{"id":265276,"date":"2008-10-22T15:26:15","date_gmt":"2008-10-22T15:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2008\/10\/22\/catalan-literature-one-year-later\/"},"modified":"2018-04-16T17:29:45","modified_gmt":"2018-04-16T17:29:45","slug":"catalan-literature-one-year-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2008\/10\/22\/catalan-literature-one-year-later\/","title":{"rendered":"Catalan Literature: One Year Later"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared on the Frankfurt Book Fair blog.<\/a><\/p>\n

Catalan Culture was last year\u2019s Guest of Honor at the Fair, and put on a huge display of Catalan culture, and producing a number of slick publications and presentations to help make people aware of their rich literary tradition. (It\u2019s sad, but I think a lot of Americans\u2013and possibly others\u2013think that Catalan is a Spanish dialect rather than recognizing that it\u2019s a unique language. Again, Horace Engdahl, lack of literature in translation, America isolationism, etc., etc., etc.) Based on the sheer number of people visiting their booth and attending their fabulous parties, it seemed pretty successful, and based on my conversation with Carles Torner of the Ramon Llull Insitut, this positive effect has carried over quite well.<\/p>\n

\u201cBeing the Guest of Honor at the Frankfurt Book Fair was very important to us,\u201d Torner said. \u201cBy the end of this year there will have been as many translations of Catalan books into other languages as there was in 2007.\u201d Which sounds sort of static, but is actually a huge gain considering that 53 titles (including a lot of multi-volume titles) were published in German in preparation for the Frankfurt Book Fair.<\/p>\n

(I\u2019m going to digress for a moment here: as I typed that it occured to me just how special it is to be the Guest of Honor. And just how civil, bookish, and outward looking the German publishing scene is. There\u2019s a better chance of the Cubs winning the World Series than American publishers getting together and publishing a shitload of books in translation in preparation for BookExpo America. Dead horse, beating it, I know, I know, but for all doubters of Engdahl\u2019s statments, here\u2019s another instance pointing to just how right he is.) <\/p>\n

(Another digression: the press I run is publishing three Catalan works over the next eighteen-months thanks to last year\u2019s FBF<\/span> and an amazing visit to Barcelona.)<\/p>\n

Carles\u2019s feeling is that the publication of Catalan literature\u2013classic, modern, and contemporary\u2013by German publishers sent a message to the rest of the publishing world. Jaume Cabre is a perfect example. After being published by Surhkamp for the Fair, his latest novel Les veus del Pamano was picked up by Dutch, Italian, French, and even Romanian publishers. That\u2019s how the network of publishers I\u2019ve mentioned before functions: if a couple well-respected presses publish a book, it sends a message to everyone else that they should pay attention. (Well\u2013again with the horse\u2013except maybe in the case of Le Clezio. He\u2019s published by Hanser in Germany and many other fantastic presses, but Simon & Schuster doesn\u2019t seem to be rushing his books back into print . . .)<\/p>\n

In terms of numbers, over 80 translations of Catalan books came out last year around the world (or at least were subsidized by the Ramon Llull Institut) and that number will likely be broken this year.<\/p>\n

Carles also mentioned that another great effect of being the Guest of Honor is the fact that they no longer have to spend time explaining what Catalonia is\u2013something that used to be a huge problem. But now there are other problems. Similar to the situation with Dutch and China (see my earlier post), some Greek publishers became very interested in acquiring Catalan works last year, but at the time there were no Catalan to Greek literary translators . . . So the Ramon Llull Insitut organized a special seminar, helped get some translators up to speed, and now eight books are under contract with Greek publishers.<\/p>\n

Since last year\u2019s Fair, the Ramon Llull Institut has continued to expand its activities, hosting a number of events at this year\u2019s PEN<\/span> World Voices Festival (including one to celebrate the Review of Contemporary Fiction\u2019s New Catalan Writing issue), planning a seminar in New York in November 2009 to bring together translators, critics, and publishers interested in Catalan culture, and opening an office in New York next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post originally appeared on the Frankfurt Book Fair blog. Catalan Culture was last year\u2019s Guest of Honor at the Fair, and put on a huge display of Catalan culture, and producing a number of slick publications and presentations to help make people aware of their rich literary tradition. (It\u2019s sad, but I think a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67486],"tags":[366,1836,376,1646],"class_list":["post-265276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-catalan-literature","tag-cwp","tag-frankfurt-book-fair","tag-review"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=265276"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":325376,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/265276\/revisions\/325376"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=265276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=265276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=265276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}