Tag: literature

Interview | Siân Williams | Translator of the Week

Tell us a little bit about yourself.
I’m a translator and the founder of The Children’s Bookshow, a national tour of writers and illustrators of children’s literature which has been taking place in theatres across England each autumn since 2003. For most of my working life I was a publisher, initially founding, with three others, Writers and Readers Publishing Cooperative.

When you were growing up, what books had an impact on you?
The Old Curiosity Shop, Jane Eyre, Little Women, Ten Twentieth Century Poets (which I remember included poems by Auden, T.S. Eliot, Edward Thomas, Robert Frost, Edwin Muir, Yeats, Thomas Hardy amongst others, perhaps I didn’t like the others!).  I also loved Longfellow as a child and Palgrave’s Golden Treasury I think it was called.  Many many more, I’ve always been a voracious reader so a list would take a book!

Later, I came to love Russian literature, so Chekhov, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Mandel’shtam’s poetry in particular during adolescence.
 Continue reading Interview | Siân Williams | Translator of the Week

Spotlight | The seemingly unstoppable boom in literary festivals

Gone are the days when an author’s book promotion was simply about having a launch party, doing a few press and radio interviews, some bookshop signings and a talk at an appropriate venue. Now, in the UK, more books are published per inhabitant than anywhere else in the world: the scramble to get noticed is fierce.

What does a book promo package entail?

The full author book promo package now includes: having an author website, contacting personal Media contacts and those with specialist and local appeal, as well as international contacts; getting endorsements; writing for the press when and where possible; arranging speaking engagements, seminars, or workshops; connecting live ‘n’ direct with readers to build up a following via social media (facebook, twitter, youtube, pinterest); writing a blog, guest blogging and going on blog tours. It is immensely time consuming, but adopting a luddite attitude is ill-advised.

The literary festival circuit is a key component of book promotion. The more an author gets known the more likely it is sales will rise, ergo financial gain for all involved. Few writers would shun the opportunity to promote their latest book to potential punters, however many or few of them come to a talk and buy a book afterwards, with an autograph thrown in.

Continue reading Spotlight | The seemingly unstoppable boom in literary festivals

Spotlight | Boom not Bust: A new chapter in the story of translation in the UK

Translations on the UK market

In a piece for The Swedish Book Review published in 1997, I stated that, “Roughly 3% of the titles published in the UK every year are translations (as opposed to 30-40% in France and Germany).” It is a puzzling paradox that Britain is such a multi-cultural society yet so insular when it comes to ‘foreign’ writers in translation. Especially since book-buyers just want a good story and are not particularly concerned about its provenance.

Dr Jasmine Donahaye’s 2012 survey Three percent? Publishing data and statistics on translated literature in the United Kingdom and Ireland is unequivocal: “Literary translation in the UK and Ireland – whether assessed according to its broader definition or restricted to the genre categories of poetry, fiction and drama – is a little higher than the often-cited 3% figure. Indeed it is consistently greater than 4%, and, over the sample years, consistently increases.”

She gives the following statistics:
“The percentage of all publications that are translations: 2.21% in 2000 ; 2.65% in 2005 ; 2.43% in 2008.
“The percentage of poetry, fiction and drama that is translation: 4.37% in 2000 ; 4.51% in 2005 ; 4.59% in 2008.
“The percentage of all literary genres (the entire 800 Dewey range) that is translation: 4.17% in 2000 ; 4.20% in 2005 ; 4.37% in 2008.”

Continue reading Spotlight | Boom not Bust: A new chapter in the story of translation in the UK

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