I’ve been long absent from this blog, off fighting on those various battlefields that stretch endlessly into the distance as I seek to keep a roof over my head. Increasingly difficult, as my source of income—literary translation—is paid in dollars, euros, and pounds, all of which are falling against the Swiss franc, the price of my roof and rösti. Is it time to switch and go to work for a prestigious watchmaker? (Maybe they’d give me free photographs of Roger Federer.) But I love my work, and am prepared to take a hit or two for the sake of art and its ultimate triumph, but it might be time to confer with my generals and see what can be done.

Swiss franc notwithstanding, there have been a few small victories over the past few months:

This month Words Without Borders is devoted to the Arab Spring, and I am pleased to contribute to that ongoing and far more important struggle, with the translation of a story by Leila Marouane, Is This How Women Grow Up? Leila writes eloquently and harrowingly of another, more pervasive battle, that of women’s rights, and while her story is set primarily in Algeria, it is hard not to read it and recognize a certain universal disillusionment shared by many women.

On a lighter note, my translation of Anna Gavalda’s novel French Leave (Breaking Away in the UK) has been getting good reviews and even a mention in that bastion of anti-translation book reviewing, The New York Times. It’s a perfect summer read, short and sweet, like a literary basket of strawberries. Although you might find yourself headed for the corner store to buy some pet food at the end. You can read an excerpt here.

So while these two recent publications might be said to typify the aim of any literary translator, getting there is no easy thing, and is not getting any easier. This month the Centre National du Livre in France has published a report, The Condition of the Translator by eminent Le Monde literary critic and blogger, Pierre Assouline, devoted to the situation of literary translators in France primarily but the rest of the world tangentially, and it makes sobering reading. It also makes pounds and dollars sound like not such a bad currency after all, as despite the dearth of literary translations published in English (the famous 3%) we are still much better paid than our colleagues in France or Spain, although they may have a more constant source of work (primarily novels translated from English). Assouline underlines other points which are also a major issue for English language translators: the “féminisation” of the profession, which reflects the fact that fewer and fewer men are opting to take up a profession that cannot support a family; the increasingly fraught relations with publishers regarding contracts and the basic right to have one’s name mentioned on the book, in reviews and on websites.

I have often thought about my own grievances where my profession is concerned, and in comparison to many of my colleagues I realize I have been extremely fortunate. (Swiss franc notwithstanding.) A smash-hit bestseller of a translation; a Nobel-prize winner; a major memoir by a public figure; and the luxury, thus far, to promote primarily novels by women, who as always are underrepresented here too. But. But. The precariousness of my situation was driven home to me recently on a trip to the United States during a lovely lunch with other translators and people active in the literary world.

For some months now I have been concerned about the rise of the ebook—not of the medium per se; if people want to have the complete works of Charles Dickens or Henry James in their pocket that’s their look-out. No. It is the risk of ensuing piracy that worries me. My doomsday scenario—which I hope someone can pull to pieces for me—goes that publishers will begin to lose money on books because they will be pirated instead of bought (see what happened to the music industry, or so we hear); translations are always perceived as bad investments by publishers and so they will be the first to go when said publishers begin to go belly-up because those few readers left on the planet are downloading Harry Potter for free. You can see where my logic is leading (hopefully it is faulty logic). Still, I shared this scenario with my neighbour at the lunch table, a professor at a prestigious New England college who translates on the side/ in his spare time/ for the fun of it and the free lunches. Was he worried? No, not really, because he had his job at the prestigious New England college. Not his main source of income. Not a Swiss franc in sight.

Recently, too, I was approached by a small (university) press to translate a fairly long, difficult work. I was very tempted, but they were offering half my usual rate. (Let’s say they were offering a Spanish rate—bring on the tapas.) I protested, diplomatically, suggesting they contact the French government for some of their generous grants to American publishing houses. I was told, simply, that I was asking too much, grants or no grants: the editor himself was a translator, and based on personal experience such sums [as I was requesting] were not available. (Note the use of the impersonal third person.) His loss, or ignorance. But then again, he was… a university professor, with tenure and a fat salary. Or fatter than mine, at any rate.

Which leads me to the crux of my grievances. Something Assouline touched on briefly, but all the more searingly:

The literary translator would like greater recognition for her work. She is not looking for consecration, but to get credit where credit is due. But she is caught between frustration and paradox: on the one hand, she is cruelly aware that a university professor, in a comfortable situation materially, only translates from time to time, yet benefits from a prestige that is all the greater. On the other hand, the translator has been long convinced, for it is the creed of her profession, that the more self-effacing she is, the more her work will be acclaimed, loud and clear. [Assouline Report, p. 122]

Read: invisible. Like Harry Potter, in his invisibility cloak.

There is a perception, in the English-speaking world, that translations are difficult, or unreadable. I believe this perception is held primarily by publishers, because if The Elegance of the Hedgehog is anything to go by, or the Stieg Larsson trilogy, the public wants more, not fewer, translations. And why is this perception so pervasive among publishers and, perhaps, some readers? Because academia, in the United States at any rate, has co-opted a large segment of the works that will make it into translation, and a lot of these works are indeed difficult and unreadable, why? Because most university professors would not want it known they are translating a “best-seller” like Harry Potter, or even a “commercial” author like Gavalda; it wouldn’t look good on their c.v. Translations, full stop, don’t look good on their c.v.s, according to the article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Even those edgy experimental works that seem, to me at least, to make up the bulk of works in translation available in the United States. And which, fair enough, are better suited to a select audience of literary students, academics, poets, and writers, not the hundreds of thousands who belong to book clubs or still read on their way to work. If more good commercial fiction were published in translation, perhaps the overall perception of translation as something difficult and academic would begin to wane. After all, our parents and grandparents grew up on diets of  Camus and Tolstoy and Françoise Sagan and Alberto Moravia: what has happened since then?

Now, you can argue that, like novelists who become professors of creative writing because they cannot make a living as novelists, these academic “translators” have become professors of Russian/Japanese/French/Afrikaans literature because they cannot make a living as literary translators. There might be a few, I’ll grant you that. But I think it is rather the opposite. Why they translate is somewhat mysterious to me, as it does not help tenure, apparently. A true love of language? Fair enough. But the fact remains that they don’t need to make a living from translation, and this ultimately drives down the rates publishers are willing to pay, as these academics are simply happy to be in print. And this also disinclines translators from forming any sort of association that is truly devoted to the economic/professional status of its members, an association which could work for ensuring both the quality of translations submitted to publishers and a living wage for its practitioners. This is not utopia, such an association does exist…in Norway. (According to Assouline, they went on strike for five months in 2006 to impose a model contract on their publishers. Heja Norge.) Furthermore, as Assouline has pointed out, the universitaire enjoys a certain prestige, which may make him/her look better on a jacket flap than a humble full-time translator.

Finally, there is the indifference of the media. Look at the New York Times Book Review, for a start. Michael Orthofer at the Literary Saloon seems to have made it his life’s mission to point out the repeated failings of the NYT to review translations, and while I disagree with him about many other things I do believe he is absolutely right on this one. Can one imagine Sam Tannenhaus, the book review editor, putting together a report the way Le Monde’s Assouline has? Dream on.

I realize I am staring into this battle not on one front, but many. The economic crisis, for a start (perhaps I should move to Greece). The drop in readership generally. The rise in self-publishing. (Everyone wants to write/be published, no-one wants to read, as my friend Molly Giles used to say.) The ongoing resistance of publishers to translations—and when they do decide to publish a translation, the frequently detrimental conditions offered the translator. The pervasiveness of the academy’s role in what gets published in the US in translation and who translates. The indifference of the US/UK print and internet book-reviewing media.

I don’t really have time to fight these battles, alas. I prefer my battles a word, a sentence at a time, helping Leila to find an audience in English, helping, however indirectly, her Algerian sisters to make their plight known and ultimately have a better life. That still makes what I do worthwhile, and is far more important to me than the fluctuating exchange rate.

Ah. I forgot to mention: who is the enemy? That’s the irony: there is no enemy, not really. We all love literature—publishers, editors, translators, authors, readers. Even book reviewers. There might be a few hard-hearted accountants or executives running things who want more profit and never pick up a book, but they’re not the ones directly responsible. It would be so much simpler if they were.

Assouline sets forth a number of powerful recommendations for improving the Condition of the Translator, applicable to France but easily transferable to the United States and Britain (and Australia, and Canada, etc…) He voices them more eloquently than I could in any summary here, but for anyone who does not read French and would like me to translate them, I will be glad to, for the same reasons I translate Leila’s stories. I’ve always been much better at doing things in writing than at going down into the street to protest. Let’s hope I don’t have to move to Greece, actually.