Un sector editorial autosuficient

Segons Kinzer (2003), hi ha sis arguments que explicarien el poc interès del món editorial anglosaxó en publicar traduccions.

Primer: la indústria editorial es concentra en uns pocs conglomerats que tenen un model de negoci basat, sobretot, en guanys.87 Aquesta “censura econòmica” (“economic censorship”, Post, 2011) parteix de la base que “translations (supposedly) cost more to publish than books written in English and sell far fewer copies [so] publishers can make more money by ignoring these sort of books” (Ibid.), argument també defensat per Grossman (2010).88

Segon: les editorials no tenen personal propi que pugui llegir en llengües estrangeres,89 i no es fien de l’opinió de forans sobre quins llibres podrien interessar al públic nord-americà.

86 _{Conversa personal amb el Dr. Harold Bloom, 30 d’agost de 2014. Veieu apèndix}

9.3.

87 _{“Anglo-American publishers increasingly invested in bestsellers and the}

development of multinational publishing conglomerates brought greater financial control over editorial policies” (Venuti, 1992, p. 5).

88 _{Els costos potser no són superiors, però els guanys són definitivament inferiors:}

“Literary fiction in translation sells poorly in the States. I’ve heard even Saramago was selling in the low thousands (or hundreds) before winning the Nobel Prize. It’s in no way unusual for a literary translation to sell in the 2,000-copy range. And publishers who sell 4-5,000 copies of a translation feel like the did an excellent job. [Therefore], it’s more profitable to get world rights to a mediocre American author and sell rights to a couple dozen countries” (Post, 2011).

89 _{“Most editors are monolingual and only selected editors attend the Frankfurt book}

Tercer: l’alt cost de les traduccions (censura econòmica, novament) que pot alleugerir-se, però, amb subvencions.

Quart: els múltiples localismes que es troben en la literatura no- americana.

Cinquè: l’estil d’escriptura. “A lot of foreign literature doesn’t work in the American context because it’s less action-oriented than what we’re used to, more philosophical and reflective (...) As with foreign films, literature in translation often has a different pace, a different style, and it can take some getting used to. The reader needs to see subtleties and get into the mood or frame of mind to step into a different place. Americans tend to want more immediate gratification. We’re into accessible information. We often look for the story, rather than the story within the story. We’d rather read lines than read between the lines” (Kinzer, 2003).90

I sisè: el creixent desequilibri entre els EUA i la resta del món, tan culturalment com política.

En última instància, els països de parla anglesa “show an overriding attitude of self-sufficiency” (Škrabec, 2007 p. 119), en una actitud certament imperialista –que Grossman (2010, p. 29) no dubta en etiquetar de “iron curtain”– retroalimentada per la posició dominant de l’anglès en el panorama global, per la poca permeabilitat del sistema cultural anglosaxó excessivament assimilacionista, i per les

90 _{En aquest sentit Post escriu: “if people want to read for entertainment, why would}

they ever pick up a long, complex, challenging novel? Translations face a couple of added obstacles when trying to reach a wide audience. First off, there’s the built in prejudice against international literature. It’s hard, it’s obscure, it’s depressing, it’s filled with historical events I don’t know about and names I can’t pronounce. On top of that, the media loves to identify and heap praise upong young ambitious American writers who are advancing the modernist agenda and writing what could be the Great American Novel. Aside from Bolaño and maybe Sebald, that sort of media attention is rarely granted to someone from abroad” (Post, 2011).

circumstàncies específiques de mercat que tot just hem assenyalat. És com si “la finalitat última d’escriure en qualsevol llengua i des de qualsevol racó del món [fos] ser traduït a l’anglès i triomfar en aquest mercat mundial (...) La supremacia [de la llengua anglesa] és un axioma i la seva raó indiscutible emana del seu poder, de la seva força, més que no pas de cap suposada virtut intrínseca” (Parcerisas, 2000, p. 47). Grossman no dubta en afirmar que “there is the disquieting matter of the growth and spread of an increasingly intense jingoistic parochialism in our country –the kind of attitude that leads certain people who should know better to believe that their nation and their language are situated, by a kind of divine right, at the center of the universe” (Grossman, 2010, p. 42). 91 Aquesta actitud és la que promou “crusades against bilingualism in any form” (Ibid.) i un “high degree of xenophobia rampant in our country [that] may explain the American reluctance to embrace translation, but in my experience, British publishers display the same lethal disinclination, exemplified not only in a professional, deep- seated distrust of translation (...) but also in their widespread and high- handed tendency to harbor an unshakeable, insular contempt for American English” (Grossman, 2010, p. 43).

Deborah Treisman, editora del The New Yorker, afirma que “the U.S. is so big, and there are so many more writers published here than in any other country. My guess is you’d have to lump all of Europe together as a unit to match it. Translations are published relatively quietly here. They go up against tough competition, partly because so much of American literature is tailored to be meaningful for American people,

91 _{“Anglo-American publishing has been instrumental in producing readers who are}

aggressively monolingual and culturally parochial while reaping the economic benefits of successfully imposing Anglo-American cultural values on a sizeable foreign readership” (Venuti, 1992, p. 6).

very little gets written from a truly international perspective, and partly because the publishing industry has an ingrained fear of translations and doesn’t always do enough to promote them. The only way to get certain writers to find an audience is to have them win prestigious prizes” (Kinzer, 2003) com són els casos de Gabriel García Márquez, Günter Grass, Naguib Mahfouz, o José Saramago. Aquest imperialisme lingüístic i cultural “create the illusion of being absolute values” (Ibid.).

La situació de l’ensenyament de llengües estrangeres als EUA és una altre exemple d’aquesta impermeabilitat.92 Mentre que “all cultures, large and small, open to works from the outside, have a good system in place for the teaching of foreign languages and a network linking the worlds of publishing, teaching, media and academia and reflect, therefore, a high internal social cohesiveness” (Škrabec, 2007, p. 120), els EUA van per una altra banda. En paraules de William Strachan, editor executiu de Hyperion Press, “we have always been sort of monosyllabic in terms of languages, and that extends into ignorance or wariness of other cultures. People look at a work in translation and quite often think, ‘these themes don’t speak to me, these situations don’t speak to me’” (Kinzer, 2003). Com bé afirma Škrabec, “in the United States, the concept of cultural diversity is completely monolingual. The scenes and customs described in the books may be very exotic, but the original language in which these picturesque stories are narrated is, almost without exception, English” (Škrabec 2007, p. 120). Aquest concepte

92 _{Si ens fixem per exemple en la filosofia educativa que s’aplica als estudiants}

vinguts de països de parla no-anglesa, el sistema és predominantment monoglòssic. L’objectiu no és només que l’estudiant aprengui l’anglès al més aviat possible (en alguns casos com Arizona i Califòrnia en un temps no superior als 180 dies), sinó que el sistema és també regressiu en tant que en el procés d’aprenentatge de l’anglès s’elimina la llengua d’origen. En el cas del Regne Unit, l’educació bilingüe ni tan sols hi té cabuda.

assimilatiu, que ja havíem assenyalat més amunt, és il·lustrat perfectament per autors immigrants que han triat la llengua anglesa com a eina d’expressió literària principal. Per exemple, Nabokov va néixer a Rússia i escriví en anglès després d’emigrar als EUA; Joseph Conrad, que era bilingüe polonès-francès, va néixer a Ucraïna i emigrà a Anglaterra on escriví en anglès; Edward Said, palestí nascut a Jerusalem que visqué a Egipte abans d’emigrar als EUA, també escriví en anglès; i per citar un autor contemporani, Juno Díaz va néixer a Santo Domingo i va guanyar el Pullitzer Price (2008) i el National Book Critics Circle Award (2007) amb la seva primera –i extraordinària– novel·la The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, escrita en anglès. Així, per una banda, és cert que “the United States has embraced the concept of world culture (...) through immigration, (...) but it is not a 1:1 equivalent to literature in translation” (Post, 2011) perquè com aquests exemples posen en evidència, l’experiència migratòria és expressada ja en anglès.

Aquest aïllament, però, dels EUA en relació a la literatura universal, té una contrapartida. “The permanent secretary of the Swedish Academuy, Horace Engdahl, in a widely reported statement to the press in October 2008, said that ‘Europe is still the center of the literary world. The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don’t translate enough and don’t really participate in the big dialogue of literature’” (Grossman, 2010, p. 58), afirmació que porta a Post a afegir que “that ignorance is restraining” perquè “four hundred original translations of fiction and poetry a year doesn’t result in an open, idea-exchanging culture” (Post, 2011).