Читать книгу A Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Poetry, 1960 - 2015 - Группа авторов - Страница 43

The Translators Association (TA), set up in 1958 to provide literary translators with an effective means of protecting their interests and sharing their concerns, has suggested “a rate for poetry of £1.10 per line, with a minimum of £35 per poem” (Translators Association 2018), although they wisely add that “members are advised to take a case by case approach as rates for poetry vary,” which implies that poetry translators usually receive payment well below the suggested rates. Across the Atlantic, the 2017 Authors Guild Survey of Literary Translators' Working Conditions, which collected information from 205 translators on payment, royalties, copyright, and various other aspects of the literary translation profession, shows that 65% of literary translators earn less than $20,000 per year and only about 7% earn 100% of their income from translation work. The authors of the survey draw the straightforward conclusion that “a large number of US translators are being paid rates that make it difficult, if not impossible, to earn a living.” Even more worrying is that 41% of the translators report that “payment of their fee has sometimes depended on the publisher receiving a grant.” (The Authors Guild 2017) Whether similar figures also apply to the current situation of British and Irish translators is a subject about which one can only speculate.

For some translators, the prizes awarded for their work, though very few in number, offer at least the occasional possibility of supplementing a meager income. The Society of Authors lists on its website 10 translation prizes worth £15,000, which are awarded in mid‐February of the year following publication, the majority of them for “full length […] works of literary merit and general interest” translated from a given language into English. The prizes are awarded annually, biennially, or every 3 years, in recognition of outstanding translations from works in Arabic, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Swedish. One of them is the TA First Translation Prize, an annual £2,000 prize shared between the translator and his or her editor. It was established in 2017, endowed by Daniel Hahn, with support from the British Council, “for a debut literary translation into English published in the UK,” and like all British poetry prizes is administered within the terms of a closed‐shop policy (The Society of Authors, 2019), meaning that only books first published in Great Britain are eligible. However, the likelihood of a translator of poetry winning such a prize is small. The awards usually go to prose works; indeed, among the 14 prize winners of 2017 and 2018, one finds with—or without—surprise not one translator of a collection of poetry. An important award, exclusively for translators of poetry, is the Popescu European Poetry Translation Prize, which is worth £1,000 and was launched in 1983. It is awarded biennially by The Poetry Society for a volume of poetry translated from a European language into English.

Launched in 2010 by the London Book Fair, the Literary Translation Centre is an important institution that is made up of 10 partner organizations: Arts Council England Literature Department, the British Centre for Literary Translation, the British Council Literature Department, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the English PEN's Writers in Translation programme, Free Word, Literature Across Frontiers, the Translators Association (Society of Authors), the Wales Literature Exchange, and Words Without Borders. The ultimate aim of the Literary Translation Centre is to “enable publishers and translators to come together, network and attend a variety of seminars on literary translation to further this art throughout the UK and abroad.” One of the programs, PEN Translates, launched in 2012 with financial support from Arts Council England, encourages UK publishers to publish more books from other languages. Up to 75% of the translation costs are funded; if a publisher's annual turnover is less than £500,000, there is the possibility that up to 100% of the translation costs will be covered. This measure has been effective in so far as it has encouraged more publishers, big and small, to consider publications of translated poetry.

The most important publishers of poetry in translation are three of the “Big Five”—Bloodaxe, Carcanet, and Faber. However, two publishers specializing in poetry translation are more prominent—Arc Publications and Seagull Books, based in Kolkata, India, but with a registered division in London. The symbolic capital of Arc Publications—accumulated prestige, recognition, and respect, as Pierre Bourdieu defines it in Language and Symbolic Power (1991)—is widely accepted. In particular, the program “Poetry in Translation,” which encompasses no fewer than five series—Visible Poets, Arc Translations, Arc Classic Translations, New Voices From Europe and Beyond, and Anthologies in Translation—has been eminently successful. The appointment of Jean Boase‐Beier as series editor of “Visible Poets” in 2000 was an especially fortunate move. Boase‐Beier conceived “Visible Poets” as a series of bilingual books with a preface by the translator and an introductory essay by an eminent scholar. As Professor of Literature and Translation at the University of East Anglia, where she established and ran the MA in Literary Translation until her retirement in 2015, she also edits the “Arc Translations” and “Arc Classic Translations” series. The shortlist of the 2015 Popescu European Poetry Translation Prize serves as a good example of Arc's prestige: among the six shortlisted books were three Arc titles, translations from French, German, and Polish, and the winner came from among them: Iain Galbraith for his translation of Jan Wagner's collection Self‐Portrait with a Swarm of Bees.

Little magazines often publish translations, either in a regular section, as is the case in Acumen, Poetry Salzburg Review, Shearsman, and The High Window, or as separate issues. The latter case is best represented by Agenda—under William Cookson's editorship there were several special issues published: on German poetry (1994), Spanish poetry (1997), and Greek poetry (1999). In 1997, there was also a special issue devoted to Michael Hamburger's translations and his own poetry. The current editor Patricia McCarthy has been responsible for the publication of issues on modern Turkish poetry (2001/2002), translation as metamorphosis, and Rainer Maria Rilke. In terms of translations, the most important magazine, however, has been Modern Poetry in Translation (MPT). Ted Hughes's brainchild, launched together with Daniel Weissbort in 1965, was intended as “a cumulative and accumulating index of contemporary writing” (Weissbort 2004). No magazine has been more concerned with the theory and practice of translation or more devoted to introducing to English readers poets from many cultures who would not be known without translation. MPT 21 and 22 (both 2003), the last two issues under Weissbort's editorship, highlighted once again the magazine's initial aim “to provide a platform for the poetry of the first post‐War generation of Eastern European poets.” Weissbort's penultimate issue is a potpourri of all the objectives the editors had pursued over the years, including features of two contributors of long standing—Michael Hamburger and James Kirkup—with, more surprisingly perhaps for the general reader, a long section devoted to Hughes's unpublished translations in order “to draw attention […] to his importance as a translator himself of poetry and of poetic drama.” Weissbort followed up his intentions with regard to Hughes by editing a book of the poet's Selected Translations (2006). As part of the same program, he also published a monograph, Ted Hughes and Translation (2011), and a number of essays in poetry magazines and academic journals. For Weissbort, the magazine's ultimate achievement under his and Hughes's editorship was that it “help[ed] to make English readers, and English poets, see poetry as the very opposite of parochial, even if it was so intimately bound up with language. This paradox, the paradox in fact of poetry translation, remains a productive one” (Weissbort 2004).

When David and Helen Constantine took over the editorship of MPT with No. 23 in 2004, the new editors “felt the same urgency of the project, the same spirit, in very different times.” The editorial policy of their 9 years was shaped by three premises. The first was that “poetry matters: because it tells the truth in mendacious times and because that truth, through the forms and rhythms of poetry, excites in people under whatever repressive and demanding structures the demand for greater freedom,” which they shared with the founding editors. Their second premise was that “translation matters: because it brings valuable things from abroad into our home country.” Premise number three related to their interpretation of the word modern in the magazine's title, which they understood to mean “any new and lively version of any poetry of any age. So translation crosses frontiers of both space and time” (David and Helen Constantine 2016, 20). When Sasha Dugdale was appointed as new editor in 2013, not only did the magazine's shape and design change but also its frequency and editorial policy. Dugdale started to publish three issues per year, with each issue offering a focus section. She started off with predominantly European foci (Dutch, Romanian, and Polish) and managed to get the respective national literature organizations on board to make a financial contribution. Later issues of her 4‐year period contained sections that represented the magazine's global approach toward poetry in translation, ranging from Brazilian and Uruguayan poetries to Iranian and Korean ones. Other sections focused on African, Indian, and Arabic languages and the poetry produced in them. With the current editor Clare Pollard, who took over in 2018, MPT seems to have moved into a more politically engaged and more intriguing period. She introduced the editorial to her first issue, entitled “Profound Pyromania,” with a quotation from “Manifesto for Ultratranslation,” published by Antena, a language justice and experimentation collaborative founded by Jen Hofer and John Pluecker: “Who we choose to translate is political. How we choose to translate is political” (Pollard 2018). Her first four issues have contained sections on Caribbean and Hungarian poetry as well as work by LGBTQ+ authors. In what she calls her Brexit issue, Pollard argues that “[i]f Brexit has posed the question of who we are, we must listen for answers in all of our languages,” which is why she has collected “translations from Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Cornish, Irish, Anglo‐Saxon, Arabic, Polish, Turkish and British Sign Language (BSL), and poems drawing on Jamaican Patois, Scots, Ulster Scots, Shetlandic, Spanish, Angloromani, Black Country Dialect, Portuguese and the fabulous Inklisch of Sophie Herxheimer's Grandmother” (Pollard 2019).

Right from its start, MPT has always been financially supported by the Arts Council England. For the 3‐year financial period 2012–2015, the magazine received £117,500, a grant that was increased to £120,000 for the years 2015–2018.

A rival in the field of poetry translation seems to have emerged with Asymptote, an online magazine that was launched by its editor Lee Yew Leong in January 2011 as “a reaction to the literary parochialism [he] experienced living in Singapore back then” and with the mission “to unlock the literary treasures of the world.” The decision to publish it online “stems from [the editors'] commitment to social justice. Providing free access to the world's literature – for everyone, regardless of geography, language or class – is emboldened by an online platform” (Leong n.d.). In its 34 issues published up to now (August 2019), the magazine “has featured work from 121 countries and 103 languages, all never‐before‐published poetry, fiction, nonfiction, drama, and interviews” (Leong 2019). According to its founding editor, the editorial team “operate[s] differently from other translation journals in that [they] don't just sit back and wait for translations to come to [them. They] actually identify the good work from writers [that have not yet been introduced to the English speaking world] and actively seek out translators to help to translate the work for [them]” (Habash 2011). In 2015, the magazine won London Book Fair's International Literary Translation Initiative Award and also became a founding member of The Guardian's Books Network with “Translation Tuesdays,” a weekly showcase of new literary translations that was published until 2017.

Another issue in this context is the question: how well known and widely published are British and Irish poets in translation? While this would be the subject for a separate encyclopedic study, I shall briefly comment on translations into German, as this is the field I am most familiar with. (See also Romer 2013 on British poetry translated into a variety of European languages.) One important series of German publications, Edition Lyrik Kabinett, is run by Hanser Verlag and comprises collections by John Burnside, Lavinia Greenlaw, Michael Longley, Geoffrey Hill, Robin Robertson, and Derek Walcott. Fischer Verlag, another prestigious German press, published a volume of Alice Oswald's poetry in 2018, translated by Melanie Walz and Iain Galbraith.

As for the series, Poets Laureate: how many of their collections are available in German translation? Just one each: Jan Wagner translated for Berlin Verlag Simon Armitage's Zoom! (2011). Carol Ann Duffy's sole publication Die Bauchrednerpuppe (1996) appeared in Margitt Lehbert's translation more than 20 years ago under the imprint of the Residenz Verlag. Under her own imprint, Edition Rugerup, Lehbert has published one volume each of Derek Mahon, John Montague, Gabriel Rosenstock, Iain Crichton Smith, and Robin Fulton.

With regard to Nobel Laureate, Seamus Heaney, the situation is scarcely better. Under Michael Krüger's directorship until 2013, Hanser Press published three collections of Heaney's poetry, one volume of Selected Poems, and a translation of The Government of the Tongue. For Fischer Verlag, Krüger edited a volume of Selected Poems from 1965 to 2006, entitled Die Amsel von Glanmore and published in 2011. The obvious question is why are only very few collections of Heaney's one dozen poetry books available in German translation?

A very different case is that of Michael Hamburger: together with Ted Hughes, he is probably the most widely translated British poet into German. Fifteen volumes of Hamburger's poetry were published by Literarisches Colloquium Berlin, Hanser, Droschl, and Folio. The last issued seven collections, six of them translated by Peter Waterhouse. This track record of Hamburger's poetry in German translations, largely due to the close relationship that Hamburger and Waterhouse enjoyed for many years, has led some critics to the conclusion that Hamburger is better known as poet in German‐speaking countries than in Britain (Hamburger 1998, 31–32). In a 1998 interview with Peter Dale, Hamburger acknowledges “the very generous reception given to my work in Germany, where there are two book‐length studies of it and a miscellany of essays by various critics, as well as many more serious and searching reviews of it in the general press – Swiss and Austrian also – than in Britain or in America” (Hamburger 1998, 34; Romer 2013, 553). A more recent case is Kate Tempest: from her five collections of poetry that she has published until 2018, three of them are already available in German translation, all published by Suhrkamp Verlag.

The latest, more wide‐ranging (bilingual) anthology of British and Irish poetry was published by Haymon Verlag in 2002 as So also ist das/So That's What It's Like, edited by Ludwig Laher and myself. It comprises work by 28 British and Irish poets, translated by Austrian poets and graduates of my own “Literary Translation” course, taught at the University of Salzburg. Iain Galbraith edited a volume of Scottish poetry since 1900, Beredter Norden. Schottische Lyrik seit 1900, that was published by Lehbert's Edition Rugerup in 2011.

It is a rather unsatisfactory résumé. British and Irish poetry is, with very few exceptions, more or less unknown in any breadth or depth in the German‐speaking countries. (One wonders whether the situation is substantially different in other European countries, or, indeed, elsewhere in the world.) The lamentable and arbitrary situation can only change if national organizations, such as Arts Council England, the British Council, the Publishers Association, the “Big Five” of British publishers, Literature Ireland (formerly known as Ireland Literature Exchange), Wales Literature Exchange, the Scottish Poetry Library, and Literature Across Frontiers increase their efforts and programs to support interested translators and publishers, and, thus, raise the profile of British and Irish poetry on the German book market (as well as on others). A model for such an initiative could be TOLEDO, a program of the Robert Bosch Stiftung and the Deutscher Übersetzerfonds. In 2019, it launched JUNIVERS, a program geared toward the needs and desires of poetry translators, with the ultimate aim of finding new translators and new languages for German poets. For six days in June, 18 translators, arriving at the Literarisches Colloquium Berlin from countries such as Brazil, India, Poland, Italy, Argentina, and Greece, among many others, participated in a collective translation workshop and cooperated with guests such as Thilo Krause, winner of the Peter Huchel Prize, with a number of local poets, and also myself, conducting a workshop on translating the Austrian poet Erich Fried. Such an initiative will hopefully result in many more books of German poets in a wide variety of languages. British cultural administrators might take note.