Chad W. Post is always very generous is sharing information about translation issues in his Three Percent blog. So I was able to know that the Session Summary and Recommendations of the last Salzburg Global Seminar that happened last February was out. It’s a very concise document but very interesting. I think the meeting covered the issue almost completely and the recommendations make sense as a whole. I agree specially when the necessity of using social networking sites to empower translations and facilitate the flow of information is mentioned. I actually already have this designed on my mind (I need to put that on paper, I know!!!!).
Very important also is the question of seeing the translator as an author, offering them royalties and so motivating them in the promotion of the book (besides improving his/her life and work conditions, of course). But I wonder if all the publishers would really want that. Sometimes, specially if we are not talking about literature although this can happen in this field as well, publishers see the translator as a simple tool to reach their goal. They don’t want the translator to be known, they don’t even want people to realize that the book is a translation. Just pay attention to where translations credits are placed on books – if they are there at all. Just this week I was browsing a bookshop at train station here in the Netherlands and I saw a book (I honestly don’t remember the title) which the author didn’t sound Dutch at all. The plot didn’t sound Dutch. But I took some minutes to find credits of translation printed in the bottom of the back of the title page (the rest of the page was blank, and normally I don’t expect to find information there). The name of the translator should at least be printed in the title page, if not on the cover. And the reader should be informed that he is reading a translation, shouldn’t he?
I just really missed one point on this report. The language issue. As A. de Swaan pointed out in his Words of the World, a person tends to learn a language that is higher on the hierarchy, i.e. more economically interesting. So, motivating people to learn other languages than English is also an issue, otherwise there is no point in having translation programmes if there is no translator available…
