TRENDINGIowa caucus results | Ghomeshi | Bosma | Oil prices | Trudeau | Canadian dollar

Found in translation

|
More from Mark Medley | @itsmarkmedley

Why aren't there more translations in Canadian publishing?

Illustration by Chloe Cushman

Last June, Jack David, publisher of ECW Press, was in Oslo on a literary scouting mission. He was having drinks with members of the Norwegian Publishers Association when an editor mentioned, “I think I may have a book you’d be interested in.” The man’s company, Spartacus, had published a book called So Long, Marianne. When David remarked how that was the title of one of Leonard Cohen’s most famous songs, the editor told him that’s because the author of the book was Marianne Ihlen, Cohen’s former lover and muse. These  were her memoirs, and world English rights were still available. Was he interested? Most definitely.

ECW Press will publish the book in 2014.

“The question is, how do you find books like that?” asks David. Serendipitous moments like the above are rare; it takes a lot of effort, and time, for editors and publishers to find work in other languages. Canada is unique in that it is home to two separate centres of publishing, yet the barriers that exist on the international market remain at home.

One answer to David’s question may be the Translation Rights Fair, which was established by the Canada Council for the Arts in 2011. Part speed dating, part book expo, the idea is that if publishing companies from Quebec and English Canada gather under the same roof, more work will be shared between the two solitudes. “Until the Canada Council set up this meet and greet format, people really didn’t know each other very well,” David says. “There were simply no opportunities for us to meet.”

The first year the fair was held in Ottawa; last year’s event was hosted in Montreal. Last month, 80-odd publishers, editors and agents gathered at One King West in downtown Toronto, where the second-floor hall was set up like it was preparing for a university exam to take place: rows of white desks in straight lines the length of the room.

“I’m here to buy and sell,” David says, sitting down with Carole Boutin, rights manager for Groupe Librex.

“No,” Boutin says. “You’re here to buy with me.”

“So sell me.”

Groupe Librex is one of the largest publishing houses in Quebec, with a yearly list of more than 100 books spread out over five imprints. They discovered Kim Thúy’s Ru, which was shortlisted for last year’s Giller Prize after an English-language translation was published by Random House Canada.

“I am the one who sold the book,” says Boutin.

“We were very interested in that book, but once it got over $10,000, I was like, see you later,” says David. “Ultimately, [Random House] paid a lot more.”

Ru is a book that comes up frequently in conversation at the fair, a novel that may help tear down the aforementioned barriers. There are currently 30,000 copies of the book in print in English Canada. “Every successful translation really makes a difference,”
Jo-Anne Elder, president of the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada, says.

According to the Canada Council for the Arts, the number of translations — or at least those receiving funding — is increasing in Canada. In 2008-09, the council funded 62 translations, only 21 of which were French-to-English. In 2010-11, the number had risen to 111, with 68 English-to-French translations, 38 French-to-English translations, and five from another language altogether. In 2011-12, the council spent $1,012,100 spent on translations.

“I doubt very much that without the Canada Council program, for instance, that there would be very many translations published at all in Canada, in either direction,” Elder says.

And what of the perception that Quebecois publishers are more willing than their English-language counterparts to publish books in translation?

“At the first translation fair I kind of embarrassed the Anglophone publishers by saying French-language publishers were already translating a lot more English-Canadian books into French than vice-versa,” Catherine Montgomery, the program officer for the writing and publishing section of the Canada Council for the Arts, says. “Over time it has evened out.”

House of Anansi Press recently created an imprint, Arachnide, devoted to  publishing books from French-Canada. When I find Anansi’s managing editor Kelly Joseph, who also edits the imprint, at the fair, she is meeting with Éric Simard, directeur littéraire of Hamac, who is pitching her a book called Les chroniques d’une mère indigne by Caroline Allard; it sold in France and Italy but, thus far, an English-language Canadian publisher has alluded him. It won’t find a home with Anansi, however; Joseph has read it and deems it “not right for our program.”

“I have a question,” says Simard. “I want to sell to an English-Canadian publisher, but it’s hard. I don’t understand. Can you tell me why?”

Kelly delicately explains that even with the new imprint Anansi only publishes a handful of books in translation each year. “We have to make a lot of tough decisions.”

“But there’s potential in the English-Canadian market, do you think?” he asks. “Or am I losing my mind? Because I really don’t understand.”

“I would never say no,” says Joseph. “Let me think about it, and if there’s anybody that I can see it fitting really well with, I’ll absolutely let you know.”

While there aren’t many deals signed at the fair itself — publishing moves at a glacial pace, after all — business does get done. “Both years I saw concrete results from this,” Elder says, who did not attend this year’s fair. “That’s the proof that we have that it is really working.”

Before breaking for lunch Alana Wilcox, editor of Coach House Books, signs a contract with Antoine Tanguay of Éditions Alto; Tanguay, who founded the press in 2005, when he was 29 years old, brings a decidedly contemporary sensibility to the company, which is basically a one-man operation that produces gorgeous books. “When I started eight years ago, that was part of the plan,” he says. “The kind of stories I wanted to have, that weren’t published in Quebec, were published in Canada.” One of Alto’s first books was Nikolski, by Nicholas Dickner, which after being published in English by Random House went on to win Canada Reads in 2010. His English-Canadian acquisitions include Patrick deWitt, Annabel Lyon, Steven Galloway, Rawi Hage and Lori Lansens.
The deal he’s signing at the fair is for Andrew Kaufman’s 2003 novel All My Friends are Superheroes, which will be the second of Kaufman’s books he has published.

“We should take a picture!” he says as he signs his name to the contract. He then looks around the room: “Come on, Canada Council for the Arts, we’re doing business here!”

Although Wilcox has already sold him one book, she’s pressing him to take Tamara Faith Berger’s Maidenhead, a slice of literary erotica.

“You’re going to get a final answer on Maidenhead,” says Tanguay. “I don’t know. I’m 50/50.”

“And I’m 50/50 on Griffintown,” she says of Marie Hélène Poitras’s novel, which sold 6,000 copies in Quebec.

“No bulls—, Sheila Fischman wants to do it,” he tells Wilcox, mentioning Canada’s most renowned literary translator. (While there are no translators in attendance at this year’s fair, they often play the role of matchmaker, bringing books to publishers and hoping to reap the rewards). Tanguay offers a solution: “Coin toss. You take heads, I take tails. If I win, you take my book.”

After his meeting with Wilcox ends, Tanguay heads over to meet with Pamela Murray, a senior editor at Random House Canada who acquired both Ru and Nikolski. Being the sole representative from one of Canada’s big presses, she calls herself “an interloper.” (Because foreign-owned publishers aren’t eligible for Canada Council translation grants, most forego the fair). Still, Random House hasn’t published a book from Quebec since Ru, in early 2012, and none are scheduled for 2013.

“It’s hard,” says Tanguay at one point. “We don’t have many people to talk to. It’s quite unbalanced, in a way. The amount of translations we have from English Canada, it’s not 50-50 today. I know Quebec writers in Canada have a very tough time. Ru is the exception, and thank God, because if it’s opening up doors, it’s great for everyone.”

The fair may be opening up doors, but there is uncertainty as to whether it will return for a fourth year. While attendance has remained consistent, with an average of 80 people each year, “no decision has yet been reached about the future of the fair,” says Montgomery, citing the end of a funding agreement between the Canada Council and the Department of Canadian Heritage.

As the president of an organization whose members rely on collaboration between Quebec publishers and their English-language counterparts, Elder would like to see the fair continue.

“A translated book is not a lesser book,” she says.

Topics: , ,

Books Videos

Where I Belong, by Alan Doyle

“In a flawless transition from lyrical to prose, Doyle entertains with a great East Coast coming of age story.”

The Narrow Road to the Deep North, by Richard Flanagan

“Harrowing & poetic at the same time. Not for the faint of heart. I loved this book and couldn’t get it out of my mind when it was finished.”

Sweetland, by Michael Crummey

“Humorous at times, heartbreaking at others, Sweetland manages to capture the rugged, difficult life endured by so many Newfoundlanders.”

Elizabeth is Missing, by Emma Healey

“A little mystery, a little bit sad, a little poignant and completely lovable. Beautifully written and just a lovely read.”

@npbooks on Twitter
http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/books/found-in-translation
news.nationalpost.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2016-07
74276
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:OFAV4PHPDOSCGS6ZKPQ3I2ZYZNEOPYBQ
<urn:uuid:648e572f-7071-4914-8ef7-aacb32a7227b>
2016-02-06T03:03:04Z
192.0.79.33
sha1:N4WXLHRHTA3GYUFVLW26EYFNQU525HZE
<urn:uuid:b8c8f16d-d257-4308-8b88-5492faabd57a>
http://news.nationalpost.com/arts/books/found-in-translation
length
response
<urn:uuid:009ad29a-c03d-406f-b969-56010c62c831>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-236-182-209.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2016-07
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for February 2016
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf