Diversity Report 2009 Cultural diversity in translations of books: Mapping fiction authors across Europe.
Miha Kovač and Rüdiger Wischenbart
With research by Jennifer Jursitzky and Sabina Muriale
Available also at www.wischenbart.com/translation
Supported by
Table of contents
A road map to cultural diversity in books 3 The methodology 4 How diverse are translated books in general? 7 Diversity in the top-selling segment 9 East versus West is not a significant category for the top segment 11 The variations in the impact of the very top 13 Linguistically relatively open versus closed literary markets 15 Case study 01: France and Germany 16 Case study 02: Germany and Austria 17 Case Study 03: Muriel Barbery, Ildefonso Falcones, and Stieg Larsson 20 The European careers of European authors—and their limits 24 The West-East one-way track 26 Synopsis and insights 31 Four conclusions 33 Annex 1: Data sources 34 The “Diversity Report 2008 - An overview and analysis of translation statistics across Europe: Facts, trends, patterns” is available for download at www.wischenbart.com/translation . 34 Annex 2: The top 40 EUWest fiction authors April 2008 – March 2009 35 Annex 3: Top 40 October 2008 to September 2009 EUWest 37 Annex 4: Top 40 Jan to October 2009 CEE 38 The authors 39
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org
A road map to cultural diversity in books
Books allow ideas and stories to travel, and translations are the vehicle of choice. Oddly enough for such a fundamental mechanism at the core of culture and cultural diversity, we have little precise knowledge, and certainly no data-based analysis of the patterns formed by those flows, and even less about the forces driving or hindering the exchange.
After having tried to map the flows of translation across Europe at the most general level in the “Diversity Report 2008,” the present analysis aims to break down those general observations to the level of individual fiction authors and their work, and track how they move across languages or how they do not. Metaphorically speaking, we try to get from a general physical map of the European landscape of translations as presented in the “Diversity Report 2008”1 to a road map.
The goal is to develop a framework to continuously observe and analyze the career paths of fiction authors and their work across European book markets, with a special emphasis on translations, and how books travel across linguistic borders.
Who, and to what end, may have an interest in using such a map? We expect at least three groups of stakeholders to be beneficiaries:
First, all those public and private, government, and non-government institutions interested in cultural diversity and book culture. These organizations recently proclaimed in a wide variety of debates and policy documents the value and importance of cultural diversity as it was the subject of the “UNESCO Universal Declaration on Cultural Diversity,” adopted in November 2001. The value and importance attributed to cultural diversity are also mirrored in a considerable number of funding programs and awards aiming at subsidizing and promoting (mostly literary) translations. However, so far, the efficiency of such programs has been difficult to measure.
Second, for translations to be published, a complex trade in rights and licenses takes place, with a finely orchestrated interaction between various professional actors, including authors, their agents, publishers, and their scouts, who propose, sell, and buy (or do not buy) permission to have an author’s work in one or many different languages. So far, the rights trade in Europe is very much a black box, with few empirical data allowing the systematic comparison of what is on offer, what is taken up from the offer, and how novelties are put in the marketplace. Keeping in mind the fact that, in many markets of continental Europe, translations form one of the cornerstones of book publishing, such a road map of translations might be of considerable use for publishers and agents as they create their lists.
1 Diversity Report 2008: Available for free download at www.wischenbart.com/translation. The Diversity Report 2009 has been presented and discussed in a preliminary – working paper – version at the “On Translation” conference at Buch Wien 09 on November 13, 2009.
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org The third group probably interested in what is going on in terms of books and diversity is the general reading public and the media. Thus far, anecdotal evidence about the “Anglo-Saxon” impact, “cultural homogenization,” or the “Harry Potter/Stephenie Meyer/Dan Brown” effect of the “Hollywoodization” of reading often prevails, while our data and insights show just this: Best-selling books in Europe are much more diverse than anyone would suspect. However, some barriers are much odder and higher than most observers would expect.
The methodology
Our research on European adult fiction best sellers started roughly two years ago and was in its early beginnings focused on seven book markets of the European Union (Sweden, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, and the Netherlands).2
There is a set of reasons why we decided to start with these markets: First and foremost, reliable best-seller lists are available for these countries, compiled either by professional magazines for the book trade or by market research organizations and we had collected these data since early 2006.
Second, these markets represent a set of small and big markets and cover various major linguistic groups in a significant sample of Europe’s major book markets (in this report, we refer to this group as “EUWest”).
Third, these markets have a highly developed publishing infrastructure (in terms of book distribution, sales channels, and data collection). Furthermore, some of these markets are big exporters of their books to other parts of the EU (undoubtedly, the UK is the biggest exporter not only in this group, but worldwide, followed by Germany and France), while others have only minor export markets in Europe (such as Sweden or Spain; the latter has a huge export market in Latin America, but this is beyond the reach of our analysis as it focuses only on Europe).
To make a long story short, when we started the research, we could reasonably argue that, by analyzing these seven markets, we were looking at key European book markets and at the same time getting a broader picture of reading habits in the EUWest as these markets represent most of the particularities that exist in the EUWest’s best-selling book patterns.
In the next step, the research was extended to several new members of the European Union (CEE – for Central and Eastern Europe, plus Serbia, as we could get relevant data for this market as well). Yet we decided, as a mark of methodological caution, to develop a separate approach for this second set of markets for a number of historical and practical reasons.
In the socialist past, some of the CEE countries (such as Slovenia and Serbia) had a kind of proto-book markets as the economy in ex-Yugoslavia was much more market-oriented than in the rest of the socialist block, while others published books in more or less centrally planned Soviet-style ways, and
2 The first results of our analysis have been published as Miha Kovač, Rüdiger Wischenbart: End of the English (British?) Empire? Or Something Else? In: Publishing Research Quarterly. Vol. 25, Nr 2, June 2009, pages 118– 127.
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org in accordance with their overall economic organization (such as Romania and Bulgaria). As a consequence, book markets in the former Yugoslavia were more open to translations and even to the publication of books by Western authors, even as they were banned in other socialist countries. For example, the complete works of Milan Kundera were published in Yugoslavia in the late 1970s and the early 1980s, at a time when he was banned in all other socialist countries.
We assumed that, after the fall of socialism in 1989, this political and cultural heritage somehow may have determined reading and book buying patterns in Eastern and Central Europe compared to that in the EUWest. Preliminary research had shown that some East European book markets had been flooded with English translations in the 1990s, which was at least in some countries, undoubtedly a result of the thirst for such previously banned reading. In some parts of Eastern Europe, these trends started to change already at the beginning of the millennium.3
When the book markets started to evolve in all these countries after the rift of 1989, they lacked more the sophisticated publishing and book-selling infrastructures that existed in the EUWest: For most of these countries, no qualified market data are produced, and only some cultural magazines and chain bookstores compile best-seller lists, mostly of a reliability that is difficult to assess. In Slovenia and the Czech Republic, this started to change by 2009, as the National Publishers’ Association and the Society of Booksellers started to introduce professionally crated lists. We therefore had to work with the relatively best data we could find, from a heterogeneous mix of sources, including recently introduced representative data as well as information released by several of the largest chain bookstores. (See Annex 1 for a detailed list of data sources.)
For most of CEE (with the exception of the Czech Republic), only combined fiction and nonfiction lists are available. And from our experience in working with EUWest lists, we already knew that to get a more relevant perspective on a market and its specific profile, we need to compile monthly snapshots over a period of time, ideally 12 months, which we could retrieve at least for Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary (nine months, from January to September 2009), Slovenia, and Serbia. For Slovakia and Romania, we started to collect monthly snapshots, as past data could no longer be obtained.
Undoubtedly, this kind of research will become even more accurate over longer periods of time. Even for those few global best sellers that appear almost in all parts of the planet with a developed book culture, the pace of translations varies significantly: The translation of Dan Brown’s latest novel, “The Lost Symbol,” for example, hit the bookshelves in Serbia and Germany in October 2009 (one month after its publication in English), in France at the end of November 2009, and in Slovenia, will appear only in February 2010. Hence, to measure the impact of Brown’s books in Europe (and compare it,
3 In 2001, Miha Kovač explained trends on European bestseller lists in the late 1990s in gastronomical terms: “…our short walk through different European lists reveals that Slovene and Hungarian readers are predominantly consuming Big Macs, regardless of the fact that their markets offer a wide range of domestic products…and the French and the Russians are more or less ignoring McDonalds and returning – or firmly sticking – to their baguettes and pirogues”. For more on the Central and East European book markets see Miha Kovač, The State of Affairs in Post-Communist Central and Eastern European Book Industries. Publishing Research Quarterly, Fall 2002, Vol. 18, No.3
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org for example, with Larsson’s impact), it will be necessary to extend the observation period to at least two years.
As the reliability of data between EUWest and CEE is not the same, we decided against integrating all data into one unified “all European” set.
However, it also seemed important to find a neutral perspective on the entire scope of data, in order to avoid projecting any territorial preconceptions on the material, such as, for instance, a pattern of an East/West divide. Indeed, we discovered some remarkable similarities, showing that for a number of key parameters such as the share of translations from English or the percentage of domestic authors on the best-seller lists, there is no East/West pattern at all.
We started with an analysis of the top 10 best-seller lists (and, again to calibrate our perspective, in some markets where available, the top 20 as well) as this mirrors the top segment of the market, and focused primarily on authors (not titles or publishers), as we consider the authors to carry the brand of a work more strongly than the individual title or the publisher. This limited top segment turned out to incorporate a significant diversity in authors, styles, and backgrounds.
To assess and compare the impact of an author’s books, we attributed “impact points” for each month that a book stays in the top 10 in a given market (with 50 points for a #1 rank, 49 for a #2, etc.). This system allows a look at larger and smaller countries and book markets across Europe in a realistic, calibrated perspective.
We call these measurements “impact points” as they reflect the duration as well as the rank of an author’s presence at the top of a market, which we considered the second-best option to assess the reach and impact of an author in a given market, since absolute sales figures are unavailable for most markets.
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org How diverse are translated books in general?
Best-seller lists are certainly the one segment where “much of the same” would be the expected pattern. With hyper-sellers launched on a global scale, with huge promotional budgets and guaranteed media coverage, the “Harry Potter” kind of magic is the usual suspect to flatten reading markets around a silly tale. If it were so simple!
It is true that a very tiny number of authors seem to dominate markets at any given moment, and their impact on the overall market seems to grow, rather than fall.
Measured by our “impact points” (see the details in “Methodology”), the top two fiction writers of the 12 months from October 2008 to September 2009 account for roughly one third of all the points won by EUWest’s top 40 authors. The 10 strongest writers account for almost 60 percent of that top segment.
EUWest (France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, the UK) Oct2008/Sep2009 Percent of Rank Author Points top 40 authors 1 Stieg Larsson 3697 19,13% 2 Stephenie Meyer 3012,5 15,59% 3 Carlos Ruiz Zafón 1161,5 6,01% 4 Paolo Giordano 805,5 4,17% 5 Roberto Saviano 552,5 2,86% 6 Charlotte Roche 527 2,73% 7 John Grisham 497 2,57% 8 James Patterson 384,5 1,99% 9 Herman Koch 368 1,90% 10 Simon Beckett 360 1,92% Percent of Top 40 authors 57,68%
However, even among the 10 authors with the strongest best-selling records, works written in a variety of original languages are to be found. Only three of these authors write in English. In terms of content and style, again not one single overarching pattern can be identified; instead, the selection contains fictionalized and fact-based crime stories, fantasy and popular entertainment, and an autobiography with strong erotic components. We find truly global authors’ brands next to strong nationally rooted writers, genuine fiction writers as well as authors whose writing careers built on a primary reputation as journalists or TV personalities.
The perhaps strongest message from this chart is that only a tiny number of authors are really omnipresent across all or most languages and markets. The “Harry Potter” or Stieg Larsson or
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org Stephenie Meyer effect is clearly rather an exceptional phenomenon, and not a single force shaping international book markets.
Quite the opposite is true. Most successful authors have a presence in the top 10 (or top 20) rankings in only a few markets while the majority gets to the top in only one country, which is normally the author’s home market. (See Annex 2 for the complete list.)
4000
2000
0 Stieg Larsson Ken Follett Kluun Simon Beckett Hugh Laurie Hugh Roberto Saviano Roberto Charlotte Roche Carlos Ruiz Zafón Ruiz Carlos Alan Moore Alan James Patterson Dora Heldt Saskia Noort Saskia John Boyne John Khaled Hosseini Elizabeth Gilbert Tatiana de de Rosnay Tatiana Maeve Binchy Christopher Paolini Christopher Marie Gustave Le Clézio Mary Ann Shaffer Ann Mary - Jean
Data source: Top 10 lists for seven major West European book markets (France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the UK), from October 2008 to September 2009.
A chart representing those authors with the greatest impact on European readers of popular fiction shows a graph of a steep spike for the tiny leading group that then flattens quickly to what Chris Andersen, in his analysis of music and book sales via Internet-based sales channels, called a “Long Tail.”4
This Long Tail consists of a substantial number of authors from various regional and linguistic backgrounds, writing obviously, as can be judged from their different styles and topics, for a variety of different audiences, producing fairly diverse patterns of sales and catering to the largely different cultural preferences of their readerships.
4 Chris Andersen: The Long Tail. Why the Future of Business Is Selling Less of More. New York: Hyperion 2006.
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org Diversity in the top-selling segment
Interestingly, the top segment in EUWest, as predominant as the segment is compared to the rest of the fiction market, is far from homogenous, as this segment contains authors writing, aside from English, in Swedish, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and German even at the very top.
Of the top 40 authors between October 2008 and September 2009, based on each market’s monthly top 10 lists in seven major book markets in Western Europe (France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the UK), 19 write in English, and 21 in other languages.
The same survey half a year earlier (April 2008 to March 2009) showed a pretty similar pattern with a 17 to 27 ratio between English and other languages.
Perhaps even more significant is that only a relatively few authors can make it in several markets (and translations) into the very top segments, whereas most writers—starting around rank 20 in our computations—have that kind of an impact only with their domestic readership (see the table below).
EUWest Top 10 fiction lists: Authors with strongest impact. April 2008 – March 2009
Apr08/Mar09 Original Author Title Country (Points language total) Stieg Larsson Millennium (3 titles) Swedish F, SP, SE, NL, UK 2601,5 Stephenie Meyer (*) 4 titles + The Host (adult UK) English I, SP, D, UK 2156,5 Khaled Hosseini 2 titles English NL, SE, D, 1172 Roberto Saviano (**) Gomorra Italian I, D, F, SP, NL, SE, 1104 Carlos Ruiz Zafón El juego del ángel Spanish SP, NL, I , D 893,5 Ken Follett World Without End English F, D, SE, SP, 825 Muriel Barbery L'élégance du hérisson French F, D, SP, 786 Charlotte Roche Feuchtgebiete German D, NL, UK 709 John Boyne Boy with the Striped Pajamas English SP 527 Cecelia Ahern The Gift English UK, D, 465 Elizabeth Gilbert Eat, Pray, Love English NL 430 Henning Mankell Kinesen Swedish SP, SE, D, NL 404 Anna Gavalda La consolante French F, D, SP, 401 Liza Maklund En plats i solen & Livsstid Swedish SE 374 Paolo Giordano La solitudine dei numeri primi Italian I, SP, NL 368 Jean-Marie Le Ritournelle de la faim; French SE, F, 334 Clézio L'Africain
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org Jens Lapidus Snabba Cash Swedish SE 321 Andrea Camilleri Mehrere Titel Italian I, SP, D, UK 289,5 Jean-Louis Fournier Où on va, papa? French F 287 Eduardo Mendoza El asombroso viaje de Spanish SP Pomponio Flato 285 Mark Levengood Hjärtat får inga rynkor Swedish SE 285 Katie Price Angel Uncovered English UK 284 Siegfried Lenz Schweigeminute German D, 282 J.K. Rowling (*) Beedle the Bard; Deathly English SP, D, Hallows 243 Jan Guillou Men inte om det gäller din Swedish SE dotter 243 Marc Levy Toutes ces choses qu'on ne French F s'est pas dites 240 Simone van der Dutch NL Vlugt Blauw water 239 Guillaume Musso Je reviens te chercher French F 234 Asa Larsson Till dess din vrede upphör Swedish SE 229 (*) All-age titles, not listed as fiction in all countries, therefore excluded from this ranking and analysis (**) Listed as fiction in the original Italian edition, yet as nonfiction in others, but written in the form of a novel, therefore included in this ranking
At the same time, there are clear limits to the diversity in languages among the dominant fiction authors in EUWest best-seller lists: In this exclusive segment, only a few original languages seem to be allowed, namely the main European languages plus American English and, as the rare exception, Brazilian Portuguese (for Paulo Coelho). Widely translated Central European literature such as Hungarian or Polish is not represented.
The very limited choice of original languages, it must be noted, is not equivalent to the personal origins of the top writers—who include the Afghani Khaled Hosseini, the India-born winner of the 2008 Man Booker Prize, Aravind Adiga, and Ukrainian-British Marina Lewycka in previous years. The same is true as for the topics of the books, which cover a wide range of issues, regions as well as styles.
Most interestingly, the emerging pattern is not defined by the size of a language’s domestic market, given the strong presence of languages such as Swedish or Dutch. Instead, these observations strongly indicate that forces other than sheer size or the scope of languages and domestic readerships define the permeability of the translation markets. However, more research and a broader set of data are required to better understand these forces and—notably ‘symbolic’—barriers more adequately.
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org East versus West is not a significant category for the top segment
It is remarkable that, at least at the top level, no significant difference can be noted between EUWest and those markets in the EU’s new member states of Central and Southeast Europe—as if the combined political, economic, and cultural shift of 1989 had never existed, and in the aftermath of the integration of these countries into the European Union, no tidal changes from Soviet to Anglo- American cultural influences had ever occurred.
For this comparative analysis, we established at first a similar Top 40 author’s list for the combined markets of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Serbia, and Slovenia (referred to as the “CEE” list). All these lists, with the exception of the Czech, combine fiction and nonfiction titles (as does the Italian list in EUWest).
The 40 leading authors in the resulting CEE ranking show that again just 13 write their books in English, 17 in the respective country’s domestic (majority) language, and another 10 authors use “other” languages.
“Other,” once again, comprises just Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, Swedish, German, Dutch, Norwegian, French, and, in the case of Haruki Murakami, Japanese.
Even in the per-country CEE charts, one can find hardly any exception to this rule. Most importantly, not one original CEE title has made it—not in CEE or in EUWest—on any of the charts other than that of the title’s own original language and market.
The story gets even more complex in a per-country comparison of key parameters such as the distribution of original languages, notably for each country of the number of listed works written in the domestic vernacular, in English, or in an “other” language.
Surprisingly, it appears that, on average, the penetration by works originally written in English is not stronger but lesser when it comes to the top segment.
For all but two countries in EUWest and CEE, translations from English account for roughly one third in the top segment. This is a very modest value when compared to the fact that, overall, roughly two thirds of all available translations are from English originals. It is true that the impact of English in Central and Eastern Europe tends to be lesser than in Western Europe, but only by a few percentage points, with the Czech Republic showing the strongest resistance against English at around 50 percent. (For details, see “Diversity Report 2008” at www.wischenbart.com/translation.)
The two real exceptions—at the two extremes of the scale—are, on the one hand, obviously the United Kingdom, with 28 of the top 30 authors in the charts writing in English, and on the other, Sweden, with only three of the top 30 authors writing in English plus another five in “other” languages.
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org English 30 25 20 15 10 5 english 0
All of Europe: Number of Top 30 authors writing in English
However, when it comes to the number of domestic authors for each country, variations appear to be limited, and a solid middle ground has to be noted. In 7 out of 11 surveyed markets, domestic authors account for roughly half of the top best sellers: France, the Netherlands, Hungary, Italy, Serbia, Czech Republic, and Germany.
The exceptions are again Sweden, with more than two thirds of the country’s best-selling authors writing in Swedish, and, at the other end of the scale, Slovenia, Poland, and Spain, where domestic writers seem to have a much harder time finding a large home base among readers.
domestic
30 25 20 15 10 5 domestic 0 UK Italy Spain Serbia France Poland Austria Sweden Slovenia Hungary Germany Netherlands Czech Republic
All of Europe: Number of Top 30 authors writing in the domestic (majority) language.
Again, additional research might be required to understand what forces define the ratio of domestic authors to translations in a country’s reading preferences.
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org Surveying the West European countries for about four years now, we must confirm, at least as an anecdotal insight, the fact that those patterns seem to form clearly distinct country profiles, when it comes to the proportion between the origins of notably fiction titles and authors. However, we also can take note that, between the extremes (e.g., the particularly high impact of domestic authors in the United Kingdom and Sweden), most markets seem to be much more open and prepared to embrace new voices than many observers tend to assume.
The variations in the impact of the very top
One more parameter can be introduced to the per-country analysis, and this is the impact of the absolutely strongest performers among the successful authors compared to the Longer Tail. The differences are significant.
In the two countries with the strongest preference for domestic authors, the UK and Sweden, the top 10 performers account for less than half the impact of the top 30. Meanwhile, in Spain and Italy, the respective top 10 authors represent more than three quarters, and Poland, Slovenia, and Germany follow suit with around 70 percent each. This very group—with the exception of Italy—also has the weakest impact of domestic writers in fact.
% of Top 10 against Top 30
80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0
All of Europe: Proportion of the top 10 authors as compared to the top 30.
Thus, again, not only does a simple West/East divide make no sense, but also a blunt comparison of big versus small seems to be pointless.
A comparison of the percentage in impact points of the top 10 listed authors for Sweden and Spain illustrates how different some of these markets are in terms of the impact of the top authors against all the others who can make it to the top of the lists:
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org 30 25 20 15 Sweden 10 5 Spain 0 1 2 Sweden 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Percentage of Top 10 against Top 40 authors for fiction in Sweden and Spain.
Based on this pattern, one could distinguish markets with a strong “winner takes it all” dynamics— such as Spain, Italy, or Poland—against markets with a more smoothened curve of the most successful. This is not about the exceptional impact of the absolute winners, or the top two or three. The differentiation continues in a most interesting way as the curves flatten out into the Long Tail below.
250 200 150
100 Sweden 50 Spain 0 4 6 8 10 12 Sweden 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30
Percentage of Top 3 to 10 against Top 40 authors for fiction in Sweden and Spain.
We see how in Sweden (or similarly in the UK), the difference between a number 4 author and his or her colleague of rank 30 is much less drastic than in Spain or Italy. To use Chris Anderson’s language again, it is very obvious that all best-selling charts have a Long Tail; however, in some, the head is much longer than in the others.
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org It would be desirable to have additional research based on absolute sales figures, and not only on the kind of indirect measures as provided by our “impact points.” Unfortunately, such absolute numbers are available only for a very few markets.
Linguistically relatively open versus closed literary markets
As we screened the various book markets with regard to their diversity in the original language of the best-selling works—of fiction for EUWest and in the Czech Republic, and with a combined fiction and nonfiction overview for CEE and Italy, we came, of course, to the question of how easy it is for books written in all the “other” languages, aside from the domestic vernacular and English, to access a given cultural market and how accessible the readership is for translations.
It turns out that, once again, a new basic pattern takes shape, not deriving in any simple way from the impact either of domestic or of authors writing in English. In fact, the permeability by books translated from “other” languages shows more variations than any of the previous parameters.
other 16 14 12 10 8 6 4 other 2 0
All of Europe: Number of Top 30 authors who write in any language other than English or the domestic majority language.
First, we note that those countries with the steepest curve for the impact of their top three or top 10 authors in the overall best-selling segment are pretty much the same as those most open to translations from “other” languages, namely Spain, Poland, and Italy. Germany and Slovenia in both
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org cases occupy places in the middle, while the UK and France, both showing a comparatively flat curve for the top segment, return here as markets most difficult to be penetrated by translations.
However, if we combine parameters, we face ever more complexity.
30 25 20 15 10 5 english 0 domestic UK english other Spain Italy Serbia Sweden Poland Slovenia France Hungary Austria Germany Netherlands Czech Republic
All of Europe: Combined graphs for original languages per country
As we see for instance, there is no simple correlation between the overall number of translations and the percentage of translations from English, or from other languages. It seems as if several more parameters and drivers need to be taken into account for a full understanding of diversity.
We must be cautious here and carefully look at a number of apparently contradictory aspects. To shed some light on this issue, a few case studies for the selected markets are helpful.
Case study 01: France and Germany
We must certainly make a clear difference between patterns in the top best-selling segment and the overall translation activities for a given country, language, and market, and the overall book or fiction market. However, a comparative analysis of the top segment is certainly worth the effort as an additional piece in the larger puzzle.
France is arguably the country with currently the largest number of translations of books per year, and seems to have overtaken Germany in this quality (for details, see “Diversity Report 2008”); therefore, a direct comparison between those two market and language entities is obviously of interest.
With the huge success and subsequent penetration of large parts of the European readership by Stieg Larsson, which has, as we shall see in more detail below, picked up early momentum
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org particularly from the French translation, we see that France can be a very effective European launching pad, again a role traditionally occupied by Germany.
The paradox of France as a hefty translating market, with a tightly locked best-seller segment that hardly any fiction author writing in a language other than French or English can access, persists not only in the snapshot of the past 12 months.
Going back all the way to January 2006, 111 fiction authors have made it into the top 10 fiction list of Livres Hebdo, yet only a handful of books translated from languages other than English were embraced by the widest readership in France. Oddly enough, we find four Nordic crime authors (three Swedes, Larsson, Camilla Läckberg, and Henning Mankell, plus the Icelandic Arnaldur Indridason). The only German author in this segment was Stefan Zweig, whose French readership, independently from any current affairs, goes back to the period right after World War II.
In Germany, the overall list is shorter by roughly one quarter, with only 83 writers, yet a wider variety of well-received “other” languages, including French (Muriel Barbery, Jonathan Littell, Anna Gavalda), Swedish (Mankell, Larsson), Spanish (Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Ildefonso Falcones, Isabel Allende), Brazilian Portuguese (Coelho) and Danish (Peter Hoeg).
Thus, we see a top 10 segment is more difficult to penetrate, as fewer authors have established their footprint here, yet with a wider linguistic variety.
Case study 02: Germany and Austria
A comparison between Austria and Germany comes with the surprise that there is only a small difference between the basic patterns in the reading preferences of the two countries.
Of course, as they share the same majority language, German, this similarity may seem obvious. However, notably in Austria, the differences between its cultural heritage and tradition with Germany are generally highlighted very strongly, and considered to play a central role in defining Austrian national identity (which traditionally is understood to make all the difference against the German cultural tradition).
English 12 14 Domestic 14 AT: 1-2 (*) 11 AT: 4-5 (*) Other 4 5 Top10 Top 10 Germany Austria buchreport Mediacontrol (Spiegel) (Anzeiger) Stephenie Meyer 1224 25,07% Stephenie Meyer 842 18,52% Charlotte Roche 369 7,56% Charlotte Roche 409 9,00% Simon Beckett 360 7,37% David Safier 342 7,52% Sarah Kuttner 281 5,76% Daniel Glattauer 341 7,50% Dora Heldt 234 4,79% Daniel Kehlmann 273 6,01% Daniel Kehlmann 231 4,73% Sarah Kuttner 231 5,08%
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org Uwe Tellkamp 187 3,83% Simon Beckett 226 4,97% Carlos Ruiz Zafón 180 3,69% Paulo Coelho 191 4,20% Cornelia Funke 175 3,58% Donna Leon 146 3,21% William P. Young 136 2,79% Christopher Paolini 144 3,17% Ken Follett 134 69,17% Ildikó von Kürthy 137 69,18% Moritz Netenjakob 132 50,55% Cecelia Ahern 131 48,55% Daniel Glattauer 132 Carlos Ruiz Zafón 96 Alan Bennett 132 Joanne K. Rowling 91 Christopher Paolini 95 William P. Young 90 Joanne K. Rowling 95 Tess Gerritsen 89 Donna Leon 94 Thomas Bernhard 88 Elizabeth George 89 Michael Köhlmeier 87 Sebastian Fitzek 86 Veit Heinichen 87 Volker Klüpfel 50 Anna Gavalda 84 Michael Kobr 50 Andrea Camilleri 44 Dan Brown 49 Uwe Tellkamp 43 Ildikó von Kürthy 48 Karin Slaughter 43 Paulo Coelho 47 Brian D´Amato 42 Charlotte Link 47 Elizabeth George 42 Markus Heitz 46 Iny Lorentz 42 Cecelia Ahern 46 Eva Rossmann 41 Fred Vargas 45 Martin Walker 41 Cassandra Clare 44 Birgit Rieger 41 Siegfried Lenz 44 Total points 4882 4546 Top 16 to 30 880 18,03% 856 18,83%
Top 30 fiction authors in Austria and Germany, October 2008 to September 2009
It is striking that not only is the ratio of the English language, domestic, and “other” language writers very similar between the two countries. The presence of Austrian writers in Austria is significant, yet not overwhelming —as illustrated well in an analysis of how authors are distributed between Austria and Germany in detail.
DE&AT Only DE Only AT
meyer roche beckett safier kuttner heldt kehlmann tellkamp Zafon funke young follett netenjakob glattauer
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org bennet paolini rowling gerritsen leon th bernhard george köhlmeier fitzek heinchen klüpfel gavalda kobr camilleri brown kürthy slaughter coelho d'amato link heitz lorentz ahern vargas rossmann clare walker lenz rieger
Comparison by author between Austria and Germany, October 2008 to September 2009
It would be highly desirable of course to compare this snapshot of the past 12 months between October 2008 and September 2009 with a long-term analysis. Unfortunately, no historic data, ideally going back five or even 10 years, are available to us, and the current reliable “Media Control” list was started only very recently; thus, we can only point to another paradox.
At a university seminar around 2005, we conducted a similar comparative analysis of Austrian and German lists, using for Austria lists published by general media, with no proof of their reliability. Nevertheless, at that time, the differences between the top authors in Austria and Germany were very significant, with an extraordinarily high proportion of Austrian writers on the Austrian list, hinting then at major differences. Even today, such lists, usually based on only one or a few local bookstores for Austria, are published in some newspapers here and there, as opposed to the more representative Media Control data used for this report, and in these lists, differences between the reading preferences in the two countries seem to be much more apparent.
Perhaps this mirrors a certain discrepancy between the perceptions of a cultural—or book- oriented—elite, with a strong presence in bookselling, publishing, and the cultural industry and media in general and, on the other side, the general book-buying target groups at large.
With TV programs from both Germany and Austria available in Austria via cable and satellite for a generation, and significant parts of common popular culture and entertainment consumed in both countries, the assumption of similar reading preferences comes with a strong plausibility.
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org Case Study 03: Muriel Barbery, Ildefonso Falcones, and Stieg Larsson
Muriel Barbery
The typical career of an internationally successful best-selling writer and his or her books has a build- up period, normally in the author’s home market, followed by one or several peaks and then a fadeout, eventually picking up momentum as a new book by this writer is released.
This is the case, for instance, for Muriel Barbery’s “L’élégance du herisson.”
200 150 100 50 0 01.02.2007 01.04.2007 01.06.2007 01.08.2007 01.10.2007 01.12.2007 01.02.2008 01.04.2008 01.06.2008 01.08.2008 01.10.2008 01.12.2008 01.02.2009 01.04.2009 01.06.2009 01.08.2009
Case study: Muriel Barbery: “L’élégance du herisson.” Accumulated points for seven West European markets.
Barbery is a French writer, born in 1969 in Morocco, and a professor of philosophy in French Normandy who lives in Kyoto, Japan. Her first novel, “Une gourmandise,” published by Gallimard in 2000, about a legendary culinary critic, knew both domestic and international success as the book was translated into 14 languages.
“L’élégance du herisson,” published by Gallimard in 2006, has won numerous literary awards and tells the story of a Parisian concierge who accumulated an enormous cultural knowledge, and yet has decided to live as the keeper of an apartment building on a well-off street in the inner city of Paris. The novel is the heroine’s monologue, full of observations and gossip about the house’s inhabitants as well as of literary and philosophical references, mixing the most banal comments with learned quotes ranging from Marcel Proust to Immanuel Kant. The book topped the French fiction list for 30 consecutive weeks and has been translated into 34 languages. The book’s story and style are arguably the opposite of what may be considered typical “best-seller” material.
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org A chart by country shows how, with initial success in the original language, the author had a continuous exposure over a longer period of time. The translation climbed into the top segment in several other markets, yet, on average, the success abroad lasted only briefly. We discovered similar patterns in many other translated best sellers.
60
50 Czech 40 France 30 German 20 Italy Bestseller Punkte Bestseller serbia 10 Spain 0 Sweden
Case study Muriel Barbery: “L’élégance du herisson.” Points by country for seven West European markets.
Ildefonso Falcones
Ildefonso Falcones, a novelist writing in Spanish (Castilian) and a lawyer, living in Barcelona, had a huge local success with “La catedral del mar.” The debut novel, set in the Middle Ages, is about the construction of the cathedral “Santa Maria del Mar” in Barcelona in the 14th century. The novel was published in 2006 by Grupo Editorial Random House Mondadori, a joint venture between the German/U.S. publisher Random House and the Italian publisher Mondadori. The book sold approximately 2 million copies in Spain alone and has been translated and published in 30 countries. In 2009, Falcones’s second novel was released, “La mano de Fátima.”
At first, the initial success of “La catedral del mar” was unnoticed abroad, and after a delay, the translation rights were sold for a number of other languages, but upon publication abroad, the book proved to find a good audience in many other countries as well.
The chart by country shows clearly how the initial success in Spanish at first only coincided with the good reception of the Italian translation. Only a year later, the German translation—and an early English (British) translation that proved strong, even though it did not climb to the very top of the ranking—pushed the title to its international level.
In summer 2009, Falcones’s second novel, “La mano de Fátima,” instantly got to the top in Spain, and it will be interesting to observe if, once the ground has been prepared and a community of readers has been built, the experience can be repeated (or even enlarged) with Falcones’s new book.
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org However, despite the performance of the debut, no synchronized launch between the original and translations into key languages was organized—as it would have been certainly considered for a comparably strong English language writer.
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50 Czech 40 France 30 German 20 Italy Bestseller Punkte Bestseller 10 slovenia Spain 0 Sweden
Case study: Ildefonso Falcones: “La catedral del mar.” Points by selected countries.
Stieg Larsson
The pattern is entirely different for the “hyperseller” type of authors such as Stieg Larsson. They seem to spread like diseases, with readers’ ‘contagion’ re-enforcing the momentum even across markets and building up the strength of a wave over an astounding period of time.
Stieg Larsson, a Swedish journalist and editor of the left-wing magazine “Expo” and a (in his lifetime unpublished) writer of fiction only for the last few years before his early death from a heart attack, was born in 1954 and died in 2004. His crime trilogy “Millennium” was released posthumously between 2005 and 2007: Män som hatar kvinnor (2005), Flickan som lekte med elden (2006), and Luftslottet som sprängdes (2007). Initially, Larsson had planned to write 10 volumes with the cast of “Millennium.” By late 2009, approximately 15 million volumes of the series have been sold worldwide, including 3.5 million in Sweden alone.
Remarkably, in the publication and promotion of the “Millennium” trilogy, none of the globally leading transnational publishing groups seems to have played a key role; instead, a number of well- renowned independent houses with substantial track records in the publishers’ respective national literary publishing traditions were important. This is the case for the Swedish original, released by Norstedts, Sweden’s oldest publishing house, as well as for France and the United Kingdom.
It was arguably the French translation released by Actes Sud that developed the books to their full international potential, thereby triggering a global craze. The German translation by Heyne, an imprint of Bertelsmann-owned Random House, fell far short of the French success, which is even
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org more remarkable as Scandinavian crime novels have a particularly strong German readership, and it can be reasonably said that the German market has acted as a launch pad for Nordic crime as a genuine trend for all of Europe over the past decade.
In the United Kingdom, the rights to Larsson’s work were bought early on by Christopher MacLehose, a veteran publisher of international fiction (formerly with Harvill until it was acquired by Random House), who picked the “Millennium” trilogy to start his own, independent publishing venture.
160 Czech 140 France 120 German 100 hungary 80 Italy 60 NL Bestseller Punkte Bestseller 40 poland 20 Spain 0 Sweden UK US
Case study Stieg Larsson: “Millennium” (all three volumes combined). Points by country for seven West European markets.
In the case of Stieg Larsson, the charts show impressively how the initial success in Sweden has not been the main factor in the books’ enormous buildup all over Europe and beyond. Only as Larsson took off with French readers was something very special set into motion, and after more than two years, the momentum is still building.
1000 500 0 01.02.2006 01.05.2006 01.08.2006 01.11.2006 01.02.2007 01.05.2007 01.08.2007 01.11.2007 01.02.2008 01.05.2008 01.08.2008 01.11.2008 01.02.2009 01.05.2009 01.08.2009
Case study: Stieg Larsson: “Millennium.” Accumulated points for seven West European markets.
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org
The European careers of European authors—and their limits
European fiction writers not writing in English have had a significant impact notably in the top segment of best-seller lists for at least the past several years, bringing an astounding variety of voices to the broadest possible reading audiences. The seemingly singular phenomenon of Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium” trilogy sits on top of a broad catalogue of works of great diversity not only linguistically but also in tone, issues treated, and literary complexity.
While the spread of Nordic crime fiction, and along with it, of crime fiction from virtually every region of Europe, has been marveled at by many commentators of literary trends, it has been hardly noted that this pattern has more facets than this.
We speak of writers and works such as the historic novels of Ildefonso Falcones from Barcelona (“La cathedral del mar”), almost gothic novels by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, the hilarious monologue of a Paris philosopher concierge in Muriel Barbery’s “L’élégance du hérisson,” the fact-based yet fictionalized underworld accounts in Roberto Saviano’s “Gomorra,” a story about Germans and the Holocaust written by an Irish novelist in “The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas,” and the huge reconstruction of the most private motivations of a Nazi criminal, written by a native U.S. citizen in French, in Jonathan Littell’s “Les Bienveillantes,” to name just a few examples.
All these works have been, aside from the broad critical acclaim they received, smash hit novels not only in their original language versions but also in various translations, thereby hinting at a broad European reading audience with shared interests and preferences. The main works of these writers have been instantly translated into most major European languages.
It has to be underlined that these books are so different that the old argument of best sellers being mostly much of the same looks pretty silly. Even more so, the other myth of best sellers being mostly ‘made’ by marketing strategists is proved false as well. Many of these books, like Larsson’s posthumous furor, Barbery’s “Herisson,” or Falcone’s “Catedral,” had initially built domestic communities of readers, and only at a second degree picked up speed in spreading either by activities of their original publisher (like Barbery) or even by the publisher of an early translation (like Larsson).
As we have seen, medium-sized independent publishers seem to play at least as important a role as the powerful marketing machines of transnational conglomerates, and significant marketing budgets were not the trigger for these stories but a reaction after an author and a book had found a broadening initial readership.
Looking more closely at those writers and their novels, a few more surprising aspects can be identified.
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org These non-English books have at least one trait in common with a number of novels written in English by non-native-English authors who set out to showcase topics or regions that a significant readership was prepared to explore through books.
Examples include Khaled Hosseini with “The Kite Runner” and “A Thousand Splendid Suns” on Afghanistan, Marina Lewycka on the pitfalls of immigration and cultural immersion, and, most recently, Aravind Adiga’s “White Tiger” on the ambitious, newly rising Indian middle class.
These authors, their various stories, and their careers point at a number of notable phenomena.
Books, it seems, are considered by a large reading audience as a valid and either educating or entertaining medium to engage with topics of interest, in many cases topics that are related to general news stories (like Afghanistan, India, immigration, history, etc.).
It can be assumed that, for many of these books, the authenticity of an author’s autobiographical background is a key to the credibility, or symbolic value, of these books, particularly in comparison to other media accounts and the usually limited immersion of journalists and correspondents.
Weaving current affairs and their wider background in history and complexity into a good story with lively characters certainly help as well to add further credibility and possibilities for a reader’s identification with the story.
This potential has been well recognized for at least a decade by the driving actors of the trade in international rights and licenses, foremost the community of literary agents and scouts, who have created two powerful platforms at the Frankfurt and the London book fairs, developing such authors and their books from local best sellers into global brands. Since the stunning launch of the novel “The God of Small Things” by India (Kerala)-born Arundhati Roy in 1997, this scheme has been brought to perfection in the meantime and is applicable today not only to works written in English but also, as we can see, in a few other languages.
One interesting element in this reframing of international publishing successes and authors’ careers is a shift in the impact of the most prestigious awards.
The Nobel Prize in Literature was, for a long time, unmatched when it came to bringing an author to truly global recognition. However, since the advent of this new model of developing writing careers internationally, the British Man Booker Prize has proved to be much more effective than the Nobel Prize in Literature, which is probably due to the Man Booker’s close interconnectedness with the book trade and not only with the general media. While the Nobel brings an author’s picture to the front pages of newspapers around the globe, the Man Booker is a tool for actually selling these books, and a by-now unrivaled reference appreciated by the closely knit network of the agents and scouts.
It is no coincidence that Arundhati Roy’s rocket-like appearance in the late 1990s was helped significantly by her winning the Booker Prize in 1997. The last in a long series of subsequent examples of this award competition was, in 2008, the broad penetration of Adiga with successful translations in so many languages, boosted again by the Man Booker Prize, while the awarding of the Nobel Prize in
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org Literature to the well-established French writer Jean-Marie Le Clézio had comparatively modest effects on the global stage.
The West-East one-way track
This being said, a thick line must be drawn as well, defining what seems to form an almost unbreakable limit to the exploration of the world via literature: Only a few countries and their book markets seem to work as launching pads for the kind of top literary best sellers we want to analyze here.
With the odd exception of the Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami, and the Brazilian wizard Paolo Coelho and his powerful personal marketing machinery, all those writers started their journey, with technical support, it is true, with a handful of truly global literary agents in London and New York, from one of the members of “old Europe.”
Small countries and languages are not a counter-indication for such propulsion, as is shown by authors from Sweden, Denmark, and, most recently, even Iceland, with crime writer Arnaldur Indridason. However, starting a similar career from Hungary, Serbia, or from outside the triangle of Western Europe, the USA, and the former British Commonwealth obviously is hardly conceivable.
The pattern and its shaping forces that we want to understand better are complex. As we have already shown, the basic distribution between works written in English, in domestic languages and translations from “other” languages is pretty similar for most countries across Europe; only the UK and Sweden present significant exceptions to the rule.
The authors translated from English and from ‘other’ languages carry, again, few surprises. When a modern classic like Stefan Zweig suddenly enters the top ranks in France, or the Russian Ljudmila Ulickaja appears in Hungary, this can usually be explained by rather concrete local factors. French readers for instance embrace Zweig for many decades already. Ulickaja had a very successful appearance at the Budapest Book Festival in 2009 and, according to her Hungarian publisher Géza Morcsányi of Magvetö, she could hook up with a local, predominantly female readership well prepared to receive the story line of this particular book. Yet the overall impact of these exceptions to the general pattern is very limited indeed.
More striking is the fact that not a single writer from Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Slovenia, or Serbia entered the top segment in the “West,” as if 1989 had never happened. Yet in the authors’ countries of origin, authors such as Michal Viewegh, Spiró György, and Vladimir Pistalo (a Serbian writer living as a professor in the USA!) are uncontested stars.
The story gets even more complicated as it does not mean at all that literary authors from those very same countries would not have found wider recognition, through translations, in literary milieus all across Europe. The opposite is true. A small elite group of fiction writers, such as Milan Kundera, Jáchym Topol, Peter Esterházy, Peter Nadás, Andzrej Stasiuk, Mircea Cartarescu, and Drago Jančar, has clearly arrived at the heart of Europe’s culture, and their influence on European writing is
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org obviously a well-recognized fact. They have found dedicated niche readerships abroad and receive prestigious awards, are regularly invited to major festivals all over Europe, and are given the floor whenever a debate on European cultural diversity is staged. For instance, Peter Esterházy has received seven international literary awards, including the prestigious German Peace Price, Peter Nadás five, including the Austrian award for European literature, Drago Jančar two, and Mircea Cartarescu one.
Yet, some odd distinction seems to be at work, making a difference between this elite and the reading mainstream as reflected by the broader best-seller audience.
For a more realistic picture of the translation landscape, we therefore chose to add to the top-down approach through best sellers a second perspective, contrasting the former with the bottom-up analysis of which authors are translated into which languages in the first place. For this, we checked on three different groups of writers:
a) A selection of CEE’s current local top authors b) As a control group to (a), a sample of CEE’s literary “elite” c) A selection of EUWest’s most successful literary authors
H R S SR U Nat. Name CZ DE FR U IT NL PL O SE K SLO SP B K Zdeněk CZ Svěrák o x Michal CZ Viewegh o X x x x x X x x x Jaroslav CZ Kmenta o x x Marie Poledňákov 198 CZ á o 5 Lenka CZ Lanczová o Vlastimil CZ Vondruška o X Dana CZ Čermáková o O Szabó HU Magda X x O x x x x x Lőrincz L. László (Leslie 1984 HU Lawrence) X O x Moldova HU György X O X x Spiró HU György x O x Csernus HU Imre O Katarzyna PL Grochola X X o Malgorzata PL Musierowicz X o
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org Marek PL Krajewski x X x x o X X x x Wiktor PL Suworow X x o Małgorzata PL Kalicińska x o x Wojciech PL Cejrowski x Tone SLO Pavček X X o x Goran SLO Vojnović o Gorica SRB Nesovic o Vladimir SRB Pistalo x x x o x Marija SRB Jovanovic x o Milan CZ/FR Kundera o X x X x x x x X O x x x Jáchym CZ Topol o X x X x x x X O x x x Peter HU Esterházy x X x O x x x x X x x x HU Peter Nadás x X x O x X X X X x x György HU Dalos X x O x X x Andrzej PL Stasiuk x X x X x x o x X x x x Mircea RO Cartarescu X x X x x o X x x x RO Andrei Plesu X x o X X x Drago SLO Jancar x X x x x x o x x CAN/F Jonathan R Littell X X o X x X x X X 2010 x x Charlotte DE Roche X O x X x X x X x x Bernhard DE Schlink x O x ? x X x x x X x x x Daniel DE/AT Kehlmann x O x X x x X x X X x x x FR Le Clézio x X o X x X x X X X x x x Muriel FR Barbery x X o X x X x x X X 2010 x x Aravind IN/UK Adiga X X x x x x x X x o Paolo IN/UK Giordano x X x o X x x 2010 x x Roberto 2010 IT Saviano x X x X o X x x X X x Andrea IT Camilleri X x X o x x x x x x x Haruki JP Murakami x X x X x X x x X X x x x
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org Raymond NL Kluun x X x X x o X X x x x Herman NL Koch o Stieg SE Larsson x X x X x X x x O X x X x SE Åsa Larsson X x x x O X Liza SE Marklund X x X x x x O x x Carlos Ruiz SP Zafón x X x X x x x X X x X x Barbara US Delinsky X X X X x x X X o Colleen US McCullough x X x X x x x X X X o Overview of selected authors of fiction and their translations available in selected markets.
A number of relevant insights can be drawn from such an overview.
First and foremost, we see that the “Falcones/Barbery/Littell” kind of EUWest top authors also has a wide representation through translation in most of Central and Southeast Europe, while the current local stars in CEE remain mostly just that—local authors, with comparably few translations into other languages. German and French are the most important “launch pads”—or transfer languages—for most international fiction. Yet despite the fact that the English book market is such a high-walled fortress for translated best sellers, and making the UK best-seller lists is a privilege for only an extremely tiny minority of translated authors, translations into English act as an important launch pad for the careers of international authors. For both the best-selling EUWest authors and the CEE literary elite writers, English translations are mostly available as well as translations in many other languages—which is mostly not the case for CEE local best-selling fiction writers (with a few exceptions, such as the Czech Michal Viewegh and the Hungarian Magda Szabo). Dutch and Swedish, the two languages with the highest percentage of domestic writers on the best-seller lists (aside from English), are at the same time among the most receptive for translations below the best-seller threshold.
On the one hand, the online catalogue of Amazon UK notably includes an ever-wider variety of languages in the books the site offers, e.g., very substantial Polish and Czech lists. In reverse, English language imports occupy a significant market share not only in the Netherlands but also in most of Scandinavia and Germany. In the Romanian online catalogues, for example, we found English translations from a variety of non-English original editions, indicating that English reading might be a topic to consider as a growing complement to translation, and this might be the case even for works written in other (third) languages.
Furthermore, in 2008, according to data from the British Publishers’ Association (PA), Slovenia, with two million inhabitants, imported approximately GBP 5 million worth of English books (representing between 5 and 7 percent of the overall Slovene book market), or GBP 1 million more than Romania with a population of 22 million. The Czech Republic with 10 million inhabitants imported GBP 10
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org million worth of English books, and Estonia, with 1.3 million inhabitants had UK imports of GBP 1.7 million.
In October 2009 alone, the English version of Dan Brown’s “The Lost Symbol” was number 5 on Slovenia’s best-seller list, and on the list of Emka, the country’s largest chain bookstore, three English titles occupied the first three ranks.
The impact of English books on all European markets is of course bigger than British PA data show as these data do not include U.S. book imports or online sales from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk. It is very likely that the arrival of the Kindle in Europe will further enhance the processes of bilingual reading and considerably strengthen the role of English book sales in these markets.
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org Synopsis and insights
The European landscape of books and reading as seen through the lens of best-sellers, translations, their impact, and their penetration contradicts many of the preconceptions found in the majority of comments in today’s mainstream media.
1. Books translated from English represent, on average, about one third of the best-selling authors and titles across the continent; the only significant exception is Sweden. The UK best-seller market is—as expected—by far the most averse to translations. 2. As one consequence, national preferences show a much wider variety of—particularly domestic—authors and books, representing, on average, another solid third of the top segment, to the effect that countries’ reading preferences seem to be diverse rather than homogeneous across Europe. 3. Only a small group of authors succeed with translations of their work in a larger number of markets and countries. In the 12 months between October 2008 and September 2009 in EUWest, only seven of the top 40 authors appeared on top 10 lists in four or more countries, three writing in English (Elizabeth George, John Grisham, Stephenie Meyer) and four in other languages (Roberto Saviano, Carlos Ruiz Zafon, Paolo Coelho, Stieg Larsson). The European authors out competed the Anglo-Saxon writers significantly in impact points (7373.50 against 4570.50). Among the most translated Anglo-Saxon writers, only Stephenie Meyer, Richard North Patterson, and John Grisham made it into an accumulated European top 10 ranking, while the books of other American and English authors (such as Tess Gerritsen, Ken Follett, P.D. James, and Clive Cussler) regularly appear in translations on one or the other European best- seller lists. 4. The very top segment in best-seller lists is a very narrow segment indeed, propelling just two or three authors in their own category for each country, with the singularity of this high peak marking a significant distinction between markets. Remarkably, it is the UK and Sweden, or two markets with a particularly high percentage of domestic authors on top, where the entire curve of the best-selling authors is considerably flatter than in countries with lesser impact by domestic authors. 5. At least for the past few years, a recognizable number of European, non-English-writing best- seller authors evolved and found a broad mainstream readership across markets and languages, yet these authors were exclusively from “Western” (or “old”) Europe, who form an exclusive club that is almost inaccessible for authors, e.g., from CEE. 6. The West-East “one-way street” described above is the only pattern where West and East form meaningful categories, just as “big” and “small” languages and markets of origin seem to play a far smaller role than often assumed. 7. In EUWest, no systematic distinction between a (“high”) literary elite and eventual access to the top best-selling segment across Europe through translations seems to prevail; however, such a distinction clearly exists for authors from CEE who made their way into the European
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org literary elite, but as niche authors, not as authors who can find a broader European mainstream book readership. 8. The diversity in fiction best sellers in terms of topics treated, background of the authors, tone, and styles is huge; many of the most successful authors are initially “made by readers,” not planned, contradicting, in the initial careers of authors and their successful books, the popular notion of best sellers being engineered and homogenous.
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org Four conclusions The “Diversity Report 2009” is meant to be a starting point and an incentive for a debate that relies on data and transparent concepts rather than preconceptions or only anecdotal evidence. This will, of course, require the collection of data on a much broader basis and the development of tools for the analysis in order to build a dynamic model for the driving forces and main parameters framing book markets and translations. However, if literary fiction is to defend its role and importance as a channel for cultural exchange and communication across the European cultural diversity, the debate needs to be based on a more realistic perspective.
Even as the findings of this report are only the first attempt to satisfy such an ambition, they allow the formulation of at least four provocative conclusions:
The translation market falls short of readers’ curiosity. The market for rights and licenses, which is currently the core driver for translations, does not take in the full spectrum and diversity of what is on offer from authors across Europe, or what seems to be readers’ preferences. Instead, only a limited set of authors from a restricted set of backgrounds is given full access to the European reading markets, although the recent careers of European non-English-writing authors provide strong indications that an appreciative readership for such a wide diversity may exist. The funding policies for translations lack the information and the tools for a realistic assessment of the translations’ efficiency. The data compiled and, at least partly, analyzed for this report suggest that a more differentiated and realistic picture of the cultural dimensions of the European book and reading markets can actually be developed. The role of English is that of a bottleneck and a driving force. All general translation data demonstrate how little is translated into English, if compared to other target languages; and yet more of the “elite” authors are available in English than is generally assumed. English therefore plays a significant role as a transfer language (together with French and German), a factor of growing importance as the readiness for reading literature in certain foreign languages (most often, this means in English) seems to spread. In many markets, the reading of books written not only in English but also in any language and then translated into English seems to be expanding, and new digital technologies will drive this development forcefully in the near future. For policymakers, this brings up the critical question of either continue to focus on translations between the many languages or to also emphasize lead programs of translations into English. The potential for digital innovation can be game changing. As digital distribution currently picks up momentum with electronic reading devices and most new titles being rapidly available not only in print but also in digital formats, there is a strong likelihood that books in translation as well as in their original editions (or in one transfer language, notably in English) will spread much more easily than in the past; this
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org aspect has the potential to develop into a “game-changing” mechanism for all kinds of niche reading, hence for literary translations, within a relatively short period of time.
Annex 1: Data sources
The best-seller lists have been taken from the following sources:
Country Source Web address Type of source Austria Mediacontrol/Anzeiger des www.buecher.at Point of sale data by österreichischen Buchhandels market research Czech SCKN www.sckn.cz Point of sale data by trade Republic association France Livres Hebdo / Ipsos www.livreshebdo.fr Point of sale data by market research Germany buchreport / Spiegel best- www.buchreport.de Point of sale data by seller Liste market research Hungary Lira www.lira.hu Chain bookstore Italy Informazioni editoriali www.ie-online.it Point of sale data by market research Netherlands Boekblad/GfK www.boekblad.nl Point of sale data by market research Poland Empik www.empik.com Chain bookstore Romania Carturesti http://librarie.carturesti.ro Chain bookstore Serbia Knijzara.com www.knijzara.com Online bookstore Slovakia Martinus www.martinus.sk Chain bookstore Slovenia Emka www.emka.si Chain bookstore Spain El cultural www.elcultural.es Monthly survey by trade magazine Sweden Svensk Bokhandel www.svd.se Point of sale data by market research UK The Bookseller / Nielsen www.thebookseller.com Point of sale data by market research
The “Diversity Report 2008 - An overview and analysis of translation statistics across Europe: Facts, trends, patterns” is available for download at www.wischenbart.com/translation .
All data have been organized in an MS Access database conceived and programmed by Philip Minarik.
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org Annex 2: The top 40 EUWest fiction authors April 2008 – March 2009 (by Miha Kovac and Rüdiger Wischenbart, April 2009)
Author Title Original Country Apr08/Mar09 language (Points total)
Stieg Larsson Millennium (3 titles) Swedish F, SP, SE, NL, UK 2601,5
Stephenie Meyer (*) 4 titles + The Host (adult UK) English I, SP, D, UK 2156,5
Khaled Hosseini 2 titles English NL, SE, D, 1172
Roberto Saviano (**) Gomorra Italian I, D, F, SP, NL, SE, 1104
Carlos Ruiz Zafón El juego del ángel Spanish SP, NL, I , D 893,5
Ken Follett World Without End English F, D, SE, SP, 825
Muriel Barbery L'élégance du hérisson French F, D, SP, 786
Charlotte Roche Feuchtgebiete German D, NL, UK 709
John Boyne Boy with Striped Pajamas English SP 527
Cecelia Ahern The Gift English UK, D, 465
Elizabeth Gilbert Eat, Pray, Love English NL 430
Henning Mankell Kinesen Swedish SP, SE, D, NL 404
Anna Gavalda La consolante French F, D, SP, 401
Liza Maklund En plats i solen & Livsstid Swedish SE 374
Paolo Giordano La solitudine dei numeri primi Italian I, SP, NL 368
Jean-Marie Le Clézio Ritournelle de la faim; L'Africain French SE, F, 334
Jens Lapidus Snabba Cash Swedish SE 321
Andrea Camilleri Several titles Italian I, SP, D, UK 289,5
Jean-Louis Fournier Où on va, papa? French F 287
Eduardo Mendoza El asombroso viaje de Pomponio Spanish SP 285 Flato
Mark Levengood Hjärtat får inga rynkor Swedish SE 285
Katie Price Angel Uncovered English UK 284
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org Siegfried Lenz Schweigeminute German D, 282
J.K. Rowling (*) Beedle the Bard; Deathly Hollows English SP, D, 243
Jan Guillou Men inte om det gäller din dotter Swedish SE 243
Marc Levy Toutes ces choses qu'on ne s'est French F 240 pas dites
Simone van der Vlugt Blauw water Dutch NL 239
Guillaume Musso Je reviens te chercher French F 234
Asa Larsson Till dess din vrede upphör Swedish SE 229
Johan Theorin Nattfåk Swedish SE 226
Lauren Weisberger Chasing Harry Winston; Chanel Chic English F 225
Dora Heldt Urlaub mit Papa German D 220
Paolo Coelho Brida Portuguese I, D, NL 205
Nicci French What to Do When Someone Dies English NL 193
Patricia Cornwall Scarpetta, The Front English UK 191
Martina Cole The Business English UK 190
Esther Verhoef Alles te verliezen Dutch NL 188
Youp van t Hek Bacterien moeten ook leven Dutch NL 188
James Patterson Cross Country English UK 187
Uwe Tellkamp Der Turm German D 187
Mary Higgins Clark Where Are You Now? English F 183
Aravind Adiga The White Tiger English UK 181
(*) All-age titles, not listed as fiction in all countries, therefore excluded from this ranking and analysis
(**) Listed as fiction in the original Italian edition, yet as nonfiction in others, but written as a novel.
Data source: Top 10 lists for seven major West European book markets (France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the UK), from April 2008 to March 2009.
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org Annex 3: Top 40 October 2008 to September 2009 EUWest
EUWest Top10 Rank Oct2008/Sep2009 1 Stieg Larsson 3697 19,47% 2 Stephenie Meyer 3012,5 15,86% 3 Carlos Ruiz Zafón 1161,5 6,12% 4 Paolo Giordano 805,5 4,24% 5 Roberto Saviano 552,5 2,91% 6 Charlotte Roche 497 2,62% 7 John Grisham 384,5 2,02% 8 James Patterson 368 1,94% 9 Herman Koch 363 1,91% 10 Simon Beckett 360 1,90% 11 Åsa Larsson 359 57,09% Top 10 12 Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio 334 48,60% Top 5 13 Mark Levengood 329 14 Ken Follett 320 15 Andrea Camilleri 315,5 16 Tatiana de Rosnay 287 17 Sarah Kuttner 281 18 Elizabeth Gilbert 278 19 Karin Slaughter 275 20 Khaled Hosseini 274 21 Elizabeth George 272 22 Hugh Laurie 270 23 Muriel Barbery 269 24 Alan Moore 258 25 Dave Gibbons 258 26 Christopher Paolini 250,5 27 Jean-Louis Fournier 243 28 Saskia Noort 241 29 Liza Marklund 240 30 Dora Heldt 234 31 Paulo Coelho 232 32 John Boyne 232 33 Daniel Kehlmann 231 34 Maeve Binchy 230 35 Annie Barrows 226 36 Mary Ann Shaffer 226
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org 37 Dan Brown 219,5 38 Kluun 214 39 Guillaume Musso 196 1,03% 40 Jan Guillou 193 Total points 18989 Top 21-40 4816 25,36%
Annex 4: Top 40 Jan to October 2009 CEE
English 13 Domestic 17 Other 10 Top 10 PL/CZ/HU/SLO/SRB 1 Stephenie Meyer 2419 2 Rhonda Byrne 1289 3 Khaled Hosseini 1349 4 Zdeněk Svěrák 674 5 Michal Viewegh 674 6 Carlos Ruiz Zafón 610 7 Paulo Coelho 576 8 Stephenie Meyer 558 9 Roberto Saviano 550 10 Jaroslav Kmenta 548 11 Stieg Larsson 546 Gorica Nesovic, Jelica 12 Greganovic 397 13 Goran Vojnović 393 14 Vladimir Pistalo 384 15 Marie Poledňáková 378 16 Hugh Laurie 376 17 Marija Jovanovic 369 18 Małgorzata Kalicińska 363 19 Felix Francis 300 20 Sherry Jones 326 21 László L. Lőrincz 276 22 Bernhard Schlink 268 23 Helen Exley 267 24 Wojciech Cejrowski 262 25 Randy Pausch, Jeffrey Zaslow 234 26 Raymond Kluun 227 27 Tone Pavček 220 28 William P. Young 192 29 Muriel Barbery 196 30 Lenka Lanczová 194
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org 31 Agatha Christie 194 32 Stephen Clarke 192 33 Vlastimil Vondruška 190 34 Spiró György 188 35 Csernus Imre 188 36 Jostein Gaarder 186 37 Haruki Murakami 186 38 Jonathan Littell 182 39 Kate Mosse 181 40 Dana Čermáková 180
The authors
Miha Kovač is associate professor at the Department of Library and Information Science and Book Studies at School of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and a publisher for Mladinska knjiga Group, the biggest publishing house in South-East Europe. He is author of many articles on book markets and author of a book “Never Mind the Web. Here Comes the Book.”
Rüdiger Wischenbart is the founder and president of “Content and Consultancy”, a company based in Vienna, Austria, focusing on international book and culture markets as well as a journalist and lecturer at the University of Vienna. He authored many articles and several books on publishing and on culture, notably in Western as well as in Central and South East Europe. With more details available at www.wischenbart.com. Contact: ruediger (at) wischenbart.com
Jennifer Jursitzky is a student of German studies and philosophy at the University of Vienna and a staff member of “Content and Consultancy”.
Sabina Muriale is a cultural anthropologist and a staff member of “Content and Consultancy”.
Verein für kulturelle Transfers - CulturalTransfers.Org is a not-for-profit organization specialized on cultural diversity based in Vienna, Austria.
ISBN: 978-3-9502872-0-2
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org Diversity Report 2009 Cultural diversity in translations of books: Mapping fiction authors across Europe.
The goal of this report is to develop a framework to continuously observe and analyze the career paths of fiction authors and their work across European book markets, with a special emphasis on translations, and how books travel across linguistic borders.
Conclusions:
The translation market falls short of readers’ curiosity. The funding policies for translations lack the information and the tools for a realistic assessment of the translations’ efficiency. The role of English is that of a bottleneck and a driving force. The potential for digital innovation can be game changing.
Available also at www.wischenbart.com/translation
ISBN: 978-3-9502872-0-2
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Diversity Report 2009 © by Verein für kulturelle Transfers – CulturalTransfers.org