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How public funding could help the circulation of translated books
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Conclusions policy at European level, the way forward
More cooperation and reciprocity, and a higher level of public funding is necessary to achieve cultural diversity and fair remuneration at European level. It is difficult to achieve cultural diversity in Europe without the strong commitment of the whole book value chain and an efficient public support system. Consequently, most European countries have taken measures to support the export of their books and have put in place grant systems to support foreign publishers in the translation of books from their languages. A good support system should be holistic : it should cover not only translation, but also publication and promotion costs. Co-financing rates should be generous enough to be attractive to publishers. Grants for translation should also be an opportunity to promote and enforce fair practices, including fair remuneration and fair contracts between translators and publishers. Support for training and networking between translators and/or publishers is also important to build relationships and give higher visibility to diverse literary scenes. International books fairs and the agents of foreign right departments (FRD) should also be supported in order to be able to fully play their roles in the international promotion of books and, eventually, facilitate the sales of translations rights.
In all these aspects, public funders need to cooperate. For instance, in the case of a book whose translation has been publicly funded, the remuneration of the translators based in the target country depends very much on the level of funding and the practices of the funders based in the source country. In order for a funder in country A to make sure that remuneration in country B is fair, the exchange of information on market conditions is crucial. Likewise, public funders need to cooperate to organise events or mechanisms to allow publishers to meet authors from abroad and network with other publishers. A pure ‘export’ strategy has its limitations : funders cannot expect other countries to be open if their own markets are not open. It is, for instance, difficult to imagine that a translated book will find its audience without the commitment of the book fairs and booksellers of the target countries. That is why reading promotion strategies at national levels should have a strong European dimension: literary festivals and bookshops should be supported to play their role of promoting books from abroad. Ideally, public support should be reciprocal and should go as far as supporting inbound translation, that is giving grants to national publishers to translate foreign books into domestic languages. Supporting inbound translation is also a good way to enforce fair remuneration, since public funders can more easily determine – in cooperation with domestic publishers and translators – what is fair in their own country. European countries are ‘condemned’ to work together to succeed : fair remuneration and diversity cannot be achieved without some form of reciprocity and cooperation. There are many examples of established cooperation, such as NordLit or project-based collaborations. More recently, publicly funded literary translation organisations
