and later translated into English have you read, if any?
Thanks, I'll be delighted if you chime in. Do mention the name of the book if you can, and more or less how many books have you read in the period as opposed to translated books (like e.g. "I read around 100 books and only 1 was translated into English")
This is tough because I read so much...I must have read several hundred books in the last couple of years, or more...let see, Gabriel Garcia Marquez...several books, a nameless Spaniard who is quite famous but whom I forget...Javier something starting with J..the book, meh...Don Quixote..quite a Spanish theme building...a very long Polish book, again, I forget the name but it was enormous...Polish Christians being thrown to Roman lions...a Danish book about an Icelandic girl on a ship...can you tell I am bad at titles...sailing books, from Brazil, Argentina and France...probably 5 or 6, a couple of French Canadian and several Italian ones...that I can remember...definitely the vast majority are English...
ReplyDeleteIt's funny, when I read your post I thought "Oh, I read lots of books that were translated." But, then I realized that I read lots of books about other countries or written by authors for whom English is a second language, but not so many are actually translated. I also realized that books by British authors weren't going to count, lol.
ReplyDeleteI read around 4-5 fiction books a month, so I'm surely going to forget some that were translated. But, let's see... I read Blindness by Jose Saramago (translated from Portuguese), Balzac and the little Chinese Seamstress (from French), some Maupin stories (French), The Overcoat (Russian, and, yeah, I was on a short story kick for a while there), Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the world by Murakami (from Japanese), Love in the Time of Cholera (Spanish), and...that's all I can think of.
Hmmm...I also read Marquez in the last year, and a beautiful book by a G reek author and of course, her name escapes me right now. I have the book on my nightstand, so I can look it up later. I also recently read a translation of one of Cavafy's famous poems (another Greek).
ReplyDeleteAnd we finished reading a translation of Beowulf with my class--does that count?!
Sadly, now that I think about it, I've only read about 20 books this year, and two of them have been translated, including the one I'm reading right now, My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk (translated from Turkish).
ReplyDeleteAlas, upon reflection, I have read woefully little in the past year. Probably 3-5 books, and I don't think any were translated. We read quite a few translated books when we were living in Czech Republic a few years ago - mostly Ivan Klima and Milan Kundera. Klima was defnintely translated from Czech. Some of the Kundera may have been translated from French instead ... but AD might remember better than I.
ReplyDeleteOnce at the end of storytime, a friend of mine happened by a book originally in French that had my son's name on it. But I can't remember the name of it. Yes, it's a kid's book, but I can say I read one this year.
ReplyDeleteBut it is probably the third book I have ever read like that. The others I remember are Child of the Dark (Quarto de Despejo). I can't remember if Corrie Ten Boom's "A Hiding Place" was originally in dutch. Given that I don't read much at all (very unfortunate), it probably makes up a good percentage of books I have read :-(
I am a little ashamed of how few translated books I read, especially as a percentage of books in total. Over the apst couple of years, I have easily read over 1,000 books and I don't even think that 5% of them were translated (that would be about 50, yes?)
ReplyDeleteI have read some Marquez, some Allende, re-read Don Quixote, re-read some of the Greek histories and tragedies. Oh, also read the new translation of War and Peace. And some books of poetry (rilke comes to mind). And probably about 15 - 20 books from Chinese authors that were translated.
However, the biggest problem I have is not having very much exposure to translated works. I don't read a ton of reviews with translated works, and I don't have a network of friend who give me recommendations. I would love to have a whole new area opened up to me, it is just a very underdeveloped area in the US market for books. PLease send any recommendations you would give.
Hope this helps, must talk more soon. :)
chicagomama