Péter Inkei

FROM LITERARY TRANSLATION LANE TO CULTURAL DIVERSITY AVENUE*

The institutions of the European Union pay growing attention to the issues of language and translation. Conferences, high level documents, the creation of a separate post in the Commission testify to the increased interest. In spite of the impressive improvement in the performance of the EACEA, the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency which administers the EU’s relevant programmes, the content and scope of the support given to literary translation has changed very little. The actual Culture Programme of the European Commission (approved by, therefore done also under the authority of the European Council and the European Parliament) supports the translation of books of fiction from one European language to another in the framework of the so called Strand 1.2.2. The grants are given to publishers connected to handpicked („high quality”) titles. The programme offers certain preference to the new member states (and their languages) and favours independent publishers.

Providing help for the sustainability of the publishing markets in minor languages is an important indirect function of this translation programme. In the early phases (going back to the Ariane project in the 1990s) this was the prevailing goal. The function of helping works from minor language cultural communities to enter into broader (including English-language) markets has lately been coming to the fore.

The Budapest Observatory has been following and analysing this programme in the past few years. We found its focus all too narrow and we think it should be fundamentally broadened and changed into serving cultural diversity, mainly defined in terms of the cultures of lesser spread languages. As will be seen, this is conceived as a relative definition: different languages can be considered „lesser spread”, depending on the context.

The sustainability of creation in lesser spread, lesser spoken or minor languages should become the key objective of the EU action and the associated support programme. Cultural – especially literary – communities are typically defined by a common language – although not always and not exclusively, taking into account the great number of writers who belong to one culture while using the language of another culture in their creative work. With respect to these instances, we consider it an eminent European goal that cultural diversity should be fairly synonimous with language diversity. To put it bluntly, we hold it a European task to slow down the process of growing into a mono-lingual cultural space, which is best manifested in the increasing dominance of the English language also in the cultural fields. Conscious efforts are needed to counter the handicap of writers, thinkers and publishers who work in other than English in Europe, both alive and those who created in the past. The main emphasis must be put on helping the access of representatives of isolated cultures to mainstreams.

In the future, the main emphasis of the support programme therefore needs to be put on the source language. The insistence on quality (both of the work and of the translation), and on wide dissemination, the criteria that are defined in the actual translation programme, should nevertheless be kept.

At present, the quality is judged by invited experts during the recurrent annual application rounds. In 2008 446 books of 95 publishers were selected. Taking into account the size of the European publishing scene, this hand-picking procedure can never be perfect: one can easily identify questionable items in both lists (books and publishers). A large number of presses and titles that, for various reasons, do not even apply, would equally be qualified for the subsidy.

Instead of this handmade selection process, the goals must be set higher and tackled more broadly. The case of translation calls for a structural approach, and possibly the implementation of automatic support.

With regard to structural approach the best example is the MEDIA 2007 programme, which supports the European audiovisual industry on a broad scale, ranging from various stages of film-making to distribution and promotion, and has an important training component. Suggestions to devise similar EU programmes for the culture industry sectors of publishing or music have been formulated repeatedly. Nonetheless, the Budapest Observatory proposal is not aimed at one „sector”, at book publishing or literary translation. The cause of language diversity is at the same time broader and narrower than both of these two areas.

MEDIA includes an element of automatic support. This is a detailed and sophisticated mechanism by which cinemas can apply for automatic grants after showing European films. Further to this example, relatively near to our cause, the agricultural programme of the European Union is especially rich in various forms of automatic payment. 

The first step towards automatic support is the declaration of principle. Declared political agreement needs to be reached about the acknowledgment of the importance of sustainable level of language diversity in Europe. Such an intention can be exemplified by a statement like the following: if a (European) language is represented by less than 5 % as the original language in any cultural „market” that is defined by the original language of the “products”, works translated from that language are entitled to community care and protection, including support. 

When such a declaration is translated into action, a number of questions are raised and will be answered. In case of the book market, the eligibility of publishers, the range of genres (going beyond fiction), the measure of the percentage (new titles per year, copies sold etc.), the basis of the counting (e.g. new translated books), the period to observe (e.g. past five years) can all be defined during the process. We do not exclude or blame cases when on a given market all source languages qualify as supportable, except for English.

The percentage threshold can be adjusted and differentiated. Adjusted, for example, to available funding. Differentiated by a number of criteria. For instance 5% in general, but 3% for books in French and German originals, to offer more chances for even lesser spread languages.

Let us illustrate this on the Polish book market. The table shows the top ten of translated literary titles in 2005 (and a few former years, percentage of titles published), by the original language, as derived from the Index Translationum of UNESCO. In the chosen particular segment of the European literary space books translated from Italian, Spanish etc. would, and indeed should, eo ipso be entitled to European protection, including some sort of financial aid. When Russian is acknowledged as a European language, preferences will also be extended to that bunch of titles. The figures show, that the increasing mono-lingualism of Europe might soon require the status of endangered species for fiction books from German and French, and not only on the Polish publishing scene.

 By moving the main emphasis from the translation of literature books to the sustainability of lesser spread cultural communities, a number of issues will be conceived differently from the Strand 1.2.2 of the Culture Programme, as it stands today. Not only literature (belles lettres) will have to be supported, but the translation of all cultural products originating from a lesser spread language community, such as non-fiction, lyrics, journalism, sub-titling of films and television programmes etc. And not only printed books but other vehicles as well, including electronic ones. Once more, declaration of principle comes first, support follows when feasible and where there is a consensus.

The proposed shifts involve further issues to clarify. Supporting the access of lesser spread language cultures into broader markets is closely connected to the multilingualism programme of the EU, yet it is distinguished from that programme by not (necessarily) focusing on language learning and on (multi-)language competences.

The recommendation is also related to the hitherto central issue of European Union language policies, the availability of official documents in the official European languages – but is at the same time very different from it. Acknowledging the symbolic democratic value of these efforts, most actors of literary translation find the translating and interpreting business of the Union a distressing waste if compared to other translation needs.

The main concern behind the Budapest Observatory proposal is about minor languages, nevertheless irrespective of their status: whether national, minority or regional. As the Polish example shows, from certain aspects Russian, French or German can be considered “minor”. In this respect, the notion of European languages will have to be revised, extending it to languages spoken in the member states of the Union. In the actual context, works originated in the European Union in one of the “non-European” languages should have the same right. (For example a story written and eventually first published in a member state in Urdu or Russian.)

The goals of the proposed support logic imply that translating into English will take a considerable share of the resources, which for many people sounds close to betrayal of earlier principles. Yet such a shift indeed follows from the principles of the proposed changes. We are convinced that the greatest favour to a small language literature today is if its works are translated into English and are distributed professionally – this is where community help is most welcome. Of course, other mainstream markets (French, German etc.) remain important, which is why thresholds can eventually set at the target language side, too, in the sense of limiting the degree of absorption of English. Finally, no reform should end up in diminishing the actual absolute numbers in the support of translations from one minor language into another.

Advocating such changes may raise concern among the actual beneficiaries, the translators and publishers of fiction. They should understand, however, that within the frames of the present-day handmade artisanship of EU support the offer will always remain at a far cry from the necessary demand. The separate “strand” of literary translation must join up with more powerful allies. Fusing into broader streams like support for the book sector (a cultural industry!), into the language front (multilingualism), or creating a broader translation project are all viable options. The Budapest Observatory is convinced, however, that the cause of cultural language diversity is the right avenue, which, among others, can also generate larger resources for the translation and publishing of fiction. The need to upgrade most aspects of the translation support administered by the European Commission nevertheless goes beyond tactical considerations. The sustainability of cultural and language diversity in Europe is the strategic horizon. 

POST SCRIPTUM

After completing this article did I come across the important and interesting paper by Benhamou and Peltier, who also consider the original language of books published on a given book market an important indicator of cultural diversity; or rather, can be used for the generation of a number of diversity measurement indicators.

Françoise Benhamou and Stéphanie Peltier: How should cultural diversity be measured? An application using the French publishing industry. Journal of Cultural Economics, 2007, vol. 31, issue 2, pages 85-107