The world is truly getting smaller. Americans are embracing, indeed driving, a new era of global trade and recreational travel, jet-setting from one international time zone to another; we are communicating across borders by e-mail, surfing the Web for foreign news and flocking to see foreign films. It stands to reason that American publishing must also be primed to reap the cultural bounty of a vast world literature, quickly and competently translated into the English language. Right? Well, not exactly.

Truth be told the figures for translations from foreign languages into English are discouraging. Of all the books translated worldwide, only 6%—and that is considered to be a generous estimate—are translated from foreign languages into English. By contrast, almost 50% are translated from English into other languages. In a typical week, at least half of the top-10 bestsellers on Amazon.com in France and Germany are books in translation; on the U.S. site, a recent scan showed not a single foreign name on an extended list of 24 top sellers. And that's par for the past decade. Only one title in translation—Like Water for Chocolate—made PW's yearly top-10 lists in the 1990s.

Some midlist titles show respectable sales, but more often than not it takes validation on the level of a Nobel Prize to ratchet numbers up into the solid five-figure range. All the Names, by José Saramago, published by Harcourt in September 2000, has sold more than 30,000 copies. By contrast, a first novel by Dutch author Arthur Japin, The Two Hearts of Kwasi Boachi (Knopf), has sold just over 6,000 copies since its publication in November 2000—in the Netherlands there are more than 100,000 copies in print.

It is possible to argue that translations perform on more or less the same level as similar English titles. Knopf senior editor George Andreou points out that Kwasi Boachi is "a first, quite literary novel, so if one could be assured of selling 7,000 copies of such a book, even if it weren't in translation, I think it would be worth doing." Nevertheless, there is no getting around the fact that sales of translations in this country do not match sales of English titles abroad.

Why are U.S. readers and publishers so resistant to literature in translation? Some chalk it up to cultural imperialism (UNESCO's Index Translationum, a source of translation information and statistics, quotes "several writers" who claim there is "a certain arrogance on the part of British and American publishing houses... [which] consider anything published in another language to be automatically inferior"). English is, in practical terms, the most important language in the world today, and whether imperialism is invoked or not, that reality has a certain effect on American publishing. Still, many target a less pragmatic, more culture-specific kind of solipsism. "America is just frighteningly different from the rest of the world," says Barbara Epler, editor-in-chief of New Directions. "We're really Disneylanded beyond belief." Translator Peter Constantine's take on the situation is gentler. "We in America are a little bit cautious—publishers are cautious about what they bring out.... Here the public doesn't seem to have the hunger for translation that the European market has."

It is difficult to say whether things have changed much in recent years—opinions vary, and statistics are hard to come by. Drenka Willen, a senior editor at Harcourt who works with Nobel laureates Günter Grass and Saramago as well as Umberto Eco, believes that there's been an upturn in the past seven or eight years, with even poetry in translation faring better. Robert Weil, executive editor at W.W. Norton, is downright enthusiastic about foreign translations. "So few publishers are involved that you can publish the work of superb overseas writers. It's an embarrassment of riches. We, as American publishers, ignore distinguished works that can be very commercial. But you have to know what you're doing." Susan Harris, director of Northwestern University Press, on the other hand, notes 1992 as the year "trade houses were scaling down their translation programs," and Northwestern took advantage of the situation to become a small powerhouse of literary translation. According to Andreou, things haven't changed much—translation "was never the most profitable part of the business." A glance at PW bestseller lists back to 1900 suggests that he is right, and that on the grand scale, at least, there was never a golden age of literature in translation in the United States.

The historical trajectory of midlist profitability and popularity is, of course, more difficult to fix. Here, however, it seems clear that the climate of an increasingly profits-driven industry does not encourage the flourishing of high-cost, low-return translation projects. When literary publishing is squeezed, literary translation gasps. "I would say that if people are more cautious, that caution probably extends into translation, because translation is overall a more difficult proposition," says Andreou.

Cautious Optimism

At the same time, there are hints of optimism. Morgan Entrekin, publisher of Grove/Atlantic, for one, is gambling that bookshelves in the U.S. will someday be as cosmopolitan as bookshelves abroad. "If you look at Europe," he says, "the bestseller lists and publishing programs of the major houses are all very international, and I believe that's going to happen here. It's going to become more and more the norm." Riva Hocherman, an editor at Holt imprint Metropolitan, cautiously concurs. "Editors and publishing houses are so hungry for good material—maybe they're more open to looking everywhere."

There is a sense at a few houses that the riches of global literature are vast and available for the taking. "There's so much exciting literature—there's so much available," says Harris. Even better, according to Entrekin, smaller publishers aren't "in competition with the big conglomerates" for foreign titles. But most tread cautiously. "For a publisher like Random House to bring a book over," says editor Joy de Menil, "it has to have a lot behind it. Either huge popular success or a prize or preferably both." Translations must compete for attention not only with American titles but with books by writers from English-speaking foreign countries. As Andrea Heyde of the German Book Office points out, "an American publisher can go international by bringing over Canadians, South Africans, Australians—it's international but still in the same language." Even Entrekin admits that "booksellers feel that translation is not the easiest thing. They have a hard enough time carrying all the American books, and Canadian after that—translation takes a backseat."

Most editors cite literary excellence—"quality, high quality, literary quality," says Willen—as the key factor in the decision whether or not to publish a book in translation, but relevance is of major importance too. "Most important is that we love it; and then, that the work is not so specific to the place and culture in which it was written that it cannot translate," says Hocherman. Weil also notes the lure of quality. This year Norton is publishing Nietzche: A Philosophical Biography by Rudiger Safranski (translated by Shelley Frish) and The Complete Works of Isaac Babel (translated by Peter Constantine). And in 2002, the house will publish a new translation of Dante's Inferno by Michael Palma and The Collected Stories of Joseph Roth (translated by Michael Hoffman), among other works. "These books will go through multiple printings," Weil said. "The Nietzche and the Isaac Babel books will sell for a lifetime and make the house a lot of money. This isn't charity publishing." And pure novelty value is not necessarily disdained. Crazy, a slim, cultish first novel by a 16-year-old German, Benjamin Lebert, was published by Knopf in April 2000 and has sold around 30,000 copies—as many as Saramago's All the Names.

Quality, then, is a concern, but so is the bottom line. And calculations involve a commodity that is hard to qualify in dollars and cents—time. "It takes more time for the editor to find a book in translation than it does to find a book in English, and the translations often have to be heavily edited," says Alane Salierno Mason, an editor at Norton and a translator herself. The real problem, she believes, is "the ratio of time to profit earned... the opportunity costs." Jonathan Galassi, publisher and editor-in-chief of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, agrees. "It's a very laborious process, and rewards are often not great."

"We throw around a very unscientific statistic," says Hocherman, "that we could probably produce two books for every one translation, because it takes so much longer. And finding good translators—I think that if a translator does 80% of the job we are over the moon, but that percentage is usually lower and the editor's part of it is tremendously demanding."

High Labor, Low Pay, Lower Profit

From one translator's perspective, the process engenders a catch-22. Val Vinokurov, translator with Rose-Myriam Réjouis of Patrick Chamoiseau's Texaco, believes that low pay means the quality of translations suffers, and as a result translated literature gets a bad rap. "The majority of translations are just not very good, because that is the way the market is set up. I don't think publishers are ever going to say to themselves, well, gosh, why don't we see what's really going on, what happens when a translation is really successful. How can we make this happen again and again?"

In relation to the work involved in translating a book, fees are in fact abysmally low, the going rate hovering around $75—$85 per 1,000 words, with a one- or two-point royalty sometimes included. Editors across the board say they would like to pay more, for the translators' sake and for the sake of the work. But as Entrekin explains, translation fees hit publishers hard. "It's not a cost that you can charge against royalties, so it's not the same as an advance; it's a one-time cost. I wish I could pay translators more. But the problem I face is that the financial equation, which is not rosy, becomes even less so when I have to pay a large fee for translation."

Even if all goes well with the translation, the book may founder on the shoals of marketing and publicity. The days when sales directors lobbied for the removal of "translated by" from jackets, in the belief that an obviously translated book would never sell, are happily past (or so say most). But marketing staffs are sometimes stumped by foreign literature, or quick to give up on it. As Entrekin points out, "the books are not as familiar—all the references are new." As a result, and because foreign authors rarely tour the U.S., most literature in translation must depend on review coverage for publicity. "If we have new authors, we have to rely on reviews," says Willen. "It's very, very important." The right projects—or the lucky ones—attract early attention, like Random House's forthcoming memoir of Consuelo de St. Exupéry. "The Tale of the Rose has been chosen by Borders as an original voices title, and the sales reps love it... so we're distributing 20,000 copies as our original laydown, which is really fantastic," says de Menil. There are few sure things, though a few major prizes—the Nobel, the Goncourt—do command notice.

Small Presses

Where major houses fear to tread, small houses and academic presses often venture intrepidly—and they aren't just bidding on tiny, obscure titles. "We can not afford to find people who are famous here already," says Epler. "On the other hand, there are great writers like Cela—he won the Nobel Prize and we can still afford him. And I think that's partly due to corporate finances.... Even when they're known you can still pick them up sometimes on our budget." Harris is in the same position. "We don't compete for huge blockbusters. But on the other hand, we are able to bid on properties of high literary quality more or less on a par with commercial publishers." Peggy Fox, also at New Directions, says, "We are one of the major publishers of work in translation, which I find appalling. That someone our size can be a major player."

Granted, first printings are usually very small. Marketing support, too, is minimal to nonexistent. "We're trying to reach out on the Web," says Epler. "We try to encourage our authors to come over and help, but we have a very limited budget." Big houses may depend on reviews, but even one review in a major publication can make all the difference for the smaller presses. Some venues are more amenable than others. Harris singles out the L.A. Times as "very sympathetic to literature in translation."

Breakout success is possible. W.G. Sebald performed admirably for New Directions until Random House snapped up his most recent title, Austerlitz, to be published this fall. Editors at small houses are usually happy to see their writers graduate to the next level—in pure business terms, it helps backlist titles. But sometimes they wonder how long the transplants will be welcome in their new homes. "Sebald is a wonderful, wonderful writer, and in our terms he sells extremely well, but in Random House's terms I wonder—I wonder how long they'll keep someone like that on," says Fox.

Small houses may not be able to offer high-profile promotion or guaranteed review coverage, but what they can and almost always do offer is careful attention to texts and writers. It is the translators who are often the beneficiaries of this velvet glove treatment. "We sometimes become the home of pet projects," avers Epler. Small presses may even pay as much or more than major houses. At university presses, on the other hand, shoestring budgets mean translators must sometimes be willing to work for substantially less than the going rate. "My experience of university presses is you better like what you're translating an awful lot, because they don't pay... in my experience they give you a flat fee," warns Linda Coverdale, a translator from the French, who goes on to say that the projects themselves have always made the work worth her while.

So You Want to Be a Translator?

Translators' experiences vary widely, and the lack of common industry standards or resources makes it hard for them to compare notes. "There's no centralized information base for either translators or publishers," says Minna Proctor, a translator from the Italian. "Often big publishers have no idea what to pay." The PEN Translation Committee does what it can to build community and sponsors a number of awards. Five years ago, it declared May World-in-Translation month, for which it schedules readings and discussions. Still, translators find they must ultimately fend for themselves. "There's not a lot that organizations can do for you," says Vinokurov. Most translators have checked out PEN's sample contract, but because of anti-trust considerations, PEN isn't allowed to give guidelines for reasonable fees. "If you're not politically savvy... you often don't know how to negotiate for yourself," says Coverdale. "It all depends on the relationship you have with your editor." And as Proctor points out, "translators don't have much representation by agents because fees are so poor." The bottom line, she says matter-of-factly, is that "most houses consider a translator dispensable."

Subtler but equally disturbing is the inefficiency of the word-of-mouth system in connecting deserving translators with projects. "It's very troubling that when editors go looking for translators it's not an equal game. It's not about quality or experience—it's about who they met at a cocktail party," says Proctor. "Finding new translators is a big challenge," says Galassi, speaking from the other side of the fence. "Translators getting in touch with us and sending us samples—that's something we always want to see," says Hocherman, "because there is such a scarcity of really good translators." Weil says, "You need someone as talented as the finest writers. You have to promote the art of the translator, who becomes your author in the U.S. "The playing field may not be entirely level, but editors eventually build up a workable referral system. "I've gone to other editors, I've gotten recommendations from the French Publishers Agency, from other translators," says de Menil. "It's a lot of asking around," Epler concludes. "The field is rich in opportunities." For those translators who do manage to make the right connections, the work must often be its own reward. Most eventually find steadier employment to subsidize their translation careers, but a few discover they can make ends meet as full-timers. "If you stick to it long enough and are really interested and do as much as possible, it can turn into something worthwhile and full-time and interesting," says an optimistic Constantine. "Projects keep coming in and they're all irresistible." Coverdale also translates full-time. "It's pretty difficult to earn a living," she says. "But you make the sacrifice."

Translation Grants?

Translators will likely continue to make sacrifices, but will publishers? Outside assistance might go a long way toward encouraging them to take risks on new foreign authors. "I think that what translation really needs in this country now—and I've started to work on it with some friends but haven't gotten very far—is money," says Galassi. "I really think we need a translation foundation of some sort." Such a resource, says Andreou, "might tip the scales in a few cases, might allow one to choose a better translator; it might, in the case of a close call, eliminate translation costs from a P&L and thus make a difference."

Grants are currently available from foreign ministries for publishers working on books in translation, but major publishers rarely take advantage of the money available. "Not a lot of people know that grants exist," says Katherine Nanovic-Morlet of the French Publishers' Agency. "At the bigger houses I don't even think the idea crosses their minds. And in any case the program is designed for small houses, struggling houses." Those who do apply generally find the grants helpful. "We rely very heavily on the governments of source languages for subvention of our works," says Harris. "And we've had very good luck in securing funding."

Few editors at major houses may apply for grants, but quite a number have signed on for the trips organized by the German Book Office (the French Publishers' Agency is starting up its own program this year). These trips, says Heyde, are for "editors who are interested in being plugged into the international network; we travel to foreign houses, so they can make contact with their colleagues." Organizations like the German Book Office and the French Publishers' Agency can be very useful as information sources, and in recent years they have been striving to expand their role, increasingly coordinating their activities. A one-day seminar sponsored by a number of different offices and in conjunction with the NYU Institute for Publishing is to be held on September 7—it will address practical problems of publishing translated works, including how to develop international networks and how to negotiate contracts.

In the end, nothing helps the translation market so much as the blockbuster success of one big book or author in translation. The triumph of "a book like One Hundred Years of Solitude or The Name of the Rose—that's what makes editors more optimistic and does a lot for sales," says Proctor. Even if the effects can't be measured directly, anything that broadens the reading habits of the American public makes a fundamental difference in the potential market for literature in translation.

And editors are on the whole confident that more and more readers will eventually dare to pick up books by Vargas Llosa or Szymborska, Oe or Makine. "This is going to sound like Pollyanna Inc., but I think the situation is improving," says Epler. "I can't help but think people must become more interested in world literature—because what else is there? I just can't believe people aren't going to get more interested as the world does get smaller."