The sale of translation rights often forms a large part of the work of a publisher’s rights department; with reductions in licensing income from areas such as paper-back rights, they have taken on greater importance and may be sought as part of the publisher’s overall package of rights, particularly if a large advance is being sought by the author or the author’s agent. However, translation rights may not always be granted, particularly if the agency has a specialist depart-ment for handling such rights. Literary agents often work through a network of subagents in individual overseas markets; in such cases, the subagent’s commission is deducted from the overall commission deducted by the author’s agent from revenue earned.
Translations of English language books tend to dominate the market, perhaps hardly surprising when it was confirmed in 2004 that 40% of all new titles produced were English language original titles; the accessibility of the English language makes English books easier to assess than those in many other languages and translators tend to be easier to find. In addition to this, Anglo-phone publishers have the advantage of long experience in placing their rights abroad, and have a stable of well-known authors of literary and popular fiction as well as non-fiction and academic writers.
While the aim of placing translation rights is certainly to generate welcome additional revenue, there is also the motivation of bringing the book to a wider readership. Here there may be some difference in the method of operation between academic and trade publishers.
Some academic authors are keen that their books should be licensed for translation less for financial reasons than to ‘spread the word’, particularly if they are writing in a field where they feel that information is badly needed in the poorer countries of the world. Examples here might include books on medicine, economic development, new business techniques and aspects of tech-nology. A rights department in an academic publishing house may therefore be prepared to invest time in arranging a licence for a nursing book in Nepal or a book on rural development to Malaysia, often following up contacts 2
provided by the author. Such arrangements may be on the basis of a token fee and may not cover the cost of administering the licence, although the exer-cise usually generates considerable goodwill from the author and should contribute to the general process of maintaining a long-term relationship with such writers.
Academic publishers may also spend considerable time dealing with licence applications from countries that have limited resources for payment, or from developing and newly industrialized countries which may have introduced forms of compulsory licensing. They may also be dealing with publishers in countries that do not belong to any of the international copyright conventions or which have a poor record of copyright compliance. In such cases, licensing should be regarded as ‘defensive’ rather than as a voluntary activity, as a means of combat-ting piracy, compulsory licences and unauthorized editions.
The importance of copyright knowledge when dealing with a wide range of countries cannot be overemphasized. There is a tendency to assume that the major developed countries of the world operate against a similar background of copyright protection, but there may still be anomalies in both the duration and the standards of protection. For example, at the time of writing, Japan still has a copyright term of fifty years post mortem auctoris, although there are plans to extend this to seventy or even seventy-five years. The EU duration directive removed discrepancies in the periods of protection in member states which are now harmonized to seventy years post mortem auctoris (see Chapter 1 for further details). However, many other countries have shorter terms of protection, which may mean that a British work still protected in its country of origin and elsewhere within the European Union may have entered the public domain in other countries. EU legislation can also affect the territorial aspects of licence arrangements; for example, the granting of German transla-tion rights for the territory of Germany alone would be viewed as impeding free trade within the area, whereas the granting of world German-language rights to a publisher in Germany would be acceptable.
The provisions of foreign copyright legislation elsewhere can prove prob-lematic for British works; for example, the copyright law introduced in Japan from 1 January 1971 provided that foreign titles published before that date are considered to be in the public domain as far as translation rights are concerned, if no authorized Japanese translation has appeared within ten years of first publi-cation of the original edition. Sri Lanka and Yugoslavia (whose legislation is still in force in Serbia and Montenegro) have similar compulsory translation legislation. Russia, a member of the Berne Convention since 1995, has joined with the proviso that foreign works first published in their country of origin before 27 May 1973 (the date of the accession of the then Soviet Union to the Universal Copyright Convention) remain in the public domain and can be freely used in Russia.
Promoting translation rights to foreign-language publishers normally involves a variety of techniques: general mailing of catalogues and perhaps selective 182 Translation rights
rights guides for key new titles, provision of information and material on specific projects, attendance at the relevant international book fairs, and, if rights potential is high, separate sales trips to visit customers in individual countries.
Rights can now be promoted via company or dedicated rights department websites (see Specific promotion in Chapter 7) and via e-mail alerts linking to the URL of a particular book description on such websites.
In most cases, business correspondence is conducted from the British side in English, but it could well be that a significant proportion of incoming corres-pondence is in languages other than English. It is here that linguistic expertise will prove valuable, as well as in face-to-face contact with customers.
Some foreign-language publishers employ scouts in Europe, the United Kingdom and the United States who will comb catalogues and the trade press for suitable titles on their behalf. Some western publishers and literary agents will choose to employ subagents in markets such as Japan, Korea, Taiwan, mainland China and central and eastern Europe if they feel that this is prefer-able to visiting or promoting directly to such markets (see The use of subagents in Chapter 7).
It is inevitable that titles with excellent potential for translation in some markets are non-starters in others. This is only natural when one is dealing with a wide range of licensees whose cultural, social, political and economic perspectives may differ greatly from country to country. Until the 1990s, many western books in the fields of modern history, politics and economics were completely unacceptable in countries ruled by a communist regime, and these restrictions also extended to fiction which touched on sensitive ideological areas. Ironically, one of the first western cinema films to be shot in Russia in the throes of the country’s political and economic changes was The Russia House, released in 1990 and based on the novel by John le Carré – long a banned author in the former Soviet Union.
In recent years, restrictions have been lifted, and there is now a keen demand for books that would previously have been confiscated at a book fair or ‘gone astray’ in the post. However, some problems may still be encountered in mainland China, as was evidenced in 1997 when the National Press and Publications Administration in Beijing halted negotiations for a translation of Paul Theroux’s novel Kowloon Tong and declared it to be ‘anti-Chinese’. A book such as Mao by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday cannot yet be published in China. There are regular examples of censorship if books refer to topics such as the status of Taiwan, the treatment of ethnic minorities such as Tibetans, and the Tian’anmen incident of 1989. High-profile cases of complaints about censorship have included Hillary Clinton’s autobiography Living History.
The official publishing industry in China remains state-controlled, and in September 2005 there was a move to restrict the purchase of rights by the so-called ‘second channel’ publishers (sometimes referred to as ‘cultural studios’).
They are unauthorized by the state authorities and have to acquire SBNs by
‘purchasing’ them from state publishers.
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In March 2001, Turkish domestic copyright law was amended to specify that publishers were obliged to purchase ‘banderoles’ or holograms from the Ministry of Culture; this was used as a means of censorship and the International Publishers Association lobbied for the provision to be withdrawn. The system became redundant in 2005 owing to piracy and the theft of 2 million genuine banderoles.
Other factors may affect the attractiveness of titles for translation. In the educational sector, it is difficult to sell a full-scale course which has been designed for the National Curriculum in the United Kingdom, although supple-mentary material may have better prospects. In general, foreign-language publishers prefer to commission course material from teachers in their own country who are familiar with the requirements of the local curriculum. There are, however, translation possibilities within the United Kingdom, for Welsh and Gaelic rights. At tertiary level, titles may have a better chance of trans-ferring to another country, although scientific books are usually easier to adapt than books in the humanities and the social sciences, which may be more geared to circumstances in the United Kingdom, or at least to the English-speaking world. Some subject areas have specific problems, for example technical titles that include regulations (e.g. construction engineering) or normative standards (e.g. for the manufacture of concrete) that may prove too laboursome and hence too expensive to adapt to local circumstances.
It should be borne in mind that many British and American university text-books are adopted in considerable quantities for use abroad – in Europe in areas such as the Benelux countries and Scandinavia, but also further afield in South-East Asia and the Indian subcontinent. It would therefore be unwise to undertake extensive promotion of translation rights in key textbooks to publishers in those countries. Copy for copy, the revenue will always be greater from the sale of the English-language edition than from the royalty derived from a translation. The loss of sales of the English edition in such markets will rarely be compensated for by higher unit sales of the translation. For this type of book in these markets, there should be regular liaison between rights and export sales staff. But it is important that the relative merits of licensing versus direct sales are assessed book by book and market by market. There can sometimes be an element of territoriality between rights and export sales depart-ments, and there is also a danger that sales turnover is compared (incorrectly) with rights turnover (see Chapter 4).
In countries where textbooks can be licensed without a conflict of interest, it should be remembered that licensees are often nervous of the risk inherent in taking on a translation of a book still in its first English edition. It is much more likely that they will wait to assess the performance of the first English edition, and good sales figures may thus form part of the sales package when promoting rights in subsequent editions. High-level monographs normally have a relatively limited market in English worldwide. In the countries of western Europe they are likely to be read in the original English edition. However, 184 Translation rights
where the ability to read English is not so high, there may well be opportu-nities for licensing translation rights, albeit with small print runs.
Children’s books often provide a good market for translation rights, both for unillustrated fiction and for picture books. Some classic children’s books have been widely translated: Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit is available in more than thirty languages. Some works seem to transcend cultural borders, as with J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, which have caused as much excite-ment in Japan and Thailand as they have in Europe and the United States;
at the time of writing they have been published in over sixty languages, including Latin and classical Greek. They have also had the added benefit of film exploitation.
In this field, much depends on the status of the author (and the illustrator if appropriate). For illustrated books, however, there may be a considerable difference in style between countries. For example, France and Belgium favour the comic-strip storybook (bandes dessinées); books from central and eastern Europe and China often reflect the local folk-art style; Japan has picture books with delicate watercolour illustrations, but also the manga tradition of comic books, popular with both children and adults.
The actual content of the illustrations may also affect their saleability; for example, the ethnic mix of people shown in a British children’s book may be quite inappropriate for a publisher in Denmark or Latin America. In some countries, there is even a gender requirement for children’s books; in Sweden, illustrations must show an equal number of male and female characters and they should not be performing gender-stereotyped activities. Street scenes showing double-decker buses and traffic on the left-hand side of the road may reduce the chance for foreign licences.
In the area of adult fiction, the status of the author and the quality of the writing within the genre are key elements. The works of authors such as John Grisham, Stephen King and John Le Carré are translated extensively, including in the former socialist countries, and Agatha Christie is still a firm favourite there. With the lifting of censorship laws, the early 1990s saw an explosion in translations of more sensational foreign fiction in the region; by the mid-1990s it was estimated that 90% of all legitimately published books in Russia were translations of foreign titles; the initial wave of translations of pulp fiction was followed by translations of popular non-fiction for both adults and children, much of it illustrated information books and coffee-table books on topics such as cookery, gardening and interior design, reflecting a more affluent reader-ship. The period also saw massive piracy of western titles, often in multiple editions.
There has since been a noticeable reduction in the number of rights acquired from the west, and the size of print runs has also dropped significantly. This has been influenced by a number of factors – the initial novelty has worn off, there has been something of a backlash against western domination of the market, and there have also been economic difficulties in some markets, 1111