Lost in translation?

On hearing of a conference of literature translators last week, at which the participants regretted the decrease in quality and complained about a lack of communication within the translators’ community, I decided that the issue deserved a closer look.

For the last five years or so, Russian bookstores have been flooded with translated titles from various languages, leading to complaints from publishers of domestic fiction that foreign competitors are taking over the market. This is, of course, an exaggeration, but the fact is that dozens, or even hundreds, of foreign authors have entered the Russian book market in recent years. Only some have become popular here, while the rest probably haven’t met sales targets.

From time to time, book critics express surprise that a certain foreign author – despite immense popularity in their home country – has not achieved any prominence among Russian readers. They often state the quality of trans­lation as one of the main factors, along with cultural differences. And they are probably right. I know people who reluctantly read translated fiction, as they don’t trust translations. Those who speak foreign languages often prefer to find a book they think is worth reading in the original. It’s not that difficult these days, given the availability of stores carrying foreign books, libraries, and, of course, the opportunity to order books online.

I myself had a stab at fiction translation a few years ago and have some ideas to explain why the quality of translation in Russia is so often inadequate. Firstly, there is basically no selection of translators. Just about anyone can come to a publishing house and, regardless of whether they have any relevant educa­tion or experience, get a job translating a book. Why is that? Because of the second reason, which is that the translation of literature is very poorly paid. Very few people with the appropriate qualifications would do the job; while those who would work as translators do the job in haste to fit more in and make more cash. All that is in stark contrast to the conditions under which translators worked in Soviet times. Then, they had sufficient time to work on a book and received fairly high pay – by Soviet standards, of course. The drawback was limited contact between the Soviet Union and the outside world due to the Iron Curtain, which sometimes prevented translators from traveling to countries whose language they translated from, to study the realities described in the books. This must be one of the reasons why translations of books set in previous epochs were often better than those set in present time.

Those problems are no longer an issue, since the Internet can easily com­pen­sate for someone’s inability to travel to a certain country. Nevertheless, what the reader eventually gets when buying a book translated from a foreign language is often below acceptable standards.

Is the situation going to improve, at least financially, given that book prices here are going up and may soon almost reach those in Western countries? Maybe, but so far, there have been no significant signs of improvement. 

Vladimir Kozlov

Moscow News 19/07/2007