At the Sharjah International Book Fair, currently happening in the United Arab Emirates, a panel about translated books saw execs from various countries talking about the difficulties of getting titles that do not originate in English into the Western markets.
The panel, called 'Translated Books and the Global View of Sales,' was chaired by Nadia Wassef, who is based in Egypt and is the founder of Diwan Bookshops there. The discussion kicked off with a view from a Western publisher.
Seth Russo, v-p of international sales for Simon & Schuster, said he was certain that there is a rising pool of readers in English, thanks to the growing penetration of social media in book promotion. Russo also said that the growth of online retailing in Europe and Asia is, he thinks, contributing to this trend. He noted that the sharp increase in e-books has not been at the expense of print, although there are more e-books sold than physical books.
Yasmina Jraissati, founder of the literary agency RAYA, which promotes the translation of Arabic works, spoke of the challenges in getting Arabic literature to editors outside the Arab world. Because it's hard to get good translations from the Arabic, many books are translated from another language rather than from the original. Nonetheless, she still looks for strong narratives, noting that she only deems 2% of the books she good enough to be translated. From that 2%, she added, roughly half are actually translated.
Bringing an entertaining air to the conversation was Amir Muhammed, who founded the Malaysian publishing house, Fixi. Muhammed became a publisher because, as a teenager, he couldn't find books he wanted to read. In Malaysia, a country of 30 million, a title can become a bestseller by moving roughly 50,000 copies, he said. The other notable aspects of the Malaysian market is the fact that romance is the most popular genre, with some 90% percent of readers being female.
With Fixi, Muhammed set out to offer something else for readers; the first title he published was Stephen King's Joyland. Translating it was his first problem. Muhammed conducted an open audition on the Web, and narrowed the field from there. "The first line of the book is, 'It was the Fall of 1973.'" The responses, he said, featured "translations beginning with people falling down all over the place in 1973."
