Diversity Report 2016
Rüdiger Wischenbart, Miha Kovac and Yana Genova. With additional research by Julia
Coufal, Michaela Anna Fleischhacker and Jennifer Krenn.
Rüdiger Wischenbart Content and Consulting
Diversity Report 2016
Rüdiger Wischenbart, Miha Kovac and Yana Genova. With additional research by Julia Coufal, Michaela
Anna Fleischhacker and Jennifer Krenn.
Published by Rüdiger Wischenbart Content and Consulting, Vienna
ISBN: 978-3-903074-09-5
© Verein für kulturelle Transfers. © All Rights Reserved
Cover design by Wolfgang Zwiauer, Vienna
This book was created with Booktype.
For more information, please visit: www.booktype.pro
Diversity Report 2016
Table of Contents
Part 01: Introduction .............................................................................................................................. 1
Executive summary ............................................................................................................................. 2
About this report ................................................................................................................................. 3
Part 02: Analysis of Key Developments and Case Studies .............................................................. 5
Literary translations in the context of international book markets ...................................................... 6
Translations and the top bestselling segment in international fiction ............................................... 17
Tracking translations across Europe .................................................................................................. 32
Translation as a European project: The role of subsidies and grants. Case study EU grants ............. 40
Re-thinking, re-organizing and re-directing translation: New initiatives and new models ................. 52
Outlook: Challenges and opportunities ahead ................................................................................... 57
Part 03: Annex I + II ............................................................................................................................. 60
Annex ................................................................................................................................................ 61
Diversity Report 2016
Part 01: Introduction
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Diversity Report 2016
Executive summary
The Diversity Report 2016 builds on the previous editions of this survey in 2008, 2009 and 2010, to map
and analyze flows of literary translation in the context of book markets across Europe.
The study is looking at a wide array of publicly available data, plus provides furthermore original, data
based research, to better understand how some authors are being successfully translated into different
languages, while distinct barriers curtail other works of fiction from traveling beyond their original linguistic
realms.
The 2016 edition of this survey is looking at literary translations specifically in today's fundamental
transformation of book publishing, and book markets.
The Diversity Report 2016 aggregates book market data for selected countries, especially Germany,
France, Spain, Poland and Sweden. It emphasizes how blockbuster bestsellers as well as new
phenomenons like genre fiction and self-publishing have transformed formerly integrated reading markets.
It highlights the expansion of reading in another than a reader's native tongue, and how 'Global English'
reading has expanded recently.
With an exclusive rich data model for tracking translations of almost 250 authors of most diverse
backgrounds, and across a dozen European languages, the Diversity Report 2016 sheds light on what
makes some books, and their authors, finding multiple reading audiences, while others are recognized just
by their domestic readership.
In extensive case studies, the workings, and impact, of translation grants is analyzed, especially for the
example of the European Union's efforts, and, in a close up on two countries' efforts, how Austria's and the
Netherlands' public funding models respond to publishers' submissions.
Finally, innovative approaches, using today's tools and opportunities provided by digital production,
distribution and community communication, are given an exemplary overview of models for reconceptualizing literary translation policies.
The Diversity Report 2016 concludes on a set of recommendations, particularly to re-frame some of the
funding policies, in order to meet the new challenges as well as the new opportunities.
The Diversity Report 2016 will make its ample original research, and data tables, publicly available, to
encourage further research and market intelligence in a dedicated resource at the web at
www.culturaltransfers.org.
The Diversity Report 2016 is an initiative of Verein für kulturelle Transfers / Culturaltransfers.org, and has
been supported by Bundeskanzleramt Österreich, MA 7 - Wissenschafts- und Forschungsförderung
and Hochschuljubiläumsstiftung der Stadt Wien.
Contact: [email protected]
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Diversity Report 2016
About this report
The approach, and the goals
The Diversity Report 2016 builds on approaches used for three earlier reports, released in 2008, 2009 and
2010. (See www.wischenbart.com/diversity)
The goal of all these studies is to document, and analyze, the development and the share of literary
translations in a good dozen of book markets across Europe. We want to discuss, and better understand,
what are the drivers that make translations work, and what are the barriers; what new patterns have been
emerging over the past decade, and to what degree, old habits have changed; and also how does the
current overall transformation in the business of books impact on literary translations.
From the very beginning we have used the term of 'diversity' in a pragmatic way, similar to the UNESCO
Universal Declaration of Cultural Diversity of 2001, and not as in various theory driven debates n academic
'cultural studies'.
In our first study, Diversity Report 2008, we had started looking at what were the most prominent original
languages in current fiction, and which recipient languages, and markets, can be identified. By 2010, we
broadened our perspective significantly, by tracking translations from some 200 authors of various
backgrounds, and analyzing which among them could find a broader readership in more than just a few
countries, and what factors could be identified that were relevant in that process.
In 2016, we reviewed, and updated all these approaches, and added several more sets of questions.
We chose to look at how the overall number of translations in several markets has evolved, how a growing
number of readers read not just in their native tongue, but also in English, how structural changes in
consumer books - especially the phenomenon of massive 'blockbuster' bestsellers - influenced the niche
for translated books, versus books authored in English aiming at a globalized readership.
We zoomed in on a corpus of almost 250 authors, from top sellers to mid-list, and from well recognized
writers to only locally prominent names, as they are represented across languages and genres.
And we want to find out to what extend, European grants, and support measures, had an effect on what
gets translated, and how these authors indeed find a role in the different literary landscapes that we could
look at.
The goal of this research exercise is to shed light on the representation of a few languages with a
predominant presence, that are English, German and French, in comparison to all others, for both the
literary creation in those languages, and their receptiveness for translated works; we want to add market
perspectives to a broader debate on translation, which usually is discussed primarily in cultural
dimensions; and we want to propose some perspectives that, ideally, help stakeholders involved in
creating, supporting and marketing literary translations to do so in a better informed context.
Similar to our previous studies, the Diversity Report 2016 proposes as much a piece of analysis, as a
working tool, and a framework of references. In this ambition, we will make also our raw data tables
available online, at www.culturaltransfers.org, add materials and pieces of further analysis even after
completion of the current report, and invite other researcher to use our materials for subsequent inquiries.
Already in the past, we have identified that only a remarkably small number of authors succeed to finding
broader readerships across multiple languages, while most mid-list writers are well received only in a few
other tongues, and even a successful translation of one work does not necessarily guarantee that
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subsequent books are allowed to travel across linguistic borders, too.
In today's competitive book markets, only a limited number of original languages are more or less
systematically explored by interested publishers and their scouts, while books from more peripheral
languages either need the lucky coincidence of a dedicated translator or editor, or a first breakthrough
success in one of the few 'transfer languages, notably English, German or French.
We had found earlier already that even in the top bestseller segments, English originals accounted in the
past for around one third of the listed titles. This was less than we had expected. But our more recent
findings point to a growing share of books written in English among bestselling titles.
Patterns, and conclusions are more difficult to formulate when it comes to the mid-list, which is the
market segments that is particularly relevant for most translations: Mid-list titles are successful enough to
earn back the investment of a publisher for acquiring the rights to translate a book, plus the cost of
translation. This is the segment that caters particularly strongly to the many different interests of more and
more specialized reading audiences. But it is at the same time a particularly competitive field. Squeezed
between a still very high output of new titles, and a shrinking overall book market, the average print run of
mid-list books has declined considerably over the past decade, and small and medium sized, independent
publishers are carrying an increasingly heavy burden to maintain a solid commercial operation. Also, any
study of that segment is confronting the challenge of hardly any sales figures being available to the public.
We therefore had to develop a set of methodological approaches, which we had been able to test mostly
already with our earlier reports, which we could use once again, thereby taking advantage of the continuity
of our work for roughly a decade.
Notes on the applied methodology
For this report, as already in 2010, we chose at the core to use two sets of analytical tools to compensate
for the lack of broader available market data.
a) To document, and measure, the top segment of well selling works of fiction across markets, we could
look at bestseller charts for roughly one decade, across eight major markets, and compare performances
by what we labeled as "impact points";
b) To document, and measure, a much wider variety of authors, from vastly diverse backgrounds, across
the wider specter of a dozen different markets, we came up with a corpus of almost 250 authors, whom we
tracked for available translations of their works in major book retail catalogs.
Each of these approaches provided the data that we discuss in one of the main chapters in our study,
where the logic, and the implications of the chosen research angles will be discussed.
Furthermore, a complete discussion of the methodology is to be found with the annex, which also backs
up the analytical part of this study with the underlying data and tables.
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Part 02: Analysis of Key
Developments and Case
Studies
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Literary translations in the context of international
book markets
The excitement about translated books
When Time magazine released a list of the “100 most influential people on the planet” in 2016, an Italian
writer was among them, whose real name has been kept a secret, while her books, particularly the four
volumes of “Neapolitan Novels”, have found a wide international readership through translations into
English, Dutch, French and Spanish – yet not in German, at least until September 2016, when a first volume
will be released by the prestigious publisher Suhrkamp. The Original, “L’amica genial”, was already
published by Edizioni e/o in 2011, an independent publisher in Rome, founded in 1979, out of literary
enthusiasm (especially for Russian literature), and leftist political activism – and since 2005 a partner of
New York based Europa Editions, which released, among other books in translation, the English edition of
the book that kicked off the “Ferrante fever” (The Guardian, 14 Feb 2016) that even made its impact on
Napolitan tourism.
The Ferrante case is ever more remarkable for an understanding of how literary translations ‘work’ in
today’s world of globalized, blockbuster driven publishing, as also the French edition was released by
Gallimard, the Spanish by Lumen, an imprint of Grupo Planeta specializing in high end international fiction.
The absence of these titles in German, for long seen as a market with particular appetite for literary
translations, and for its admiration of Italian authors, seems ever more strange, as earlier books by Ferrante
had been translated as early as 2003 (for the debut “Lästige Liebe”, or “L’amore molesto”, English as
“Troubling Love” in 2006), picked up back then by publishers specializing on international bestsellers, like
Munich based List publisher. Currently a used trade paperback edition of this book is on offer at a stunning
retail price of € 160 on Amazon.
In the current craze round the Napolitan tetralogy, and with the only exception of the Spanish translation
published by an imprint of Planeta, none of the global publishing groups has had a hand in the making of
the international success.
Ferrante is not an isolated case. Swiss born Joël Dicker’s also wildly successful debut, “The Truth About
the Harry Quebert Affair” (original title “La Vérité sur l’Affaire Harry Quebert”) sold 2 million copies across
32 languages in just one year. The book was initially acquired by a tiny, yet well connected Parisian
publisher, Bernard de Fallois (*1926), and released through the Geneva based small publisher L’Age
d’Homme. The spectacular rise of the author to the status of an international celebrity writer was triggered
by the auction of his debut at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2012. (See The Guardian, 24 Apr 2014 , The
Independent, 2 May 2014 , and Bernard de Fallois)
Authors who already can look back at a thriving international career, driven with the help of a leading
international publisher, can get to a point where they consider such a support not the best choice anymore.
This was the case of German young adult star author Cornelia Funke (“Tintenherz”, “Tintenblut”, Tintentod”,
in Germany by Oetinger, in the US by Little, Brown, an imprint of Hachette), when her American editor
wanted her to moverthe opening chapter of a new novel to a different place within the book. Helped by
advice from her literary agents, Oliver Latsch for Germany, and Andrew Nurnberg for international, Funke
decided to drop a publication through a traditional publisher altogether, and instead made her own
arrangements through her own company, Breathing Books, together with a PR firm. (See Publishers’
Weekly, 15 Sep 2015)
Successful translations of fictional works not always earn only praise. To the surprise of many observers,
a new translation of Salman Rushdie’s controversial “Satanic Verses” had the Czech ambassador
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summoned by the government of Saudi Arabia in protest about the publication in fall 2015 – almost three
decades after the original release of the book, in 1988. Translations of fiction come under scrutiny
regularly, when – especially neighboring, or otherwise closely related – countries clash, as was the case
most recently in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, with Russia giving cultural actions special
emphasis in recent years as a “soft power”, to accompany its “geopolitics”. (See for instance the
conference “Global Culture Forum”, held in St. Petersburg on 8 Oct 2014, attended by one of the authors of
this report; see also the notes of translator Stephen Komarnyckyj in Publishing Perspectives, 28 Oct 2015:
Global reach in translation: An overview in fundamental statistics and patterns.)
An infographic produced for World Book Day 2015 by a commercial translation services company sees
Antoine de Saint Exupery’s “Le petit prince” as one of the most translated works of literary fiction with 253
translations, followed by Carlo Collodi’s “Pinocchio” at 240, and the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen
at 159 translations. Perhaps it is not surprising to find in the top of the list so many books that had initially
been written for young readers. Hergé’s classic comic books on the adventures of Tintin come in fourth,
followed by Paulo Coelho’s “The Alchemist” at rank 5 as the first novel targeting primarly a grown up
audience. (The Translation Company)
As we could argue already earlier, in our Diversity Reports in 2008, 2009 and 2010, languages are not at all
equal in their presence, and impact, when it comes to publications and translations. Instead, only a few
languages, with English by far predominating, and followed by a few other languages, especially German,
French or Spanish, shape any survey on the number and impact of translated books.
A recent authoritative paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States
of America (PNAS) on the ‘importance’ of languages, “as expressed in book translations, multiple language
editions of Wikipedia, and Twitter”, come to similar conclusions: “We find that the structure of these three
global language networks (GLNs) is centered on English as a global hub and around a handful of
intermediate hub languages, which include Spanish, German, French, Russian, Portuguese, and Chinese.”
(Links that speak: The global language network and its association with global fame. Shahar Ronen et al.,
PNAS, vol 111 no. 52, E5616-E5622)
With regard to books, for many decades, since the 1930s, UNESCO provided the most valuable reference
with its Index Translationum which, however, has been recently discontinued due to lacking financial
resources. (Information by UNESCO to the authors of this report)
The Index has never been an absolute measure, as it depended on contributions of data from national
sources, mostly a country’s national library. And both the willingness of those cooperation partners, and
the capacity of UNESCO to handle those data, had their limitations. Translations into English were mostly
missing altogether. Also the rise of Chinese as an original language was not properly represented in its
files. And yet, the Index was tremendously help for an understanding of fundamental trends.
In the quarter century, between 1979 and 2004, when records seemed to be particularly reliable, the rise of
English as a global lingua franca was easy to detect.
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UNESCO Index Translationum: Translations from selected original languages, 1979 to 2004 (the year which still had largely consistent data
entries. Data courtesy of UNESCO, analysis and graphical representation for this report.
Taking out the numbers for translations from the predominant English originals furthermore allowed
highlighting, how strongly the rank of an original language was less a function of the size of its population
of (native) speaker speakers, than rather an indicator for the weight and impact of a linguistic community
in the international power play between nations. This could be well represented by zooming into selected
top languages, for the same period of time, 1979 to 2004.
The three top languages combined, English, German and French, account roughly of four in five
translations recorded. And together with Italian and Spanish, these top 5 original languages cover most of
the spectacular increase in translations that had occurred in those 25 years.
But also one big loser can be identified, Russian, whose wild popularity collapsed quickly with the Soviet
imperium after 1991. (For a more detailed discussion on the UNESCO Index statistics, see the Diversity
Reports 2008 and 2009.)
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Diversity Report 2016
UNESCO Index Translationum: Translations from top original languages, except English, 1979 to 2004 (the year which still had largely
consistent data entries. Data courtesy of UNESCO, analysis and graphical representation for this report.
The data reveal a cascade of original languages, with a few sitting on the top, and with translations out of
these predominant languages guaranteeing a steady flow of books, ideas and story embedded in the books
written in those top languages, trickling down into all the others. In reverse, bringing a book written in a
more peripheral language to the attention of a wider audience, through translations, is a hard uphill battle.
Also only a very few languages work as “transfer” languages, making the trajectory easier, as many
commissioning editors in publishing houses in many languages, together with various experts, are able,
and willing, to read them. Aside from obviously English, only German, French, and to a lesser degree
Spanish, qualify. Russian also had that potential as long as the cultural transfer was backed up by political
power and the influence of Russophile elites. Unsurprisingly, the current Russian government has made
considerable efforts to reconnect to that potential of influence through books, and translation. A dedicated
coordinated effort in this regard had been started under the umbrella of the label and organization of Read
Russia around Russia being the guest country at BookExpo America in 2013.
A focus on selected translation markets in (Western)
Europe
Mapping, and comparing translation markets across languages and countries confronts a number of odd
challenges. First and foremost, no standard definitions are available that would allow to generating
consistent statistics.
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National libraries tend to count what they receive as legal depot submissions, or establish title catalogs
based on ISBN. Some publishing trade organizations aim at establishing their own title count, based on
books in print databases, and eventually would compare those with the libraries' ISBN based lists. The
former includes works that are not available through commercial sales channels, the latter is more
restrictive. The recently growing importance of self-published works is making matters ever more
complicate. Publishers' professional organizations would usually exclude these from their statistics. Also,
a significant share of self-published titles are connected to one of the leading online services, such as
Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), which are not necessarily included in other commercial title
catalogs, and Amazon is increasingly using their own, Amazon Standard Identification Number (ASIN),
instead of the ISBN. And lastly, not always are new titles, and re-editions perfectly identified as such, and
properly counted.
This said, tracking numbers over several years, as we do it in our studies, tends to represent overall trends
fairly well.
Germany
For decades, Germany had been regarded as Europe's leading market for the publication of translated
books, and especially for translated fiction.
For long, the total number of translations had been continuously increasing, with some up and downs in
the 2000s, with those fluctuations generally attributed to an ongoing controversy between publishers and
translators over 'fair' compensation standards, and subsequent lawsuits and court rulings, that had
publishers complaining about unpredictable risk factors in their cost management of translated titles.
Over the past decade, the output of translations has significantly stabilized. A direct comparison between
the two past decades is problematic as, from 2008 on, the statistics released by the German Publishers'
and Booksellers' Association, Börsenverein, counted new titles plus re-editions, while before that date, only
new titles had been included. The numbers normally include publishers from Germany, Switzerland and
Austria.
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Diversity Report 2016
Translations into German, 2007 to 2014, new titles and re-editions (from 2008 on), in absolute numbers, % of all new titles, and break out
numbers for selected original languages. Source: Börsenverein, Buch und Buchhandel in Zahlen.
The share of translations from English is traditionally high, at around two out of three translated titles, and
even slightly higher even, by two or three %-points, for translated fiction.
Within the overall stability in the entire observed field, a few elements stand out. The increase of
translations from Japanese is the only major change that is to be noted. While no data on drivers of this
development are available, it can be assumed that the expanding popularity of Japanese Manga is a strong
factor here. In return, translations from Swedish have hardly produced remarkable increases in the overall
number of titles, despite the immense popularity of "Nordic crime" among German readers.
France
France has seen a continuous increase of translated titles for a long period in time, like no other country in
Europe for which we could find data. At around 17 to 18% of all new title releases, their share in overall
production is significantly higher than in Germany, at 12 to 13%. But in absolute numbers, Germany's
market which is double the size of France, maintains its lead.
The share of translations from English, at around 60% is less than in many other European countries,
including Germany, but still clearly a league of its own.
With a long domestic tradition in comic ("bande dessinées", or BD), France has also spearheaded to
penetration of Japanese Mangas in Europe. If literary translations have significantly added to the rise in
titles from Japanese originals, based on a long history of admiration for Japanese writers, and a recent
craze for Haruki Murakami, cannot be backed up with data, which fall short on specifics.
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Translations from German have seen an ongoing slide over the recent past.
Translations into French, 2010 to 2014. Share of selected original languages, and % of overall title production. Source: Syndicat National de
l'Edition, SNE.
Sweden
Sweden is another readers' market with a high admiration for translations, which is probably both echoed,
and driven, my Sweden being home to the Nobel Prize for Literature. If this habit is also similarly backed up,
or even re-enforced by reading in English, and perhaps in other Scandinavian languages, can only be
assumed, while concrete data are missing. The portion of translations from those two origins, books
written in English, and in other Scandinavian languages, is outstanding, as together, the two segments
account for almost 9 out of 10 translated books. The oustantingly high numbers of translations from
English are consistent over the full period portrayed here.
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Comparing translations into Swedish from two major language groups, 2012 to 2014. Source: Swedish National Bibliography; via Swedish
Publisher Association.
A closer look at major original languages, with the exception of English, highlights massive fluctuations,
year on year, yet with a few overarching trends.
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Translations into Swedish, 2002 to 2014. Selected major languages, excluding English. Source: Swedish National Bibliography; via Swedish
Publisher Association.
The outstanding share, and sustained long term increase might result from a mix of push and pull factors,
with push coming from Norway's policy of strongly subsidizing translations of their authors, and pull
highlighting the appetite for inter-Scandinavian exchanges, and perhaps also the appreciation for
neighboring crime fiction.
A continuous rise of translations from French, and to a lesser degree from German and Italian, can be well
recognized as a difference to most other destinations in Europe.
Spain
The situation is all different in Spain, and in Poland, two markets that otherwise have little in common.
Translations into Polish, and into Spanish, have seen a continuous decline for well over a decade.
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Translations into Spanish, 2005 to 2013. Source: Federación de Gremios de Editores de España, FGEE.
Spain has the economy, and also in a direct consequence, the book market, hit hardest by the economic
crises of 2008. The book business came down by around 30% in market value in just a few years. As title
production stayed high, while retail prices were largely maintained close to pre-crises levels, average print
runs, and therefore also profitability of many titles, came under a huge pressure, which most likely
impacted on the willingness of publishers to choose foreign books for translations into Spanish. This
contrasts with a reverse development in Latin America, where at least some countries could take
advantage of a better economic outlook, so that especially Mexico, and also Columbia, became important
export destinations for Spanish language books. And the strong Latino community in the United States
also increase in consuming books, along with other cultural media, turning them into a promising target
audience. But seemingly, publishers of translations could not take advantage of the opportunity.
Poland
The overall number of translations followed the market development closely in Poland too. And similarly to
the Spanish language, market challenges contrasting with a steady increase in title production resulted in a
widening of the gap in print runs, and profitability.
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Poland: Key parameters shaping the translation market (title production, translated titles in absolute numbers and % of all new titles), 2004 to
2014. Source: Books in Poland. Polish Chamber of Books and Polish Book Institute. Analysis and graphical representation for this report.
The number of translations suffered severely over the past decade. But it also must be noted at what high
level translations indeed shape what is published, and read, in Poland. Translations account for between 30
and 40% of all books in a country otherwise portrayed as self centered, and particularly fond of its domestic
national culture.
Altogether, these snapshots at selected book and translation markets emphasize that an upbeat
development in translations often enough requires a sound overall economic context. The example of
Poland illustrates, how translated books indeed can offer an important window for looking out into the
world at large. But even such enriching features can come under severe pressure, once that the book
sector is losing its balance between production of titles, and its financial foundations.
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Translations and the top bestselling segment in
international fiction
Languages are not the only parameter framing what “works” in translation, in terms of finding the largest
conceivable audience. Another factor is the prevalence of a few books, and their authors, who dwarf all of
the rest in reach and visibility.
The prevalence of a few titles among all new released titles in gaining traction with readers, but also
media and attention well beyond the book business, has been a widely reported and discussed
phenomenon over the past decade and a half. Much of this debate started with the break through success
of Joanne K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, with the first of seven volumes being published in the English
original in 1997.
The impact of Harry Potter on the book trade was perhaps even topped by the Millennium trilogy of Stieg
Larsson, with the first volume, “Mänsomhatarkvinnor“ (“Men Who Hate Women”) released in Swedish in
2005. The French translation, which arguably trigerred the international career of Millennium, published in
2006 as “Les Hommes qui n'aimaient pas les femmes”, by ActesSud. “Millennium” is so particularly
outstanding as conventional wisdom about the book industry would probably identify several key factors
that would normally drown any chances for becoming a major success: First, it was a book without an
author who could appear in the media, as Stieg Larsson had died shortly after completing the third volume
– of several more that he had planned to write. Second, writing in a “small”, even “peripheral” language that
editors of the biggest publishing houses do not read, makes the selling of rights more difficult, and
Millennium was not represented by one of the powerful agents based in London or New York. So the book
was not the object of secret desires in one of the more legendary pre-Frankfurt Book Fair auctions. On the
contrary, the book climbed to the top of the Swedish charts, stayed there for a good while, yet without
anyone outside of Sweden noticing. And thirdly, none of the three publishers who became critical for the
huge trajectory of the Millennium books had the global reach and marketing muscle of the leading “Big
Five” publishing corporations governing the decisive English language markets. Instead, Millennium was
originally published by Swedish independent Nordstedts, picked up in France by another independent
house, ActesSud, and then launch into the English universe by MacLehose Press (in 2008, an imprint of
then independent Quercus).
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Bestseller career path of Stieg Larsson: Millennium trilogy, in first editions and presence on bestseller charts in selected languages. (Various
data sources, analysis and chart by Diversity Report)
Rights for the German translation had been acquired early on by Random House, one of the Big Five.1 But
the first volume in the series had only a short lived presence among the top selling titles, which is, in
hindsight, ever more surprising as German readers had probably been the first large international audience
for what should become, later on, the craze for “Nordic crime”. But German readers at first stayed faithful to
their favorite Swedish writer Henning Mankell. Years later, when Larsson had become a household name in
France, with hardly any commuter train in Paris not having at least a few readers absorbed by Millennium,
German thriller fans became infected just as much.
The body of anecdotal evidence about the huge presence of a few hyper, or blockbuster, bestsellers
almost every year in the past almost two decades can be extended almost at liberty. The income from the
– usually serial – books from Stephenie Meyer (“Twilight”), Suzanne Collins (“The Hunger Games”), or E.L.
James (“Shades of Grey”) could make, or in the absence, break, the bottom line of the largest international
publishing groups.
But to our knowledge, no reliable, and across markets, sales data are available to measure the extent of
market share of those blockbusters. We ignore the scope of the competitive impact on all other new book
releases, especially on the “mid-list”, of those scores of books accounting for the diversity in styles and
stories of literature. We cannot even say, with certainty, if the total market share of these top sellers, from
all new title shares of a year across the European markets, has increased lately, or rather established a
strong category in its own right, yet without further expanding into the presence of all the other books.
Such numbers have been released, as the odd snapshot, for a few markets, notably the UK or France. But
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for many others, absolute or relative sales numbers, by title, are not made publicly available for several
markets that we try to assess.
As a second best approach, we can provide only our own measure of “impact points”, which are a
representation for how many months a title has been among the top 10 fiction bestseller lists in the 8
countries that we are able to track for roughly a decade now. These markets are the US, UK, Germany,
France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Sweden.2
From these data, we have built a list of the top 100 fiction titles, and compared these values over the
years, between 2004 and 2015. (The full impact point data, as used in this report, will be made available
online at www.culturaltransfers.org)
Top 20 bestselling fiction titles, measured by ‘impact points’, for the years 2004 to 2015. (Various data sources; analysis and chart by
Diversity Report)
Two key findings result from this analysis:
The 5 titles with the highest score in impact points together account for a massive 20% of all point
for the top 100, which seems a realistic proportion of how big the top sellers are, among the wider
segment of well selling fiction in the major markets that we could observe.
We see very significant differences, year on year, as some titles surge high above any other book in a
given year; but we cannot see any continuous trends, such as the share of the blockbusters
expanding over the course of the past decade. Not at all. It is an up and down, well echoing the
financial results reported by those houses having a leading role in the bestseller race.
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The second point even goes together well with a summary statement in the British trade magazine The
Bookseller, in their summary of market trends in 2015. In a year when most ordinary expectations of how
the markets evolve had been turned on its head, Philip Jones argued candidly: "The book market is
performing in almost exactly the wrong way." And he explained: "The big publishers are not gaining market
share; the big books are not gettingbigger; in 2014 it was the publisher that had the fewest “big” hits that
performed most strongly." (TheBookseller, blog, 16 Jan 2016)
Why, and how, bestsellers matter in translation
So why bothering our minds with such a strange sector of unpredictable complexities in the first place?
For a long period in time, covering the decades after the Second World War, until around 2000, bestsellers
had an integral place and role in the book business, at least of major markets, to drive income, which could
then be used to subsidize upcoming authors, building a catalog of mid-list titles, and helping to promoting
the book sector altogether in the general media, and the attention of the reading audience.
Even the top spots in sales statistics were accessible for new entrant authors, and publishers, bringing a
broad diversity in books written in various languages, in different styles, with stories from authors of
multiple backgrounds and contexts into the limelight.
In the Diversity Report 2010, we could identify, in a typology of authors, a rich and thriving set of books,
written in other languages than English, telling stories of varying complexities and literary ambitions, and
reaching degrees of popularity that brought these books to the top of chart – and thus visibility -, in the
vicinity of the commercial star authors like Dan Brown, or Suzanne Collins. We speak of writers as diverse
as Spanish Carlos Ruiz Zafón, French Muriel Barbery, or Finnish-Estonian Sofi Oksanen. In the example of
these books, the fields of literary expert appreciation, as reflected in literary reviews and awards,
overlapped with the commercial spheres in which international business organizations, and top literary
agents aim at governing, or at least managing, access, and reputation.
We found that only about one third of the top ranks in bestseller charts were occupied by books written in
English. And we could identify success stories in which books, and their authors could build traction with
the audience, and the gatekeepers of the business, without at first finding a critical first foothold in the
form of an English translation. Books, even in the top ranks, like in the case of Stieg Larsson, could travel
from Swedish to France, to German and Italian, before getting picked up by an English language house.
The book markets, regarded as a system, allowed a horizontal mobility that, we have argued, exceeded
popular assumptions found in many media reports, that the most successful books would be more of the
same ‘bestseller ware’ anyway. We strongly contradicted this presumption.
Now, several years later, numerous drivers have transformed the book sector. Blockbuster bestsellers
have become a normal occurrence. An increasing number of book launches are internationally
synchronized by publishing corporations that had consolidated into global players, in order to confront
even larger competing entities such as Amazon. And with digital, not just a new book format, ebooks, has
been added in the choice for readers, but an entirely new field has been opened, as authors can now selfpublish their books.
Also, the overall production of new titles has increased, or at least kept high levels, in most European
countries, while the overall markets have been shrinking, modestly, even though continuously in some
countries like Germany or France, up to 30% within a few years such as in crisis struck Spain, or by low two
digit percentage rates, as in Italy, the Netherlands or Sweden. The average print run of books has come
down, as a consequence, respectively. While no data are available for specific segments of the trade, such
as literary fiction, we know from anecdotal evidence that in the segments relevant for this report, the loss in
average print runs, and therefore in profitability, has been massive in the middle ground, while the few top
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sellers have gone up.
In addition to this - among book professionals - well established assessment, yet another important factor
has emerged, which further accelerates this trend. In a very rough estimate, we argue that,between one
third,or even 40% of all sold books deviate in one way or another from the traditional, integrated book
market model.
Model distribution of non-traditional versus traditional parts, on the example of the German book market, in volume sales. Estimate for this
report, based on various market data for the German publishing industry.
While one can certainly argue about the details in this model representation, and the estimated shares, it
is a largely established fact that the market for the remaining ‘mid-list’, and the ‘long tail’ titles, has
significantly.
The evolution of the bestseller segment, together with other drivers of change, strongly influence the
remaining market space, and available media and reader attention, for all other segments of books
reaching out to the average readers, and especially those who appreciate to read works of fiction.
A book business massively shaped by developments in the field of bestsellers, will ever more strongly
impact on the many fancies, vogues, and other preferences of the reading audience – which we want to
better understand.
Bestsellers 2008-2014
First results of the research on the European bestseller lists based on data from between March 2008 and
April 2009, have been already discussed by the authors of this report in an article in the Publishing
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Research Quarterly (Kovač and Wischenbart, End of English Empire). We analysed lists published in Great
Britain by The Bookseller, in Holland by Boekblad, in Germany by Buchreport and Der Spiegel, in Spain by El
Cultural, in France by Livres Hebdo/Ipsos and in Sweden by SvenskBokhandel. In the second part of the
research, taking place between October 2008 and September 2009, an Italian list was added, prepared by
InformazioniEditoriali. With the exception of The Bookseller that uses Nielsen Bookscan data, the majority
of the above mentioned lists were based on point of sales data coming from chain and independent book
stores (and some online sales at least in Sweden) representing around 30% of the book market and can
therefore be considered as fairly accurate. After 2009, we continued to gather data on a same manner on a
yearly basis, and as a result, created a database on bestsellers for these countries for the period
2008-2015.
These seven markets had been chosen for several reasons. Despite being relatively similar by some of
their main demographic indicators, these markets differ significantly in size of population, in their
languages (and their language’s reception in the rest of Europe) and in their potential for cultural exports.
By European standards, the domestic British book market has the strongest muscle in terms of exports,
while the German and the French markets predominate in import capacity as well as by some parameters
such as the number of book stores catering to a highly differentiated reading population. Spain and Italy
happen to have to a certain degree a similar balance and preferences between domestic authors,
translations from non-English languages as well as in overall market size. The Dutch and Swedish markets
are exemplary for the smaller Western European book markets, as well as highly differentiated, with a very
significant culture of (incoming) translations as well as how readersare reading in foreign languages.
These latter markets show profound differences though, in the impact of domestic fiction – which is
extraordinarily huge in Sweden, and relatively modest in the Netherlands. (Kovač and Wischenbart, End of
English Empire). Altogether, the surveyed markets belong to very different language groups, and reflect
highly diverse different cultural and political traditions and cultural environments. As such, they are diverse
enough that they can serve as a representative sample for the entire Western European book market.
A relatively simple methodology was used: the sample was taken from the top-ten titles of each market’s
list. The focus was put on authors as some of them appeared with several titles on different lists. To make
lists comparable as well as to allow a consolidated meta-list across all the surveyed markets, a measuring
system was introduced, attributing an author a number of points for each presence on a monthly top 10
list, with a number one in one month on one list granting an author 50 points, 49 points for a number 2, etc.
The goal of this methodology was to measure an author's impact on one or several markets over a given
period of time.
A glance at the list of the most successful authors between October 2008 and September 2009 in
Western Europe reveals a typical long-tail picture: two authors received more than one third of all points
while the top 10 received no less than 60 per cent of total points during the period considered. During the
surveyed period, only a handful of these authors were simultaneously on several lists indicating strong
impact in several markets during one year of observation. The chart below also shows – despite some
exceptions - that the author’s factor of influence is inversely proportional to the number of lists where his
or her books appear:
Author
Title
Original
language
Bestseller
lists
Total
points
Stieg Larsson
Millennium (3 parts)
Swedish
F, SP, SE,
NL, UK
2601,5
Stephenie
Meyer (*)
4 titles + The Host (adult UK)
English
I, SP, D, UK
2156,5
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Khaled Hosseini
2 titles
English
NL, SE, D
1172
Roberto Saviano
(**)
Gomorra
Italian
I, D, F, SP,
NL, SE
1104
Carlos Ruiz
Zafón
El juego del angel
Spanish
SP, NL, I , D
893,5
Ken Follett
World Without End
English
F, D, SE, SP
825
Muriel Barbery
L'élégance du hérisson
French
F, D, SP
786
Charlotte Roche
Feuchtgebiete
German
D, NL, UK
709
John Boyne
Boy with the Striped Pajamas
English
SP
527
Cecelia Ahern
The Gift
English
UK, D
465
Elizabeth Gilbert
Eat, Pray, Love
English
NL
430
Henning
Mankell
Kinesen
Swedish
SP, SE, D, NL
404
Anna Gavalda
La consolante
French
F, D, SP
401
Liza Maklund
En plats isolen&Livsstid
Swedish
SE
374
Paolo Giordano
La solitudine dei numeriprimi
Italian
I, SP, NL
368
Jean-Marie Le
Clézio
Ritournelle de la faim; L'Africain
French
SE, F
334
Jens Lapidus
Snabba Cash
Swedish
SE
321
Andrea Camilleri
MehrereTitel
Italian
I, SP, D, UK
289,5
Jean-Louis
Fournier
Où on va, papa?
French
F
287
Eduardo
Mendoza
El asombroso viaje de Pomponio
Flato
Spanish
SP
285
Mark
Levengood
Hjärtatfåringarynkor
Swedish
SE
285
Katie Price
Angel Uncovered
English
UK
284
Siegfried Lenz
Schweigeminute
German
D
282
J.K. Rowling (*)
Beedle the Bard; Deathly Hallows
English
SP, D
243
Jan Guillou
Meninteomdetgällerdindotter
Swedish
SE
243
Marc Levy
Toutes ces choses qu'on ne s'est
pas dites
French
F
240
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Diversity Report 2016
Simone van der
Vlugt
Blauw water
Dutch
NL
239
Guillaume
Musso
Je revienstechercher
French
F
234
(*) titles are aimed at all age groups. They were dropped from further comparisons because in some countries
they appear on kids or teenagers bestseller lists.
(**) classified as fiction in Italy; elsewhere as feature writing.
The development in 2008 and 2009 showed two more language driven facts: firstly, eight out of 30
authors in the chart wrote in English, while all others wrote in other European languages. However, besides
Swedish, only translations of books written in larger European languages seem to have successfully
crossed linguistic borders,to the point of climbing to the top of bestseller lists.
Even without a detailed analysis of titles on the top of European bestseller lists, it is possible to say that in
2008 and 2009, the top 10 European authors were writing in very diverse genres: Muriel Barbery’s Elegance
of the Hedgehog is a novel with a strong philosophical notion, Stieg Larsson’s novels are socially critical
thrillers, Stephanie Meyer is an author of fantasy bestsellers that have been turned into global blockbuster
movies, Paolo Giordano’s The Solitude of Prime Numbers is a novel on complex human relations, while
Charlotte Roche is the author of an autobiography with rather explicit sexual contents.
Respective data for the years 2011, 2012, 2013 and 2014 show similar patterns. In 2011, the impact of
Nordic authors had further increased, as Jussi Adler Olsen replaced Stieg Larsson on the first place, who
had dropped off after having an enormous presence on all bestselling charts. The number of Nordic
authors became even more prevalent than in 2008 and 2010, and this pattern now started to reach beyond
the genre of crime thrillers. Camilla Lackberg was on the third place, Swedish author Jonas Jonasson (“The
One Hundred Year Old Man…”) ranked 10th, and Jo Nesbø 13th, while the number of authors writing in
English was at its lowest (seven). This radically changed in 2012, with E.L. James’ “Fifty Shades of
Grey”taking over, winning the first place, followed by Suzanjne Collins’ “Hunger Games” right behind, and
J.K. Rowling’s post Harry Potter novel, “A Casual Vacancy” on the third rank. The three authors, E.L. James,
Susanne Collins and JK Rowling together, collected 5608 out of 14390 (or 39%) of all impact points among
the top 25 authors of that year. The number of authors writing in English grew to 10.
In 2013, these trends continued even more radically as E.L. James kept the overall lead. Instead of
Suzanne Collins and J.K. Rowling, two American authors came up, Dan Brown, Khaled Hosseini, whose
“Kyte Runner” had already been among the most successful novels in the 2000s. 11 of the top 25 books
had be authored in English.
However in 2014, another turnabout occurred. E.L. James started to retire from the top ranksto be
replaced by the new Swedish star, Jonas Jonasson. Nevertheless, Anglo-Saxon presence remained ever
stronger, with 12 out of 25 authors writing in English, including John Green, Donna Tart and Ken Follett.
The English share on the top had increased continuously between 2010 and 2014. However, if we
integrated results from the three years, to highlight those few authors who had a broader presence than all
others, E.L. James governs this entire period, but the mix of languages is slightly gaining in balance.
Author
Language
E. L. James
English
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Diversity Report 2016
Jonas Jonasson
Swedish
Jussi Adler-Olsen
Danish
Dan Brown
English
Camilla Läckberg
Swedish
Ken Follett
English
Andrea Camilleri
Italian
Khaled Hosseini
English
Stephen King
English
John Grisham
English
Lars Kepler
Swedish
James Patterson
English
Jo Nesbø
Norwegian
Suzanne Collins
English
Katherine Pancol
French
Joël Dicker
Swiss-German
Maria Duenas
Spanish
Paulo Coelho
Portuguese
Stieg Larsson
Swedish
Guillaume Musso
French
Tatiana de Rosnay
French/English
John Green
English
Carlos Ruiz Zafón
Spanish
Haruki Murakami
Japanese
Marc Levy
French
The impact of Nordic authors remains striking, establishing a cohort very similar to English. Another
remarkable feature of the list is the minimal share of authors coming from countries other than the charts
domestic territories.Only Joel Dicker, a Swiss writing in French, and being co-published between a Swiss
and a French small publisher, Japanese Haruki Murakami, and Brazilian Paolo Coelho made it to the list.
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Diversity Report 2016
Distribution of original languages, 2010 to 2014. Source: Various bestseller charts. Analysis and graphical representation for this report.
Nevertheless, the distribution by languages is more diversified for the years 2011 to 2014 by comparison
to 2008 and 2010 period, when 40% of the listed authors wrote in English, 15% in Nordic languages,whilst
not one book was translated from any languages other than from where the bestseller charts came from.
Altogether, the impact of Nordic authors, and authors writing in languages from outside of the mapped
territories was growing, whilst impact of English-writing authors and authors writing in list-languages
decreased.
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Diversity Report 2016
Comparing the share of English, Nordic and other languages, 2008 to 2010 and 2010 to 2014. Source: Various bestseller charts. Analysis and
graphical representation for this report.
To make a long story short, the differences between the annual lists and the mid-term aggregated
selection indicate an increasing prevalence of books written in English, coinciding on an, on average,
quicker turnaround of new titles replacing those already established.
The readers’ rush for Nordic crime is the tip of a giant iceberg that has grown over several decadeswhen
as early as in the 1960s and 1970s, Henning Mankell, Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö had set out finding their
readership in continental Europe. After Stieg Larsson’s success, a new dynamics led to an explosion of
translations,with new incoming authors to include Liza Marklund, Camilla Läckberg, Jens Lapiduss, Lars
Kepler, Jo Nesbø, ArnaldurInðridason, YrsaSigurðardóttir and many others. Their reach was further
broadened by international acclaim for Scandinavian TV series of the same genre, such as The Killing, the
Bridge, The Protectors, Unit One and Mamon.
All this indicates that home-brewed thrillers and series in book and TV format were popular and widely
produced in Nordic countries long before they started to become a brand driver for all of Scandinavia, and
well beyond the realm of books. (More on this Bergman, 2014)
The following five year period of 2010 to 2014 showcases the genres that are now the most popular with
readers looking for entertainment. The list includes notably thrillers and mystery (with authors such as
Jussi Adler Olsen, Camilla Läckberg, Andrea Camilleri, Dan Brown, John Grisham, Lars Kepler, Ken Follett,
James Patterson, Jo Nesbø, Joël Dicker, Stieg Larsson and Guillaume Musso), as well as two fantasy
(Steven King), and a dystopian young adult trilogy (“Hunger Games” by Suzanne Collins). Interestingly,
E.L.James’ thundering success, as she ruled over the top positions in the charts for more than two
years,did not lead to a big wave of erotica. Of course, other romance authors, such as Sylvia Day, have
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Diversity Report 2016
found a significant audience, yet not even coming close to the impact of “Shades of Grey”. Finally, between
the various works that usually get summarized as ‘genre fiction’ still allowed for a few examples of more
ambitious literary fiction from authors such as Khaled Hosseini, Katherine Pancol, Maria Dueňas, Paolo
Coelho, Haruki Murakami, Tatiana de Rosnay, John Green, Carlos Ruiz Zafón and Marc Levy.
Although English-writing authors represent only 36% of the entire list, the biographies of the 25 authors
with highest impact in Europeanfiction in this period in time reveals one common feature: Almost two
thirds of those whose mother tongue is not English have significantly changed their lives’ context in one
way or another, or navigate between several languages and cultural backgrounds already by their
upbringing.
Khaled Hosseini was born in Kabul, spent his youth in Iran and France, and finally settled in California,
where he writes his books in English. Tatiana de Rosnay is of French, English and Russian origins, writes
books in English and French, and spends her life between the USA and France. The arguably most
successful author writing in Portuguese, Paolo Coelho, commutes between Europe and Brazil. Katherine
Pancol was born in Morocco, spent her youth in France, and lived and worked for a decade in New York,
before she returned to France, where she writes her novels in French. Similarly, bestselling French author
Marc Levy ran a computer company in the USA and in France, before becoming writer. The most widely
published Spanish author, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, lives in Los Angeles and Barcelona. Bestselling Japanese
author Haruki Murakami wrote two if his novels in the USA as a fellow at several American universities. One
of the internationally most successful authors of Spanish origin, Maria Dueñas, is a professor of English at
the University of Murcia, and has worked at a several US universities. Joël Dicker is a Swiss born author,
writing in French, and has spent, as a kid, his summer holidays in New England. Guillaume Musso was
fascinated by the USA in his young days,spending some time in New York and New Jersey, where, he
explains, he developed central ideas for his novels. Even Stieg Larsson, who in his later years lived
exclusively in, and wrote about his native Sweden, spent time in his youth as a hard-core leftist training a
squad of female guerrillas in Eritrea.
In short, 11 among the 25 top European authors have biographies with at least some trans-national
background, and 9 out of the 15 who do not write in English,have ventured for some time outside of their
native cultural contexts.
Even more strikingly, with the exception of Paolo Coelho and Stieg Larsson, many of the most popular
writers at one point chose to make an Anglo-Saxon country their new home. And unsurprisingly, it is
unheard of any popular writer of English origins to opt for another language for authoring his works.
Similar to earlier period that we could study, no East-European author could be found on any of the WestEuropean annual bestseller lists in recent years. Only late in 2015, Robert Brindzamade it to Amazon’s
Kindle charts, but this debut novel had strong English roots, as Bryndza is actually of British origins, who
adopted his Slovakian name, and a home in Slovakia, only by marriage. Still, it is hardly coincidence that
Brindza’s a-typical career path brought him to his wider reading audience in the digital realm, and not
through a traditional publisher’s support, hints at how digital may be changing the rules for a winning
author’s possible game.
eBook bestsellers
Unfortunately, none of the biggest retail channels for ebooksgenerate bestseller charts that would allow a
consistent direct comparison with print charts.
Nevertheless, Amazon allows a tracking of bestselling authors continuously, which we have done for
sample authors and titles, on a regular basis for several years, and could back up these data with
aggregated ebook sales data from several distributors.
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Diversity Report 2016
First and foremost, the by far lion’s share of all ebook titles sells at very low price points. On a total
catalog of 70,000 ebook titles distributed by German Bookwire, half of all sales are from ebooks priced
under € 5.
Ebook price segments in all unit sales of ebooks in 2015 at Bookwire. (Source: Bookwire, analysis and chart: Global eBook Report 2016)
In this segment, self-published titles and authors prevail, and Amazon, as the overwhelming market leader
in this model, has built an ecosystem that caters to the complete value chain of an author using the
platform and its fully integrated services. While for many, ebooks – and not print editions – come first,
print-on-demand is an easy to add option.
Based on this set of tools, which are backed up by marketing and tracking services, again provided by
Amazon, some authors have managed to build huge audiences, in some cases even across languages, and
international markets.
In a competitive environment where ‘genre’ is a defining characteristic even in the top bestsellers from
traditional publishers, in print, that very same pattern is governing ebooks even more strongly.
One such example is Bella Forrest, “an elusive author, who has kept her private life utterly invisible” (selfportrait of the author; author’s website: http://www.bellaforrest.net/), whose “A Shade of Vampire” series
sold millions of copies in several languages.
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Diversity Report 2016
Screenshot for Bella Forrest: A Shade of Vampires. Amazon.co.uk
Aside from Amazon, ebooks have allowed the emergence of an entirely new set of – often digital only –
publishers, which is largely operating outside of the traditional publishing infrastructure, yet occasionally
run by seasoned veterans of the industry. Examples are OpenRoad of Jane Friedman, a former executive at
Random House as well as HarperCollins in the US, dotbooks in Germany, founded and operated by Beate
Kuckertz, who had been with Droemer Knaur, or, mikrotext, a Berlin venture specializing in short ebooks
created by author Nikola Richter. The above mentioned Robert Brindza is using Bookouture for his writing.
Most recently, even authors of success with their main titles with traditional publishers have discovered
the ebook track as a beneficial marketing option, as they can attract attention from readers by heavily
discounting older titles when bringing a new book to market. This model has got traction even in markets
with strict price regulation, such as Germany or, to a lesser degree, France. (For a detailed discussion of
these strategies related to pricing, see the Global eBook Report 2016)
Price however is not the only key indicator to making a substantial difference between traditional print
and digital bestseller chart. The Original language seems to be yet another factor, as on average, only a
very few titles in the top selling segment at sites such as Amazon’s Spanish and German platforms are
written in other languages than the respective local tongue, or in English. We assume that this pattern is
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Diversity Report 2016
consistent with our more general observation of ebook publishing and ebook reading to forming distinct
cultural context that are fundamentally different than those formed and catered to by traditional
publishers.
1. The others in the Big Five publishing groups are Hachette, notably through their US and UK holdings, HarperCollins, Simon &
Schuster, and Macmillan, the English language arm of the German Holtzbrinck group.
2. For our measure of “impact points” for bestsellers, we focus on all fiction titles that have been on a top 10 fiction chart in one of
the surveyed eight major markets, subsequently building a list of the 100 titles with the longest presence, from across the tracked
markets. We attributed a value for every instance, giving 50 points for a number one rank in a given month, 49 points for a number
2, and so forth. The resulting values turned out to providing a good standard reference for the prevalence of a title, and for
comparing these positions across markets, disregarding the individual size of the surveyed markets, as we were particularly keen
on measuring and understanding which titles could find large audiences in different contexts.
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Diversity Report 2016
Translations across Europe
Surveying authors’ translated literary works across
languages
Which literary authors, and which of their works, get regularly translated across the various European
languages and book markets? And which are hitting all kinds of barriers?
Possible answers to these seemingly simple questions are manifold. A literary agent, or a scout who
screens new publications for a contracting publisher, will certainly give a different answer from, say, a
translator, a reader, or the organizer of a reading festival.
For several decades, starting in the English language metropoles, especially in London and New York,
after the Second World War, literary agents, together with acquiring editors and selling rights directors at
major publishing houses in the leading book markets, have succeeded in establishing themselves as an
informal, yet efficient network of gatekeepers. Referring to personal experience in the market, backed up by
trusted business relationships with peers – that is primarily other book professionals, including translators,
and the odd academic – these gatekeepers have a clear sense to ‘know’, somehow, ‘what works’.
As is the case with successful gatekeepers in many field, transparent information is kept mostly private.
No bibliographic catalog of titles across languages is available, that would allow to systematically
exploring translated authors, works, and involved publishers in the various markets. The ISBN, for practical
reasons, does not allow tracking back a translated book to the original publication. For most books,
bibliographic information is not identifying if the author has been represented by an agent, or if either the
author, or the original publisher have been instrumental in selling the rights for translations. Hardly any
agency would make accessible a list of all the authors it represents on an online catalog. For tens of
thousands of books, called ‘orphaned works’, it is not even possible to identify who holds which rights on
the book.
Ironically, a relatively new entrant is shedding more light now into the deep obscurity surrounding books,
Amazon. Since a few years only, the largest book retailer in the world has consolidated its title database in
a way that for most books, a simple search would produce a fairly comprehensive list of all the different
editions of a work, both in terms of technical format (print hard cover, paperback, audio, ebook, etc.), and in
a growing number of different languages. As of today, translations are listed into a growing number of
different languages, even as Amazon does not have a commercial localized presence for most of the
territories where these translations have been published in the first place.
By the writing of this report, Amazon foresees a catalog with books in 41 languages, from Afrikaans (with
15,822 titles) to Yiddish (8726), which includes aside from Chinese (166,843) English (44.7 million), German
(25.2 million) or French (2.2 million) also Bulgarian (3,079), Danish (48,175), or Hindi (7,054). Obviously, so
many other languages in which books are currently published are missing, and as a commercial catalog, it
cannot replace the bibliography references of the largest among our libraries.
Nevertheless it seems fair to say that, for the general reader, these commercial databases, not just
Amazon’s, but also those of the respective major online book retailers in the various European countries
relevant for this research, that are a good way of framing what is accessible – or, to use the term of current
professional debates, what is ‘discoverable’ – for the non-expert reader.
With this approach in mind, we have built a “Big Data Table” (BDT) based on our research corpus of close
to 250 authors – of which we fully researched 240, across a dozen of European language -, for our
understanding of what has been recently ‘made available to readers’, across Europe. The selection of
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authors was, similar in 2016 to what we had done earlier, for the 2010 Diversity Report, a mix of bestselling
and award winning writers, front list and mid list, quickly emerging new authors, ‘new rising stars’, as well
as seasoned writers who, as we found out, often enough, had remained well recognized names only among
their domestic readership.
In short, we wanted the kind of mix as that one can expect to find in the literary fiction shelves of a good
bookshop. (For the full details on the methodology, see in the Annex at the end of this report, and our
repository of data tables online at www.cultraltransfers.org.)
After checking which authors, and how many of their works, are available as translations in English,
German, French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Swedish, Polish, Hungarian, Slovenian, Croatian and Czech, this
information was complemented with additional details, such as an author’s gender, or if the work had
initially been published by an international corporate publisher, or an independent, or if it was selfpublished. We added, as categories, if an author was well established only domestically, or also
internationally, if the author had been a recent rising star, or an international mainstream success writer.
And we looked into biography, as we discovered that a significant number of authors, who had qualified to
be picked for our research corpus, had changed his or her cultural or linguistic life context. These
qualifications would allow to checking subsequently on a fairly large variations and patterns that may be
relevant for a better understanding of driving forces relevant for being translated, or not.
In the following, we will document selected findings and patterns from this tracking effort. However, we
will continue to both running queries across the database, and extend it. We will also make the raw data
available to interested researcher.
Fundamental patterns of authors and the translations of their works
Out of the complete list of 240 fully tracked authors, slightly over 10% (27) had five or more titles in 8
scanned languages, of which nearly half write in English (13).
The list of the English language authors included such blockbuster writers as Dan Brown, James
Patterson, or J.K. Rowling, Nobel laureate Alice Munro, as well as erotic fiction star Sylvia Day. But also the
non-English part of the list reflects a similar spectrum, as it includes Japanese Haruki Murakami and
French provocateur Michel Houellebecq, crime writers Andrea Camilleri and Jo Nesbø, Jean Auel’s novels
set in human pre-history, two Nobel Prize winners, Mo Yan and Patrick Modiano, or New Age star Paulo
Coelho. Only a few, Chinese Mo Yan, and Brazilian Paulo Coelho come from other linguistic backgrounds
than those European main languages that we could effectively track.
The distribution by original language is similar to findings in 2010, when we had 11 authors in that top
ranking group, of which 5 wrote in English, and 6 in another language, and so was their mix of background,
styles and languages.
400+ Points
Cumulated values of 50
2016
Cumulated values of 50
2010
Alice Munro
500
Amos Oz
400
Andrea Camilleri
500
Günter Grass
400
Arturo Pérez-Reverte
450
Haruki Murakami
550
Camilla Lackberg
500
Ian McEwan
450
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Diversity Report 2016
Carlos Ruiz Zafon
500
Imre Kertész
450
Dan Brown
550
J. M. Coetzee
400
George R. R. Martin
600
Margaret Atwood
450
Haruki Murakami
600
Milan Kundera
550
Isabel Allende
550
Orhan Pamuk
450
J. K. Rowling
600
Paul Auster
400
James Patterson
550
Salman Rushdie
450
Jean M. Auel
550
Jo Nesbo
600
John Grisham
600
Julian Barnes
500
Kazuo Ishiguro
400
Ken Follett
600
Mario Vargas Llosa
600
Michel Houellebecq
500
Mo Yan
400
Patrick Modiano
450
Paulo Coelho
600
Philip Roth
600
Stephen King
600
Suzanne Collins
400
Sylvia Day
550
Umberto Eco
600
Middle value
535
Middle value
450
The top segment, 2016 and 2010. Authors with 5 or more translated titles in 8 or more of the 12 researched
languages. Authors writing (predominently) in English in red, those in other languages in black.
The full claim of exclusivity that the best translated authors from our corpus stand for, becomes only
visible in a comparison to the group of authors with 5 or more books in 4 to 7 different languages (for most,
including their original language).
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Diversity Report 2016
These authors are still in their majority very broadly recognized literary names, or well established ‘author
brands’ in their country of origin, and beyond. Some can point to hugely bestselling works, notably in crime
(or other ‘genre’) fiction (e.g. Danish Jussi Adler-Olsen, British Pauline Sara Jo „Jojo“ Moyes, or French
Katherine Pancol).
Many are very well known in their country and market of origin, yet not translated across the board with all
of their books – or their success is limited to only a few books. Here we find names like the Catalan Enrique
Vila-Matas, German serial bestseller writers such as Sebastian Fitzek and Walter Moers, or similarly,
Swedish crime author Jan Guillou, as much as Nobel Laureate poet Tomas Tranströmer (or, in 2010,
German Romanian Herta Müller, and Austrian Elfriede Jelinek).
The “authors of success” segment, 2016 and 2010. Authors with 5 or more translated titles in 1 or 2 of the 12
researched languages.
200 to 350 points
Cumulated
values of 50
2016
Cumulated values
of 50
2010
Alan Bennett
200
Agota Kristof
200
Amin Maalouf
350
Alessandro Baricco
250
Antonio Muñoz Molina
250
Amin Maalouf
250
Christina Lauren
(Christina Hobbs and
Lauren Billings)
300
Andrea Camilleri
300
Enrique Vila-Matas
250
Anna Gavalda
350
Gianrico Carofiglio
250
Antonio Munoz Molina
200
Guillaume Musso
350
Arthur Miller
250
Hilary Mantel
200
Arturo Pérez-Reverte
300
Jan Guillou
250
Barbara Delinsky
200
John Banville (Benjamin
Black)
350
Bernhard Schlink
300
Jojo Moyes
350
Boris Pahor
200
Jonathan Franzen
300
Claudio Magris
200
Jussi Adler-Olsen
300
Colleen McCullough
300
Katherine Pancol
350
Dacia Maraini
200
Kristina Ohlsson
250
Doris Lessing
350
Leonard Cohen
300
Eduardo Mendoza
300
Pierre Lemaitre
200
Elfriede Jelinek
350
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Diversity Report 2016
Rafael Chirbes
250
Enrique Vila-Matas
200
Sarah Lark (pen name)
250
Fatima Mernissi
200
Sebastian Fitzek
250
Herta Müller
300
Stefano Benni
200
Ismail Kadare
250
Tatiana de Rosnay
200
Jamaïca Kincaid
200
Tomas Tranströmer
250
Javier Marías
250
Walter Moers
250
Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio
200
John Banville
250
Jorge Semprún
250
José Saramago
350
Joyce Carol Oates
350
Juan Goytisolo
200
Liza Marklund
200
Magda Szabó
200
Mercè Rodoreda
250
Michal Viewegh
200
Michel Houellebecq
250
Per Olov Enquist
200
Peter Carey
250
Peter Esterházy
350
V.S. Naipaul
200
Average
253
Average
Average
269
Again, the lists for both 2016 and for 2010, are rich in their variety of style and target audiences. The list
contains, other than the very top segment, also authors writing in more peripheral languages, like
Hungarian (Magda Szabó), Albanian (Ismal Kadaré), Czech (Michal Viewegh, Slovenian (Boris Pahor) or
Catalan (Enrique Vila-Matas, who could add a fifth language with five or more books since 2010).
And yet, their presence is far from being paramount, across all markets and languages. Most likely, only
some of their books have passed all hurdles of publishers’ acceptance (which might be the case for a
literary global star such as Jonathan Franzen, who in 2016 is present in just 6 out of 12 languages with a
broad selection of his works).
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Diversity Report 2016
Drilling further down in the “Big Table” of our research, to those author with five or more books available in
at least one language (mostly the one they write in), yet not more than three, highlights strikingly how even
considerable recognition at home does not necessarily brings about broad success abroad.
This group, for 2016, figures locally lauded literary writers (French Matthias Enard, winner of the Goncourt
in 2015, Dutch A. F. Th. van der Heijden, Austrian Robert Menasse, or German Uwe Tellkamp, alongside
initially self-published genre authors like German Nine George and Oliver Plötzsch). A similar mix could be
found in this segment in 2010. (See the full table in the Annex)
Patterns of translation, by language groups
As we have argued already in our previous reports, especially in the Diversity Report 2010, cultural markets
in general, and more specific sectors such as translated books of fiction, or literature, are not a level
playing field at all.
Instead we must recognize an environment in which not just a few top bestsellers dwarf all other
published books and authors. A cascading system emerges, in which a few languages hugely predominate
over all others, while hardly any benevolent support instrument has sufficient leverage for impacting on the
mechanics at the core of the market, its gatekeepers and, certainly, what a larger reading audience is
prepared to welcome. (See for the complete data tables, broken out by original language groups, in the
Annex)
The ‘big’ languages
Expectedly, authors writing in one of today’s predominant original languages, when it comes to translations
– in our approach, this group includes English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, plus Chinese and
Japanese – have a significant advantage in bringing their works to a wide international audience.
Of our 161 authors in this group, 38 have 5 or more books in at least 4 languages (including the original).
This includes
The ‘established literary elite’, such as Haruki Murakami, Mario Vargas Llosa, Philip Roth, Alice Munro,
Julian Barnes, Kazuo Ishiguro, Jonathan Franzen, Mo Yan:
Well established literary authors, with a broad body of work, with most new books to be almost
automatically translated, as at least in most of the larger markets, a well-established literary branded
publisher would take care of their entire creative output;
The top branded authors of big mainstream success, such as George R.R. Martin, J.K. Rowling, John
Grisham, Jean M. Auel, Michel Houellebeq, Suzanne Collins, Sylvia Day et al.
This includes authors of ‘genre’ fiction, from young adult to fantasy and erotica, who by their brand
recognition, and sales figures, increasingly operating as any other internationally recognized branded
content (e.g. movies, musical entertainment, games) with synchronized global product launches, and
commercial strategies beyond the book, across all entertainment media formats and channels;
Around half of these most pervasive authors are present in any book market that claims to be well
connected with the international content, or ‘cultural’, industries and fancies. In this group, hardly any
differences prevail between the one dozen European language markets which we have analyzed.
However, as soon as one is looking beyond those most broadly recognized 20 or 30 writers, a second
pattern becomes visible: In the smaller Central and East European markets, only selected books of even a
well-established author gets acquired for translation, and those who do not have a clearly recognizable
label fit for ‘branding’ can find themselves omitted altogether.
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Diversity Report 2016
British Howard Jacobson, winner of the Man Booker Prize in 2010 with the novel “The Finkler Question”,
has subsequently been translated across the board.
German Walter Moers, who had started out as a graphical artist and storyteller for children, before his
work became exuberant, with wildly meandering characters, stories and illustrations, aiming more at an
adult literary audience, became astoundingly popular with many translations into English, French, Italian –
and Slovene (with 5 or more titles translated respectively), yet only a couple of books available in
Hungarian, while we could not identify any translations into Swedish or Croatian.
Juli Zeh, an outspoken essayist and commentator, aside from her writing of fiction, and an author
appearing in various media and travelling tirelessly, has found a foothold for some of her books almost in
all the markets we had looked at.
Similarly, French writing Algerian author and journalist Kamel Daoud (with his novel “Meursault, contreenquête “, and multiple commentaries and essays around the topics of Islam and migration) could find
resonance in most of Western Europe, yet without crossing into Central Europe.
Books earning a wide resonance must not necessarily compromise in ambition, though a mix of being
“clever, complicated , wise” – as the Booker Prize chairman Sir Andrew Motion had characterized
Jacobson’s winning “Finkler Questions” – seems to help.
However, undisputed quality alone can lead to clear limitations, it seems. German Uwe Tellkamp’s “Der
Turm” (“The Tower”, much acclaimed winner of the German Book Price in 2008, and published by
prestigious independent publisher Suhrkamp), a novel about the well cultured society in Socialist German
Democratic Republic during the last years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, had clearly become a literary
“must read” in Germany, a well-reviewed book when it came out in English, or French or Italian – but was
not embraced at all by the publishers in much of Central Europe.
Self-published authors have become an option in many countries and languages, with reading
communities surging around some writers in big ways. But even very big names in some markets, even in
the English language (A.G. Riddle, or also Oliver Pötsch’ “Henkerstochter”/”Hangman’s Daughter”), or
German (Hanni Münzer’s “Honigtot”) hardly traveled well so far.
The languages of Central and Southeast Europe
In 2010, we already had executed a similar tracking exercise, based on a corpus of around 200 authors
across a dozen European languages. This included 48 authors writing in languages from Central and
Southeast Europe, including notably Albanian, Croatian, Czech, Estonian, Hungarian, Lithuanian, Polish,
Slovak, and Slovenian, (summarized as CEE) to which we added another 22 writers in 2016, and assuming
that most of the translated books from 2010 would still be accessible to readers.
In the 2010 tracking, we had included several literary well recognized writers, like Milan Kundera, Imre
Kertész, Peter Esterházy, or Ismail Kadare, who indeed had numerous books translated in the majority of
the larger as well as in the CEE markets. But already we could identify that translations into CEE became
much more coincidental, for authors who had not a premier recognition in the West.
Very well-established, and broadly recognized writers in a literary sense, such as Slovenians Boris Pahor
and Drago Jancar, Hungarian Peter Nadás, Polish Andrzej Stasiuk, or Czech Jáchym Topol, had only a few
books translated across CEE, and also not in all Western European languages.
Authors remained anonymous even as in a few territories they were broadly recognized as intermediaries
between East and West, like Hungarian György Dalos, or young rising stars like Sarajevo based Miljenko
Jergovic, has been touring innumerous literary festivals, especially in Germany, where all of his books had
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Diversity Report 2016
found a publisher.
The precarious pattern was even more elusive as, in 2016, we checked on CEE writers with a certain
domestic prestige – which had brought them to the attention of the jury of the European Literature Prize at
least. But hardly any of their books found a path beyond their native tongue and readership.
The Scandinavian phenomenon
It is interesting to compare the main languages, and the more peripheral CEE languages with yet another
category, that is Scandinavia.
As we have shown in our earlier reports, “big” languages” have been contrasted in earlier debates with
“smaller” ones. By number of native speakers, Scandinavia, and Iceland, would certainly qualify in the
smaller category, with around 9 million speakers of Swedish, 6 million for Danish, 5 million for Norwegian,
and 320,000 for Icelandic.
The phenomenon of “Nordic” crime thrillers, and most recently, other successful writing, as we discussed
it in more detail in an earlier chapter of this report, resulted in a complete reversal. The books from the
Nordic superstars are following a pattern familiar from the top English language sellers, whose books are
dealt with in the highest professional ways that big marketing allows today, with book launches
synchronized internationally, and backed up with huge promotional campaigns.
What at first had been the privilege of the likes of Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell, and subsequently
of Jo Nesbø, is now almost a standard procedure for half a dozen more – including immediate translations
across CEE. The pattern also works for the higher classes of literary, as illustrated by Finnish-Estonian Sofi
Oksanen, since her debut novel, “Purge”, had taken her to an outstanding status in the relevant professional
circles.
However, the driving power of the Nordic wave stops here. The windfall could not help in more meaningful
ways to bring about translations for winners of the European Literature Prize, highlighted by their countries’
national juries. Their work has not traveled, not to CEE, despite their publishers’ strong involve with the
Prize per se, nor to the larger markets in the West.
As we will explore in more depth in this report in the chapter on European grants dedicated to translation,
the usual policy efforts of “affirmative action” do work as momentous impulses, as is an intention of any
award or grant, yet hardly ever succeed such actions in triggering a more sustainable, long term impact. In
the long run, the ‘market’, or the established gatekeepers, or a combination of both seem to prevail. At least,
this is the case as far as the traditional players in publishing are concerned. It will be interesting to find out
if the current transformation of the entire business with cultural content and media which have only started
in the past several years, will have a deeper impact at some point.
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Diversity Report 2016
Translation as a European project: The role of
subsidies and grants. Case study EU grants
An excessively quoted utterance by Umberto Ecco says that "translation is the
language of Europe”. On the background of an ever-increasing trade within the
Union, the creation of new jobs, and the reorganisation of business practices,
one may ask whether equivalent processes can be found in the way that
language-based industries in Europe such as publishing interact. And
furthermore: how exactly is this new emerging transnational and panEuropean communication through literature influenced by the existing
European policies in literature and translation.
The purpose of this chapter is to sketch some observations on the influence of two EU-supported
instruments on the literary diversity in Europe, namely the grants for literary translations and the European
Union Prize for Literature (EUPL). It must be emphasized however that the analysis here is not meant to
offer an impact evaluation of these instruments in the strict sense of the word, as such an evaluation
would require a much wider research base1.
Grants for translations under the Creative Europe Programme
In its own terms, the EU-funded grants scheme is aimed to support “cultural and linguitic diversity”,
“transnational circulation of high quality literary works”, and “access”to reach new audiences2. Within these
general aims, additional priorities focus on wide accessibility, the use of digital technologies, the visibility
of the literary translators and sustainability in a long run. Special encouragement is given to translations
from lesser-used languages into “big”ones, and to EUPL winning books. The grants programme defines
Europe beyond the political borders of the Union to encompass also countries that are not Union members,
but eligible for Creative Europe Programme. These include EFTA countries, but also Serbia, Turkey, Bosnia
& Herzegovina, Macedonia, Albania, etc. and since recently, Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine3. This extended
notion of defining Europe in cultural and historical rather than in bureaucratic and political terms, is a major
achievement of the funding programme, but at the same time poses special challenges in managing this
diversity (see below).
Like any support scheme, the EU grants are a particular kind of intrusion into the publishing industry’s
mechanisms, that are aimed to compensate for deficiencies of the market: automatic points and program
priorities interfere with, or exist next to, editorial and marketing departments’judgements in publishing
houses, and for the EUPL winners, an external, non-publishing body largely undertakes author’s promotion.
EU grants scheme 2013-2015
There are many ways conceivable of how to look at, and interpret, the EU-grants’ results. We chose here to
focus on the languages of translation, both source and target, and only briefly touch upon other intriguing
aspects such as the profiles and policies of the winning publishers, the size of the grants, formats (as for
instance if also ebooks have been included), or genres, authors and titles, etc. Statistical data and
correlations are drawn on the basis of the grants programme results published by EACEA4, the EU agency
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Diversity Report 2016
that manages Creative Europe. Interviews with five EULP prize-winning authors were held in the period
December 2015 to May 2016.
An increasing diversity of source languages of translations
Reportedly, Europe translates more than the rest of the world together, but the Anglo-Saxon publishers in
the UK and the US produce way more new titles per annum than those in other European languages.
Consequently, while Europe today translates much more in comparison with 20 years ago, English is
nowadays the source language of roughly two out of each three translated books. The tendency in EU
grants for the last three years is, if not completely the opposite, of a growing presence of books written in
“non-mainstream”languages.
English still has a very strong presence as a language of the original of the funded books, with 222 titles in
the last three years, but it has come down a long way from a previous “the winner takes it all”position, and
its numbers are decreasing each year. French rates second with 159 titles, followed by German (138),
Italian (107) and Spanish (90). All other European languages combined have risen from the modest 44% of
all funded titles to the current share of 63% in the latest results from 2015. Still, as a recent analysis by the
Budapest Observatory, which had been entitled playfully as the “1011 Translations”has pointed out, “the
huge majority (of the titles funded in 2014-2015) are books born in the centre (i.e. originally written in big
languages such as English, French or German), to be translated to the readers in the peripheries”5.
A surfacing “periphery”?
The metaphor of periphery stands here for all source languages that are not English, French, German,
Spanish or Italian, that is to say - the ones that usually form a mere 5 to 10% of all translations into a given
European country. These languages are “peripheral” in very different ways as we have seen from the
analysis of the chapter on European bestsellers in this report.
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Diversity Report 2016
As we can see from the above chart, the requirements of the donors’ and the publishers’wishes happily
meet when translations from Polish and Dutch are concerned. The group of the most present source
languages is formed by three from Eastern Europe (Polish, Czech, Hungarian), together with Dutch as well
as two Nordic languages (Norwegian and Danish). Interestingly, in most of the top source languages’
groups, a great variety of authors can be recognized. With the exception of the EUPL prize-winners that are
in a super privileged position (see below), all other authors are present with one to maximum three works
translated in different languages. The ones with more than one title are:
From Polish: Mariusz Szczygieł, Olga Tokarczuk, Szczepan Twardoch, Ignacy Karpowicz, Magdalena
Tulli
From Dutch: Arnon Grunberg, Dimitri Verhulst, Herman Koch, Jan van Mersbergen, Stefan Hertmans.
From Czech: Jáchym Topol, Emil Hakl, Jiří Weil, Kateřina Tučková
The presence of Norwegian among the top source languages is largely due to Karl Ove Knausgaard who,
with the nine titles, or volumes, of his memoir, defeats even the EULP winners. Other Norwegians with more
than one title supported are Jo Nesbø, Knut Hamsun, Maria Parr, Karin Fossum, Roy Jackobs, Per
Petterson.
The position of Hungarian among the top five of the “small” languages is heavily defined by one author
without EULP support, yet vast recognition among international publishers, László Krasznahorkai, who has
seven titles in translation. Still, among his translations only one is into Swedish, all the rest are into fellowEast European languages. Otherwise, we also recognize a sharp rise of translations from Dutch (from 14 to
33 titles within just three years), Icelandic (up from 3 to 12 titles), and Turkish (up from 1 to 14).
Looking at the other end of the ranking, it becomes clear that, if not for the European Union Literature
Prize, certain source languages and their authors have negligible chances to appear in translation. For
example, in the list of funded translations those from Maltese, Bosnian and Montenegrin are only of EULP
winning books, all but one from Latvian and the majority from Bulgarian and Macedonian. In other words, if
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Diversity Report 2016
not for the encouragement that publishers receive to apply for EULP-winning books, authors from these
languages would hardly get international visibility in translation.
New inequalities
The main beneficiaries of the EU grants clearly are the publishers from Central and Eastern Europe:
Bulgaria, Slovenia, Hungary, Serbia, Macedonia, Croatia, Albania and Poland all have more than 50 titles
funded over the period of three years. Alongside them, two countries in the European South are also in the
top 10 of recipients: Italy (with 108 titles) and Spain (with 71). In most cases a recipient country here
equals a target language, as most of these countries have but one main official national language. In Spain
there are few instances of translations into Catalan.
The obvious questions to be asked is therefore: Why are publishers from Central and (South) East
European countries so successful in winning grants for translations into their languages, –and so despite
the clearly expressed intention of the EU Programme organizers for funding, in reverse, translations from
“small” into “big” languages? Are these languages generally more receptive for other cultures? Or are they
more better willing to filling-in application documents to extend their financial means? Do they have less
funding opportunities from their own governments’ public money? Or simply, are these successful
recipients in more dire need for cash that is not generated from book-sales, given their smaller audiences
of on average only 2 to 10 million speakers of their language? Without a more in-depth research, all of these
explanations remain speculative shots in the dark. It is also true that publishing grants for this part of the
world are lower than for the more well-off countries so that the percentage of funded projects does not
necessary equal respective high absolute amounts of funding money going into these countries. In other
word’s, economic inequalities play a greater role in the multilingual, translating Europe than we usually
admit.
Even without such further references to the wider context, staying within the logic of the grants
programme itself, we can identify probably one pattern in the success-rates of the various countries and
languages, which has little to do with language combinations, or the size of a language, but with the
presence of EULP authors.
The success rate correlates with the level of applications coming from certain countries’ publishers,
together with the percentage of EULP winning books that are included in their submissions. In short, grants
go to CEE publishers, and to Italy, because they publish the most prize-winners. Spanish, on the other hand,
is taking advantage of its position as a global language, being a successful applicant without comforting to
the promotion of the EU Prize.
Globalization and the grants
The advance of technologies, the appearance of global platforms, and the current transformation of the
publishing business can be noticed even in the traditionally more conservative domain of literary
translations. On the background of the lack of enthusiasm in applying for “lesser-used” literatures on the
part of publishers in the UK, France or Germany/Austria, the “periphery” strikes back, by reaching out to
international audiences out of its own offices. We see that literary translation flows into the big three
languages of Europe are more frequently initiated by players located outside the “centre”:
Place of publication of EU-funded translations 2013-2015
Into English
In UK, France or Germany/Austria
Outside of the main country of the target
language
30
22
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Diversity Report 2016
Into French
12
1
Into German
17
7
Total
59
30
Understandably, the 22 titles into English produced outside of the UK are translations from
“small”languages: Greek, Dutch, Slovene and accidentally, Bulgarian. Most active publishers in that respect
are the truly global Wordleditions, based in the Netherlands, and the Association of Slovene Writers in
Slovenia.
There is also the notable innovative initiative Hispabooks that publishes Spanish translations into English
out of its Madrid office for worldwide readers. Most of the translations into German are made out of Greek.
Just up until few years ago, the rationality of such noble attempts to compensate for the “3%” problem
would have appeared questionable. Nowadays, though, just a random search at global retailers’ sites
shows that most of these titles are available for shipment or download anywhere in the world. (See for
additional details on Hispabooks in the chapter on ‘new initiatives’ in this report.)
Regionalisms and grants
Indeed, for the last three years, the most common language combinations funded with EU grants are from
centre to the peripheries: French to Bulgarian, English to Serbian, German to Hungarian, etc. But at the list
of the grant recipients we see preferences towards intra-regional literary communication, mainly within the
CEE/the Balkans as well as within the European North (including Baltic countries).
The European Union Prize for Literature (EUPL)
The Prize was set up in 2009 by the initiative of the European Commission and
is since then managed - with EU funds, by a consortium comprising of the
European and International Booksellers Federation (EIBF), the European
Writers' Council (EWC) and the Federation of European Publishers (FEP). Each
year, about a dozen of eligible countries are selected on a rotation basis, and
national juries make the selection. Winning authors are awarded with a check,
a big ceremony in Brussels, sample translations into English or French and are
getting visibility at promotional events around Europe.6
There is a certain dissonance throughout the years in the ways that the nature and the scope of the Prize
have been described by its very organizers: As an award for “best books”, for “emerging authors”, or for
“young writers”. It is also often misread, especially by the media and its audiences, as the grand prix for the
best European author.
Source
Target
Number of titles
Bulgarian
Macedonian
7
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Diversity Report 2016
Source
Target
Number of titles
Croatian
Hungarian
5
Serbian
Slovene
5
Polish
Bulgarian
8
Hungarian
Montenegrin
3
Croatian
Bulgarian
10
Nevertheless, by definition the EUPL is in fact a prize for emerging European authors, and its rationale is in
putting European literary diversity in focus, and in stimulating translations.
Up until 2016, 83 European authors have got the prize. Their profile is as diverse as European literature
itself: in their stylistics, age, level of recognition, etc. Some are really young and up-coming, while others are
already visible both in their home countries and abroad. For example, the 2009 winner Paulus Hochgatterer
(Austria) had received the prize for his ninth work of fiction, and after having received a number of other
awards beforehand. Marente de Moor (Netherlands) with De Nederlandse maagd in 2014 has had a
previous translation into German by the prestigious publisher Suhrkamp in both hardcover and paperback.
Jacek Dukaj (Poland) was a celebrated science-fiction author with an already significant recognition in
Poland, before getting the prize in 2009. The great variations in authors’ styles and careers, in the books
themselves reflect also the differences in the interpretation of the criteria and the aim of the prize at
national level, and the variations in the local literary dynamics within a given year.
A major difference between the EU Literature Prize and other known prizes for literature, is that is is
closely tied up with the EU grants scheme. For each book whose author has won the EU Prize for Literature,
the applying publisher is granted automatic points that give its application great advantage over other
projects and authors. As a consequence of this specific affirmative action, the more EULP winners
publishers from a given country include in their projects, the higher the country is in the grant-recipients
ranking (see chart above).
This does not mean, of course, that other titles or publishers would have no reasonable chance of getting
community support, but the results of the grants scheme are clear-cut: EULP titles constituted a mere 6%
of all funded titles in 2011 and then their number dramatically raises to 32% in 2015. There are publishers
that are so fond of the prize, that they include excessively EULP winners in their editorial lists: Balkani
Publishers and Elias Canetti Society (Bulgaria), Pivec Publishers (Slovenia), Ars Lamina and Goten
(Macedonia), Ljevak (Croatia), Mim Edizioni and Pietro del Vecchio (Italy), Fan Noli (Albania), Jagyelonian
University Press (Poland), Bokbyen Forlag (Norway).
The prize blurbs the differences between East and West, big and small, poor and rich - all winning authors
are equally solicited by applying/granted publishers. Its impact on the writers’ careers in translation is
most visible for the ones whose languages are rarely present at the international literary scene, as they
come from places such as Malta, Montenegro, Cyprus, Albania. Backed-up by the affirmative action
towards projects with prize-winners, the EULP makes visible the existence of literary production in these
languages. It also stimulates publishers to step into brand new language areas. It is to be seen, however, if,
once that publishers have ventured in these new literary territories, they will revisit the region, and bring
subsequent translations by other authors from there.
Mirroring the general picture of target languages in the grants scheme, translations of EULP winners are
mostly into Central and East European languages, and into Italian. The ratio here is dramatically telling: out
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of the 371 titles in the period 2010-2015, a whole 303 are into CEE languages! From the remaining 68, 29
are into Italian. In other words, being awarded the EU Prize guarantees authors from any language a great
exposure in the lesser-used languages of Bulgarian, Croatian, Serbian, Macedonian, Slovene, Hungarian,
etc. The rare cases of translations into French, English or German are most often done by publishers
located in the country of the original. A true exception is the UK-based Istros Books that for some years
now is consistently introducing Balkan literatures to English-speaking readers.
Among the prize-winners, there are authors with eight or more translations made with help from the
grants scheme: Tomáš Zmeškal, Ioana Pârvulescu, Gabriela Babnik, Peter Terrin, Paulus Hochgatterer,
Anna Kim, Marica Bodrožić, Rodaan Al Galidi, Carl Frode Tiller, Evie Wyld.
A fully closed circle becomes visible: Books get the EULP, and are subsequently funded by community
grants to publishers who are getting the grants because they propose EULP winners. But the Prize surely
has wider ambitions then to simply encouraging publishers to apply for subsidies. If an average of 60% of
all the translation rights sold from EULP winning authors are subsided, what would be the prize’s impact on
an authors’ careers in translation?
EULP’s influence on domestic sales and popularity in the author’s country of origin is unexplored and not
a subject of the study here. The scarce evidence from authors’ interviews and random media observations
in different EU countries suggest that getting the EUPL is not a decisive factor for a literary career, within
one’s own country. As for the impact on international popularity beyond the grants’“affirmative action”, the
evidences are implausible and their interpretation is controversial. There is no pattern to be established as
there are no recipes on what makes a writer to be noted. By getting the EULP, all writers benefit from
promotional campaigns that aim at putting them into the spotlight: They come as invitations to book-fairs
and book launches, as well as festival appearances, in forms that seem to be hardly connected to other
networks in Europe that are feeding into the programmes of festivals and other literary gatherings.
In our analysis, we could not establish any direct link between the EU prize and the translation trajectory
of an author, a winning title or other works by the same author. One reason for this is the information on
the EULP website is not very precise: it lists rights’options provided for a certain winning title but not
finalised deals or actual facts of publication. Hence, the numerous translation rights listed as “sold”for
each individual prize winner, signify publisher’s intentions rather then effectively concluded translation
deals.
The listings also include deals made before the receipt of the award. For example, Gallimard has indeed
published the winners Peter Terrin and Imanuell Mifsud while the Polish author P. Pazinski’s rights are
listed with French publisher Gallimard, but no such publication is available so far. The German rights of
Emanuel Trevi (Italy) have also not led to a publication. On the other hand, “The Longshore Drift” (winner in
2009) as well as other books by the Irish Karen Gillece are published in German before she had received the
EULP.
Another side effect of the grants programme’s “affirmative action” for the EULP is that some languages
and territories remain blocked for years as a publisher, usually from a “smaller” language territory, has
optioned a right , but, not getting the grant, never produced a translation.
These shortfalls are mostly exceptions rather than a general rule, but when checking the translation rights
situation of each of the EULP winning titles, another pattern becomes visible: EULP winners are rarely
admitted in the group of the Big Three - English, French and German, and if they are at all, the entry works
almost exclusively for authors from Western Europe. The list of non-funded translations into German of
prize winners is a very short one: Kristian Foos and Karl Frodde Tiller (by btb/Bertelsmann), Emanuel
Pagano (by German independent publisher Wagenbach, yet published before the prize), Kevin Barry (by
German Klett-Gotta). Translations into French are the most numerous: Peter Terrin and Imanuell Mifsud
(Gallimard), Kristian Bang Foss (Nil), Kevin Barry and Emanuel Trevi and Evie Wyls (Actes Sud), Daniele del
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Diversity Report 2016
Guidice and Ioana Parvulescu (Editions Le Seuil), Carl Tiller (Edición Stock), Çiler İlhan (Galaade), Adam
Fould (Piranha). The list for English and UK-based publishers is much shorter: Istros Books for the East
Europeans, and MacLehose Press for Peter Terrin.
The big exception from this rule is Goce Smilevski. Although well-known in his home country of
Macedonia as well as throughout the Balkans, the EU Literature prize that he received in 2010 for Сестрата
на Зигмунд Фројд (Sigmund Freud's Sister) had truly skyrocketed his career in translation. Among all CEE
prize-winners, Sigmund Freud’s Sister is the book with the highest number of translations, and also the
highest share of non-funded editions.
While Smilevski’s earlier book, “Conversations with Spinoza”, was published ten years earlier into the US,
the Penguin edition of “Freud’s Sister” came only after the EULP, and was quickly followed by French and
German translations. Moreover, a German translation of his first work is forthcoming, and a French
translation is in a second editions. The EULP site lists also rights’ deals for Korea, Israel, India as well as
Arabic. In other words, Smilevski’s international trajectory can be a benchmark for assessing EULP’s
effects: an author in his 40s, coming from the literary “periphery” of Europe, writing about globally
recognizable references (Freud, Spinoza), gets the EU prize for his second book, and becomes quickly
noticed across the continent, and overseas, to the point of being reviewed by Joyce Carol Oates in the New
York Review of Books.
Translations of Smilevski, Goce: Freud’s Sister (EULP winning book of 2010)
year of publication
language
publisher
EU funding
2011
Italian
Guanda
no
2012
English
Penguin
no
2012
Slovene
Cankarieva zalozba
no
2012
Czech
Odeon
no
2012
Hungarian
Libri
yes
2013
Croatian
Zapresic
yes
2013
Bosnian
Buybook
no
2013
Bulgarian
Colibri
yes
2013
French
Bellfond
no
2013
German
Matthes & Seitz
no
2013
Spanish
Alfaguara
no
2013
Turkish
Nemesis
no
2013
Portuguese (Brasil)
BERTRAND DO BRASIL
no
2013
Romanian
Polirom
no
2014
Polish
WAB
no
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Diversity Report 2016
year of publication
language
publisher
EU funding
2014
Dutch
Ambo
no
2015
French
Bellfond (in a different translation from
2013)
no
forthcoming
forthcoming
Serbian
yes
Case study Austria
Many, if not most European countries spend public money through national programs to support literary
translations. In addition, various private organizations, usually foundations, add support and money in a
similar vocation of making literary works accessible to readers in other languages.
Frameworks of translation grants
Usually, the programs have a policy to be wide open, and unspecific, in order not exclude applications for
any formal reasons. As a consequence, no detailed expectations are usually formulated by the sponsors of
the grants, except for the ambition to encourage international publishers to “publish Austrian contemporary
literature in translation”, or to “to promote international familiarity with and distribution of Dutch literature
by subsidizing the costs of translations”. (For Austria, see Kunstbericht 2014 by the Ministry for Culture
and the Arts, for the Netherlands, see NederlandsLetterenfonds)
A number of professional organizations work, and share information, on promoting the importance and
specific value of – particularly literary - translations, and the challenging working conditions of translators.
(See for instance the publications of the European Council of Literary Translators’ Associations, CEATL)
But paradoxically, to the best of our knowledge, no consolidated information is available on how much
European countries spend on these programs altogether. No platform has ever been created to allow
stakeholders such as translators, publishers, or policy makers an overview of available programs. As a
consequence, we cannot reasonably assess what has been achieved by these programs, or what could be
improved.
The criteria for obtaining a grant are mostly unspecific, too. The “quality of a translation” tends to be put
at the center of the selection process, which often requires to submit some written “expertise” (in the case
of Austria), or be listed in a professional register (for Letterenfonds). In many cases, the grant sponsor
requires, or strongly encourages, a publishing contract for the submission, or asks even that submission is
sent by the publisher who plans for a translation.
In our view, the issue of formulating “expectations” is as much critical, as it is ambivalent. Two lines of
conflicting debate are evident, at least.
First, one can argue that a key goal should be to encourage translations into English, and perhaps other
‘transfer’ languages, such as German, French, or to a lesser degree, Spanish. Translations into these
privileged target languages can be helpful in raising visibility for interesting books and their authors also
among many acquiring editors from other languages. Alternatively, it can be argued that translations
between less privileged languages are even more challenged by small target audiences, and print runs, and
should therefore be particularly supported.
Second, keeping criteria for translation grants wide open, and informal, allows submissions of the
‘unexpected’, betting on the ingenuity of the professional community of translators, publishers and
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Diversity Report 2016
specialized experts to find the most relevant works that should qualify. Without more clear criteria, the
grant sponsors can hardly evaluate the impact of their efforts, which makes it hard to justify why public
money is spent on a specific selection of works that received funding. And probably as importantly, it is
hard to promote achievements, and learn how to improve the funding schemes, or the processes.
The analysis of European funding in the previous chapter has highlighted the risk of distortion that a lack
of choices, expectations and priorities is eliciting.
For this report, we would therefore appreciate a more differentiated, and therefore more balanced
approach. We want to suggest to splitting the overall budget of a sponsor, between funds to be spent under
a set of clear priorities, and another, open batch.
In addition, we very strongly encourage the creation a directory, or catalogue, of links to dedicated
translation grants, at least throughout Europe, which should be easy to aggregate, at little cost, if
connected, for instance, to one of the leading book fairs.
The example of Austria
Choosing Austria for a case study is due to the pragmatic fact that for this country’s federal government
spending, data have been easily available through the annual reports on subsidies for culture and the arts.
(Kunstbericht; the complete data tables on which our analysis is grounded, are reproduced in the Annex )
To be consistent with the other parts of this report, we had a closer look at translation funding for the
years 2011 to 2014.
Applications must come from the future publisher of a translated work. The criteria are kept wide open, as
discussed above. Decisions are made by the Ministry for Culture and the Arts, and based on qualified
written expertise, for which no detailed requirements are given.
The Kunstbericht for 2014 emphasizes with some pride that spending on literary translation could be
increased from € 100,000 in 2001, to € 224,320 in 2014. The total amount spent in this sector had risen to
an all-time high of 275,150 in 2013.
Year
Total budget for translation grants
Number of supported titles
Ave. Subsidy per title
2011
232.370 €
89
2.611 €
2012
241.345 €
88
2.743 €
2013
275.150 €
99
2.779 €
2014
224.320 €
79
2.839 €
Table: Subsidies spent on literary translations by the Austrian Ministry for Culture and the Arts, 2011 to 2014.
(Source: Kunstbericht 2011 to 2014)
During these four years, translations of a total of 355 titles into 35 languages have been supported. The
top 10 target languages are a bold mix of major Western, and Central European languages, accounting for
69 % of the total. The former are led by English (39 titles, or 11 % of all), Spanish and French. The later
include Bulgarian, clearly the absolute winner with 44 translations (12 %), Polish and Czech (28 each).
Remarkably, Albanian, with 14 funded translations and Finnish with 13, each are ahead of neighboring
Serbian, Croatian, or Slovenian (the last accounting for just 4 subsidized translated books, a surprise in
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view of Austria’s Slovenian minority and its traditionally strong literary activities; we do not know however,
if translations into Slovenian can benefit from other sources of financial support).
Language
2011
2012
2013
2014
Total
Bulgarian
8
12
11
13
44
English
8
6
14
11
39
Polish
8
8
8
4
28
Czech
7
7
12
2
28
Spanish
6
7
3
10
26
Swedish
9
1
7
4
21
French
5
5
4
5
19
Albanian
3
4
3
4
14
Finnish
2
4
4
3
13
Italian
6
1
3
2
12
5
3
3
11
Croatian
Serbian
3
2
2
4
11
Hindi
3
4
2
1
10
Dutch
2
2
3
2
9
Hungarian
3
2
2
1
8
Ukrainian
1
3
1
3
8
2
3
1
6
Danish
Romanian
3
2
5
Russian
1
2
1
Estonian
1
1
2
1
5
4
Table: Austria. Top 20 translations by language, author and title. Source: Kunstbericht 2011 to 2014, Austrian
Ministry for Culture and the Arts.
A list of subsidies by publishers further highlights that the translation support program by the Austrian
Ministry has a few publishers who are especially successful in their applications. (The annual report of the
Ministry does not reveal data on the number of applications, versus granted subsidies though)
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Diversity Report 2016
Publisher
2011
2012
2013
2014
Total
Thomas Sessler Verlag
1
9
12
13
47
Black Flamingo Publishing
1
5
7
7
20
ShtëpiaBotueseLaholli
2
4
3
4
13
Mehta Amrit
3
4
2
1
10
Ariadne Press
5
1
4
10
Austria: Top 5 recipients of translation subsidies. Source: Kunstbericht 2011 to 2014, Austrian Ministry for
Culture and the Arts.
Five applicants have together won 100 out of the total 355 grants given between 2011 and 2014. Austrian
Thomas Sessler publisher, a house specializing in publishing theatrical plays, accounts for almost half of
the funded translations, followed by Bulgarian Black Flamingo Publishing, and Albanian Shtëpia Botuese
Laholli.
Of the overall 39 translations into English, one out of four (39) have been done by Ariadne Press, small
press targeting the academic German language departments at US universities.
In most languages, a few publishing houses build a dedicated reputation within the book community by
specializing on high quality literary fiction. For the English language, a few of these can be found among
the successful applicants, with US Melville House, and UK MacLehose Press, with 3 titles each.
In Dutch, A. W. Bruna Uitgevers can be found on the list, in Norvegian this is the case for Gyldendal.
orKaligram for Hungarian. But many more among the otherwise tightly connected translation specialists,
like Gallimar or ActesSud in France, Feltrinelli or Einaudi in Italy, Ediciones B in Spain, or Nordstedts in
Sweden, to name just a few, are missing.
As we have emphasized earlier in this report, gatekeepers in the trade with translation rights, like literary
agents and acquiring editors, together with translators and a few academics, are a tightly woven
community in whose mostly informal networks, excitement about authors and their works are ‘made’; or
also often enough neglected.
A similar exchange between funding organizations, including a respective exchange of experiences and
relevant information, does not occur across any nearly effective channels, yet would greatly increase the
effectiveness, and the impact of public money spent in the aim of encouraging, and promoting literary
translations of high quality.
1. In fact, under the previous period of the EU Culture Programme during 2007-13 such an evaluation has been commissioned to
Ecorys for the entire Culture Programme. Some of the observations here reiterate partly the findings in Ecorys’s report that is to be
found at: http://bit.ly/28S2fU5
2. http://bit.ly/28PHq7n
3. The list of countries eligible for grants in 2016 is to be found at http://bit.ly/28ZhLe3
4. for 2014 and 2015 at http://bit.ly/28PI30V; for the preceding years - http://bit.ly/28PMmu5
5. http://bit.ly/28XXAw0
6. http://www.euprizeliterature.eu
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Re-thinking, re-organizing and re-directing
translation: New initiatives and new models.
In May 2014, BookExpo America in New York had chosen for its Global Market Forum as a theme “Books in
Translation. Wanderlust for the Written Word”.1
The state of affairs with regard to literary translations was the topic of the opening panel of the one day
conference, with speakers including the late Carol Brown Janeway, one of the most renowned editors and
translators in US publishing, Susan Harris, a co-founder of www.wordswithoutborders.org, an influential
website promoting translations into English, Vladimir Grigoriev, a former publisher and deputy head of
Russia’s government agency dedicated for the publishing sector, and Joel Dicker, the then rising star
author of Swiss origins, whose debut novel the “Harry Quebert Affair” was about to become one of the most
lauded international novels of that year. The discussion opened with a surprisingly unanimous consensus
that translation had recently become a winning affair in very diverse parts of the book industry, and book
culture.
This was ever more astounding as particularly in the United States and in Great Britain, it had been
considered as conventional wisdom, shared by many book professionals that “translations don’t sell”, and
that as a consequence, publishers in their vast majority would be particularly hesitant to engage in such
affairs.
One number had become proverbial to characterize the odd situation. Translations would account for just
3 percent of all books published in the English language. “Three Percent” had even become the branded
name of an initiative by Chad Post at the University of Rochester in 2007, dedicated to the promotion of
translation, and soon to respective research, too. (For more details on the approach, in Chad Post’s own
words, see his book “The Three Percent Problem”)
3% translations among all titles released in a language is indeed a fraction of the 12 to 18% in countries
like France or Germany, or even more in some markets in Central Europe. (For more details, see the chapter
on Translation Markets in this report)
In a more recent report by the British market research firm Nielsen Book, it was stated again, and backed
up by much more robust data for 2015, that indeed, 3.5% of all literary fiction, and 1.5% of all books
published in the United Kingdom were translated works. But in sales, these books account for 5 percent of
all purchased units, up 96% from 2001 levels, and without statistics being impacted from some exceptional
blockbuster book, as was Stieg Larsson’s Millennium trilogy five years earlier. (The Bookseller, 6 May 2016)
The more anecdotal assessments of translations thought to getting new steam referred less to statistics,
than anecdotal evidence.
Over the past decades or so, a number of independent publishers, some new, others with a longer history,
had found many new ways to become more visible for both audiences and interested media by building
catalogs, and readers’ communities, around authors and books from abroad.
These include, in a non-exhaustive list, the Dalkey Archive Press, founded in 1984, Melville House, founded
in 2001, New Directions, since 1936, or the US-Italian Europa Editions, since 2005. More recent ventures are
New Vessel Press, launched in 2012, or Open Letter Books, the publishing arm of the above mentioned
Three Percent project.
In 2015 though, according to Chad Post’s Translation Database, new translations had dropped to 503 new
titles, from 597 in the previous year.
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In Britain, MacLehose Press stands for an entirely different path to becoming an independent publisher
specialized in translation. Its founder, Christopher MacLehose, could already look back at a few decades in
that business, as the publisher of Harvill, when that company was sold to corporate Random House, and
MacLehose decided to go for it all by himself in 2008, with “a ground breaking thriller by a little-known
Swedish author called Stieg Larsson” among his very first acquisitions.
Amazon Crossing
“Our motto is ‘Read the World’”, this is how MacLehose summarizes his approach, which, in a way, could
well be a headline, too, at an entirely different new entrant into the arena, “Amazon Publishing”. In late
2015, a headline in The Guardian promised to explain “How Amazon came to dominate fiction in
translation”. (The Guardian, 9 Dec 2015)
A list, again established by Chad Post, with the top 10 (US) publishers of fiction in translation, between
2008 and 2014, only two corporate publishing groups are included, Penguin and Knopf – both now part of
the world’s largest consumer publisher, the merged Penguin Random House, owned by German
Bertelsmann. (Chad Post, Twitter) Together, Penguin and Random House had released 105 translations, as
compared to 125 published by Amazon Crossing, a division of the Internet retailer, exclusively focused on
buying fiction rights for translation into English. In 2015, Amazon Crossing had 75, while Dalkey Archive
accounted for 25, followed by New Directions at 20. (Chad Post, blog post, 6 Dec 2015)
Amazon Crossing’s vocation, backed up by the pledge to earmark $ 10 million to grow the venture from
2016, must not be confounded with the Seattle based giant’s self-publishing services, as their catalog is
curated by a team of editors. However, translations of genre fiction, and a new website asking for
proposals seems to focus on science fiction, fantasy and romance.
Amazon´s publishing unit was launched as Amazon Publishing in 2009 and has several imprints, including
Amazon Crossing, which was launched one year later in May 2010. The translation imprint is publishing
foreign-language books translated into English as paperbacks as well as ebooks. Since 2012, translations
into German were added, and 2015 into French, with Italian expected to be added next.
Amazon Crossing’s first published book was “The King of Kahel” by prix Renaudot-winner Tierno
Monénembo. Global data and book reviews play a big role in choosing the titles as it already did for
Amazon´s first imprint Amazon Encore.
By late 2010, Amazon Crossing had published 200 titles by authors from 29 countries writing in 19
languages. (The Digital Reader, Oct 13, 2015)
In France, Amazon Crossing was criticized by the French Literary Translators Association (ATLF) for their
bidding process and contracts in 2014. (Open Letter to Dean Burnett, May 13, 2014)
One of Amazon Crossing´s best known authors is Germany´s Oliver Pötzsch with the “Hangman’s
Daughter” (“Die Henkerstochter”) series. Three of his “Hangman´s Daughter” books had already been
published in German when Amazon bought the license in 2010 from Ullstein, part of the Swedish Bonnier
publishing group. The enormous amount of positive reader-feedback caught Amazon’s attention to the
Bavarian book series. The Chinese publisher Yilin Press bought the license as well shortly after the books
became Amazon´s first real bestseller. Pötzsch´s first book sold 100.000 times the first month and hit #3
of the USA Today’s bestseller list. According to Amazon Crossing publisher Sarah Jane Gunter the book
“has sold more than 1m copies” so far. (The Guardian, December 9, 2015)2
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Re-thinking and re-directing
Those who re-think and re-direct an old trade must not necessarily be big, or even have fantasies of
becoming paramount at some point. Much of the business of publishing, in general, is about specializing,
segmenting, in other words, crafting elements in novel ways, and re-think how to cater the content, the
books, the stories, to very specific audiences, by taking advantage of the new means provided by
technology, new communication and new community services.
In the following, we will certainly not pretend of rolling out any authoritative panorama of the manifold
approaches that are currently developed and rolled out. Such an overview would be, of course, highly
desirable, and productive. But building such a crossroads of information and actors is far beyond the
capacities of this report (as was already the simpler, also desirable directory of funding organizations
focusing on supporting literary translation). Instead, we want to identify a few exemplary innovative actors
and approaches, to gauge the territory that we want to refer to.
Amazon in its effort to covering each and every step in the value chain of publishing is not alone. Many
others, mostly much smaller enterprises, are on to exploring how books can reach readers beyond
yesterday’s limitation of language and territory.
Hispabooks is a Madrid based, 2001 launched Spanish language publisher “specializing in contemporary
Spanish fiction in English-language translation. The list of titles includes rising talents and newcomers
alongside established authors, many of them winners of the most prestigious Spanish literary awards and
translated into many languages, and now for the first time into English.” Aside from being a professional
publisher, Hispabooks’ founder Ana Pérez builds a bridge not just between two countries, or languages, but
between two cultural universes – the Hispanic side, which includes four co-official languages (Castilian,
Catalan, Basque and Galician), and the English language, with populations so different as the native English
readers, and various expats with Hispanic origins. (See an interview exploring these dimensions at
Asymptote, 3 Feb 2016)
Connecting unfamiliar translated authors, texts, and contexts is the vocation of the already highlightedd
online journal of www.wordswithoutborders.org, a New York based initiative, deeply anchored among
traditional publishing professionals on the one end, and cultural, as well as more specifically literary
mediators from around the world. Founded in 2003, this community taps into the most prestigious
institutions and individuals that this trade encompasses, as much as novices that for the first time reach
an audience beyond their initial communities, as exemplified at the moment of the writing of this report, in
the publication of WWB’s already 7th “Queer Issue” of June 2016.
Asymptote, which above had introduced us to the specific of Hispabooks’ endeavor, is also an online
journal, “dedicated to literary translation and bringing together in one place the best in contemporary
writing”, but with a more formal connection to the professionals who are behind the workings of
translation.
The business of translation is quite another story. Traditionally, everyone thinks “trade of subsidiary
rights” at first, a business held tightly by what we have labeled earlier in this report as “gatekeepers” – the
professionals from literary agencies, and the acquiring editors and rights directors of traditional publishing
companies. These traders have mostly operated out of only a few harbors, like London, New York, Zurich,
and eventually Berlin, Paris, or perhaps Stockholm, focusing primarily on less than one dozen key markets
in Western Europe and North America. Then China has become the hottest buying market, and a few more
emerging economies, mostly Brazil, have triggered phantasies of globalization – which recently have
cooled off though terribly.
By 2016, the perspective on ‘global rights’ has become complicated, to say the least. On the top level, a
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few agents, and a few globalized publishing corporations, basically the Big Five (see the chapter on
Bestsellers in this report), aim at building networks of paramount exploitation. The example of Stieg
Larsson and others have always hinted at much smaller, versatile local, independent publishers having still
an important role to play, even in this high risk sector.
But when “rights and licenses” often are seen as the only imminent sector of growth in traditional
publishing, this implies to also cater to smaller markets and communities who had been considered as
marginal for long. Since the early 2000s, numerous efforts to create trading platforms, or clearinghouses,
to facilitate such commercial operations have been introduced, and finally failed.
Today, once again, several initiatives compete, notably US based PubMatch, and the initially UK based
platform IPRLicense, which has been recently acquired by the Frankfurt Book Fair.
The relevant part for this study is however, that the trade in what used to be “translation rights” rapidly is
broken up into selling of scores of subsidiary rights, by format, language, exploitation model, which all
requires that each participant is technically capable of efficiently managing all those bits and pieces that
can be traded, and subsequently exploited in an increasingly complex, and global, environment of
“intellectual property”. Obviously, this plays to the advantage of the biggest, corporate actors who can
afford such an exercise.
On the other end of the scale though, a few individual creators – authors, but also others who generate
and disseminate content – can take advantage of very low cost services offering them powerful handles
for managing their assets almost as any big company. Here, a very few aggregators, such as Amazon, with
their overarching platforms, largely define the game.
This creates innumerable niches in which individuals or small organizations can thrive, and innovate,
parts of the game.
Translators have always taken up the role of cultural mediators, and added income as scouts from their
often meager translation fees. The Internet opens the reach of such an extended approach, provided that
not one individual navigates between cultures, and commercial actors, but instead becomes an organizer
of a dedicated professional network. For the intrinsically difficult encounters between China and the West
– or at least, the United States – Paper Republic is one good example for a hub that carries not only
generic cultural insights and overall professional guidance, but much more granular and practical
information based services, including a specific translator directory plus translation samples.
As all these, and many more resources always integrate blogs, forums, and related networked
communication, the lines are blurring between expert advice, promotion, dissemination of both information
and services, as well as even publishing. This trend overlaps with another shift, as traditional publishing
tends to discriminate the more niche offerings, especially in high-brow literature, and in poetry, in
commercial publishing. In those innovative, digital and digital community driven approaches, such
literature is not expected to generate any direct commercial revenue in the first place. Instead, similar to
the fine arts, being published in the appropriate context results in income from grants, and access to
wealthy cultural organizations, rather than from selling books. And at the same time, technical production
costs have dwindled radically, and access to these productions do not at all depend anymore from a
traditional publishers’ competences, distribution contracts, or brand value.
1. Disclosure: Rüdiger Wischenbart, one of the authors of this report, had coordinated the program on behalf of BookExpo America.
2.
More details on Amazon Crossing here: Publishers Weekly, The Guardian, brandeins.de
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Outlook: Challenges and opportunities ahead
The business of books has become more complex and more competitive over the past decade. It is more
global today, as digital has led to different mechanics and processes for publishers big and small, and for
the distribution, too. Huge conglomerates and many smaller independent house both are challenged by
entirely new entrants, led by the Seattle based giant Amazon whose ambition it has become to bring all of
publishing under one organizational roof - and this includes translated works of fiction, too.
Those publishing houses who have built their reputation on the publication of critically acclaimed
literature, together with literary agents as representatives of such special talent, did their best to moving
along as if no such changes had confront their traditional turf with new ways. These publishers and agents
still praise their vocation of connecting the author with the readers, to operate 'as it had always been'.
At closer scrutiny though, each and everyone acknowledges that in literary fiction, average print runs have
significantly fallen in recent years, while advance payments have risen for the few top authors, the pressure
from a few outstanding bestsellers has increased, so that in the end, it has become ever more challenging
to sustain book publishing as a viable business. In this context, the extra cost of a translation, and disputes
about the 'fair' compensation of authors, and also of translators, have added additional risk on that
traditional model for making books, stories and ideas travel across linguistic boundaries.
But this is not to say that everything related to good literature is doom and gloom. Not at all. The past
decade has seen many new initiatives in literary publishing. New, in the meantime fully grown independent
publishers have risen, and become leading names in markets so different as Brazil (Sextante), Poland
(Sonia Draga), or the United Kingdom (MacLehose Press). Some of the new ventures have been recently
acquired by the big corporations (US Perseus, or Quercus in the UK, both by Hachette). But also new
ventures have emerged trying out new approaches, such as Spanish HispaBooks by offering direct
translations from Spanish into English, or manifold digital only, or digital first publishers who see entirely
new ways of bringing technology to the benefit of reading (e.g. Dotbooks in Germany, or the Bonnier
groups' Manilla imprint, to find an international English reading audience for books authored originally in
the German language.
Innovation is not at all a privilege to the outsiders.
Despite all the current legal and technological barriers, some 28,000 French ebook titles are currently
available in the US (Publishing Perspectives, 30 Mar 2016) , for local digital purchases, as particularly the
well-educated, and more affluent, consumers increasingly purchase their media content online, after
learning about what they want to read, watch, or listen to through social media communities on the mobile
devices.
Still, neither retailers nor publishers in many non-English markets have understood the importance of
overseas markets as well as multiple niche audiences scattered across territories and demographics.
Examples range from ex-pat communities, who would be receptive for a genuine mix of original language
editions, backed up by easily accessible translated editions of literature from their countries and cultures
of origin readers specializing in various cultures, topics or genres.
A case study on Polish services, done for the Global eBook report 2016, found that piracy online
distribution platforms for various formats of content had been very successful in catering to overseas
Polish migrant audiences, with a significant share of digital reading materials, and not one of the leading
legal retail platforms was able to match their clout.
The trading routines that had been driving literary translations of books particularly over the past seven
decades, since the re-building Europe from the ruins after World War II, governed by highly knowledgeable
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and likeminded professionals, particularly working in those highly recognized dedicated literary publishers
still is the backbone of literary translation, and so in Europe, West, East, North and South, more than
perhaps anywhere else.
But these networks, as much as the involved economics behind these operations, are confronting both
financial strains (e.g. by the declining average print runs of their books), and a growing competition in
winning their audiences’ attention.
In the case of literary translation, traditional ‘for profit’ publishers, not-for-profit, institutional approaches
(‘for teaching purposes’, or for ‘fair use’ – which in Europe is challenged by copyright legislation) will need
to find new ways to not just co-exist, but complement each other.
Changes in reading preferences among the traditional audiences, the well-educated, affluent middle class
European citizens, are perhaps less critical as the challenge to behave in a new environment, that requires
a global perspective, mindset, and reach, both cultural and in business terms, and a much more open
appreciation to reconsider, and innovate, how publishers, and translators, and mediators, interact with the
authors, and the readers.
New perspectives for grant sponsors
Interestingly, those offering money for backing up the publishers who are ready to meet the extra
challenges of translation, have remained very conservative in their approaches. Grants are aiming at
helping publishers in their financing, and translators, to land more assignments, in the ambition to
promoting a country's literature internationally.
We have, at the same time, not come across sponsors (driven by a cultural agenda) whose guidelines
would particularly encourage efforts to building new audiences, for creating reading communities for
translated fiction.
Some approaches seem to have shifted. When we prepared the earlier Diversity Reports 2008 to 2010,
translations between peripheral languages directly were in high esteem. Today we see that the concept of
using translations into the big transfer languages, notably English, has gained ground.It is probably not an
either or decision to be made, but a more balanced diversification in the spending priorities.
Such structuring of support resources could also be part of the answer of how to comply with open
questions raised in this report. As we have shown, many grant programs make it a policy of not defining
priorities in their sponsoring. However, in order to meet both the new challenges and the new opportunities
in a wildly changing landscape of publishing, reading, and cultural content consumption altogether, it might
be wise to set aside some money for encouraging novel approaches. To make this a more considerate
effort, a more open, and more transparent, exchange between sponsor organizations on beneficial as well
as failed experiences should be encouraged.
Lastly, we have highlighted online reading platforms specialized in catering a rich and continuous menu of
translated literature to both an interested professional audience as well as to the general reader who want
to discover new vices and themes. But both Words Without Borders, and Asymptote, specialize on reading
in the English language, and we must assume that only rarely will their attendance even among those
interested in international literatures in Europe, know about their offerings.
The obvious question that results is: Why would not an European equivalent be conceivable? Such does
not necessarily need to require an over-complex centralizing machine across 30 languages. A much
smarter approach of an aggregating engine might be appropriate, that is driven rather by an intelligent
interface for organizing multiple existing literary reading communities.
In short, as one of the conclusions of this report, we want to encourage new thinking, and re58
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conceptualizing of the old ways of how the business of translation is conceived.
Otherwise, as already mentioned in our earlier reports, a more transparent debate between sponsors,
stakeholders, and the wider interested audience should be envisaged, including a thorough evaluations of
funding models. The latter will require to build a framework for data on translations to be established. We
have some sources, as the one used for this report, but these are difficult to compare, not even speaking of
a consolidated database for translated literature across Europe.
And lastly, perhaps, stakeholders should look beyond Europe (and North America), and become aware of
new reading audiences in many regions around the world, in Brazil and Mexico, in South Africa and in the
Emirates, India, China, Korea, Japan, to just name a few.
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Part 03: Annex I + II
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Diversity Report 2016
Annex I
The Diversity report 2016 provides, similar to the earlier reports in 2008, 2009 and 2010, both analysis and a
body of references. Less a completed survey, than a tool box and a collection of exemplary approaches, the
ambition is to provide points of entry for a debate on literary translation in the specific context of today's
international book and publishing markets, in their current transformation.
In this perspective, the Diversity Report 2016, which has been established and released by Verein für
kulturelle Transfers / Culturaltransfers.org, refers to related studies of the international book industry,
especially to the Global eBook reports, ad the Global Ranking of the Publishing Industry, both researched
by overlapping teams with this study.
About the authors of this report
Rüdiger Wischenbart is a publishing consultant based in Vienna, Austria, specializing in international and
digital evelopments in the publishing and other cultural industries. He also researched and (co-) authored
the Global Publishing Markets survey for the International Publishers Association (IPA), and the Global
Ranking of the Publishing Industry and the Global eBook reports. He serves as a Director for international
affairs to BookExpo America, and Director of
Publishers' Forum, Berlin. www.wischenbart.com
Miha Kovac started his career in 1985-86 as Editor-in-Chief of Mladina, the only opposition paper in that
time in Yugoslavia. In the 1990s, he moved to book publishing and became Editor-in-Chief of Mladinska
knjiga, theb iggest Slovene book publishing house. In 2000, he started to teach publishing at the University
of Ljubljana, and has written extensively on publishing and on Slovenian politics. He holds a PhD in Library
and Information Science. In 2010, he returned to book publishing as head of digital development at
Mladinska knjiga.
Yana Genova is director of Next Page Foundation – an international NGO active in the field of translations
and publishing. She is also a co-founder of Sofia Literature and Translation House. Before starting the Next
Page Foundation in 2001 she had worked as program manager at OSI – Budapest in charge of a large
translation-funding scheme for Central and Eastern Europe. Yana Genova teaches occasionally at the Sofia
University, and works as a consultant and evaluator in the field of culture and cultural policies. A co-author,
with Georgi Gospodinov, of Inventory Book of Socialism, Prosveta, Sofia, 2006.
Data tables and documentation online
The (raw) data tables established for this report are gathered in PDF format in Annex II, which will be made
available online at www.culturaltransfers.org.
To encourage further research, we offer to make the tables available as interactive PIVOT tables upon
request with the contact form provided at www.culturaltransfers.org .
Online resources
This list provides references to online resources which we have used intensely for the establishment of this
report. The list does not claim at all to provide a comprehensive database of web resources on translation
studies though.
This link list will be further extended. Please let us know about sources that you consider to be relevant
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for research on literary translation in Europe, and beyond.
Austrian Ministry for Culture and the Arts, incl. 'Kulturberichte' on funding in Austria.
Asymptote, oline journal focused on translated literature, and agendas related to literary translation.
Ceatl - Conseil Européen des Associations de Traducteurs Littéraires, professional trade organisation, and
point of access for lobbying activities and promotion related to the agenda of literary translation.
Literature Across Frontiers, research on translation, community activities, resource for research.
Nederlands Letterenfonds - Dutch foundation for literature, Dutch sponsor for translation grants, and
resource on relevant Dutch activities with regard to literature and translation.
NextPage foundation, with multiple activities aimed at translation, and translation grants.
Paper Republic, online journal and information resource specialized on Chinese literature in translation.
Three Percent blog and website, including Open Letter Press, contains a rich resource of links information,
a database and bibliography on translations into English, et al.
Words Without Borders, online journal, and extensive resource, for international translated literature.
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