The World of Untranslated Literature

As Anglophones we are accustomed to hearing that everyone else speaks English, and moreover that books are all translated into English.

While it is manifestly complacent, and often tempered by the sentiment that you should learn a foreign language anyways, the core sentiment remains: That language ability is not useful outside of countries in which it is primarily spoken.

Therefore that to be bilingual, while desirable, is not useful, unless you live, or spend substantial time in another country.

While the assumption that everyone, or the majority of people speak English to some extent is demonstrably wrong, and carries its own problems, here, we will restrict ourselves to the question of translation of fiction.

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Not only are there many great books untranslated, but there are whole areas of the globe largely ignored by anglophone publication.

Areas of fiction that are untranslated into English generally fall into three categories: 1) Books written in a distant language to English, with few capable translators, and little interest. An example would be Cai Ce-Hai, a Chinese author available in anthology but not in longer format. 2) Writers of extraordinary complexity, like Arno Schmidt, most of who’s writing remains in German. 3) Books written in a European language but from outside Europe, this is the area I wish to highlight. These are books written predominantly in former colonies. The most prominent of which are Latin American books in Spanish, and African books written in French.

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The example of African literature suffices to illustrate these distinctions.

That many authors from the African continent are untranslated into English is probably unsurprising to most. However, to briefly oversimplify, there are three categories of fiction published there. 1) Books in a language such as Kikuyu, distant from english, with few translators. 2) Books in English like those of Chinua Achebe 3) books in another European language.

While it’s hard to see books from the first category being translated en masse into English anytime soon, the third category is a puzzling one. There are many prominent African writers, who write in the French language especially. Writers such as Kateb Yacine or Ahmadou Kourouma, from Algeria and the Ivory Coast respectively. Their novels are readily available in France, in almost any Bookstore. It would be relatively easy to translate these writers from French to English. Yet they are largely untranslated, and largely unread in the Anglophone world.

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So now we are aware that vast areas of literature are not available in English, why did we assume it wasn’t so? Why is this the case at all?

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Part of why the problem is invisible, is by nature of language itself.

Those who don’t speak a second language are inapt to see, or to even be aware of works that lie outside that language. We tend to think we have seen literature, or at least some part of it. Yet every system that exposes us to new literature although seemingly objective is operated on by a mass of restricting, framing forces, some ideological, some economic, some geographic. One of those influencing factors is what language, a book is available in. Online, in schools, libraries, in university, we are shown literature as it appears in our own language, and therefore is available to us.

Of course it is rational to surround ourselves with information that is immediately comprehensible, and sensation of a complete picture of literature comes naturally.

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Why are these books untranslated? Much of why certain areas are translated or not, involves trends, the changing demand for books from a certain culture, determined by exterior factors, economic ties, cultural ties, ideological differences, travel restrictions etc. The shifting interest of the readership has resulted in the exposure of diverse regions to Anglophone readership, such as the Latin boom, of Latin American authors in the 60s and 70s, and even many Japanese writers in recent years. Unfortunately it has also left alone some areas that would be comparatively simple to translate into English, the most blatant of which is Francophone Africa.

Ignoring these books not only distorts our ideas of language, it also distorts how we see the African continent. English readers will read books written in Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa and receive a vision of Africa that is overly homogenous, and oriented towards the African south.