France
England
Italy
Switzerland
Finland
Norway
Canada
The Netherlands
Israel
United States
Turkey
Brazil
Ireland
Mexico
Greece
Belgium
China
Greece
Spain
Czech Republic
Portugal
Sweden
Denmark

The verticality of lists is important. It quickly gives us a sense of quantity that horizontality, at first glance, does not permit. The first thing we notice about a list is the distance to the bottom. Then comes the reading of the list, and then we start wondering why these elements came together to make up a list. Lastly, we must also pay attention to what the list may conceal: that which cannot be seen at first glance but is indeed there. 

Let’s try this exercise with the list above;

1. It occupies a significant percentage of the blank page.
2. It deals with countries.
3. Countries whose editors participated in the TyPA Editors’ Week, the first program of its kind in Argentina with the goal of familiarizing international professionals with its national literature, to see it and feel it on their own land, held each April in Buenos Aires.
4. But a list also hides things, and this is what makes it dizzying, in the words of Umberto Eco. Hidden, for example, are other sublists: the 150 editors who participated in the program or the more than fifty Argentine works that were translated over the years. And it also obscures things that cannot, perhaps, be listed. 

For example, let us focus on Switzerland. The name Ricco Bilger, editor of the beautiful Bilgerverlag press, immediately comes to mind. He participated in the program in 2011. He applied to a call that set out two basic requirements: that the participants understood some Spanish (most of the event was carried out in this language) and that they already had some authors translated from Spanish in their catalogue.

Ricco did not meet either of these two conditions. But there was something in his application that caught our eye: maybe it was something as simple as mere intuition. So we told ourselves: it’s fine, we will be able to manage with just English. Ricco didn’t speak much English either. 

The Editors’ Week was hectic. We had put together an ambitious program for authors, editors, and journalists, and there were many business meetings, lunches, and dinners where someone was always taking out pen and paper to jot down names of people and books: participants’ future private lists. 

But let us come back to Ricco. We took pains to ensure he did not get lost in the conversations; we took notes for him with the names of books and authors recommended by editors and journalists, ensuring that he had all of the information so that, once he got home, he could navigate the impossible, boundless map of our country that contemporary literature can assemble. If we take a look at the program from that year, we see that Ricco, much like the other participants, had some twenty business meetings with editors, visited four publishing houses and the cultural section of a newspaper, attended lectures, and went to a party: it was the only time one couldn’t take out pen and paper; hands were busy with beer bottles, feet with dancing. 

At the party, there were many people who had met with editors during the week, as well as many authors. Among them was Hernán Ronsino, who by then had already published his novels La descomposición and Glaxo. We introduced them via hand gestures. Ricco’s English was trying hard to incorporate a few words in Spanish. The volume of the music, the excessive heat, the colliding bodies, all compromised verbal communication. Especially verbal communication that lacked a common language. Also at the party was Irene Barki, a French literary agent based in Buenos Aires for several years who at the time represented Hernán. She joined the chat to officiate as translator. It did not work either. But she did manage to tell Ricco that she had a copy of the French translation of Glaxo on her. Coincidentally, Ricco read in French. It was a quick and elegant way to end the brief torture that is trying to converse at a party with someone for the first time, in a language you don’t speak.

Some time after the program finished, we sent out a short survey to see if there had been any copyright purchases. The only one that responded immediately, because he had already secured the translation rights (into German) was Ricco Bilger—he had acquired Glaxo. It was the fastest result ever at the Editors’ Week (we all know how long these processes of buying and selling rights can take). Time passed and Ronsino established himself as an author in Argentina, he was creating an oeuvre. After Glaxo came the German translation of Lumbre, then La descomposición, then Cameron. In 2018 his German translations brought him to a residence in Switzerland for six months, invited by the Literaturhaus Zürich and the PWG Foundation. In 2020, he won the Anna Seghers award for his “Trilogy of the Prairie” (La descomposición, Glaxo, and Lumbre), an award that is given to a German-speaking author and a Latin American author translated into German. In a few months, Una música, his latest novel, will also come out in this language. All thanks to the same translator: Luis Ruby.

This anecdote is one of many from various editions of the Editors’ Week throughout the years, and we share it now because it illustrates the complex and often random process by which the process of publishing a book in another language, and in other countries, is set in motion. Of course, business strategies exist: pages of costs calculated by hand, including marketing budgets and previous agreements with influencers and distribution channels. But these make sense only when it comes to well-established authors with proven sales or, at least, celebrity status. And according to the latest surveys, this applies only to a negligible amount of just fifty authors in the entire world. The rest must make ends meet by taking another path, one in which networks of mutual understanding, like the ones we have shared, occupy a central place. 

We might call it the romantic path: that of the book as a unique and symbolically relevant artistic creation, which takes its stride because it falls into the hands of an educated reader, because it traverses a path in which elective affinities are awakened. After twenty years of working by, for, and with translation, in all its facets, we are convinced that this is just the case. But, also, that it isn’t enough. Affinities are not activated on their own, especially when distant cultures are at play: you have to seek them out, invite them in, and accompany them. Alongside romanticism, you must assume, as well, that which many may consider to be its opposite: a professional attitude. Borrowing Brian Larkin’s concept, it is a question of creating and sustaining infrastructures—that is, material networks that allow for the traffic of goods and people, and that can also shape the exchange of ideas and cultural products. In the case of literary translation, it becomes essential to know all of the agents involved in this exchange—editors, literary agents, translators, and critics, among others—to participate in international circuits, to strive to communicate in a different manner according to each interlocutor, to learn the economic and legal regulations at play, to know how to negotiate, to come up against official bureaucracy in each country, to construct a trustworthy route, to persevere.

It’s no small thing. And if, additionally, the journey of a book starts in the South, the work is presented with much more demanding challenges than when it starts in the North. The complicity and inequality of the global system of literary exchange has been studied by many, so we will not get into it in detail here (although we refer to the seminal texts by Pascale Casanova and Johan Heilbron, or to the always invaluable reflections by Esther Allen, to name a few examples). It’s true that in the last few decades there have been efforts made to reverse the situation—all driven forward by translators—and that there are minor changes we have seen here and there; yet, for now, the relationship is still as uneven as always. 

Okay, then. What to do? We think perhaps the best option would be to unify, to the extent possible, romanticism with professionalization. To encourage thought-out and sustained actions that generate friendly spaces for this union, to favor the possibility for the spark to ignite and the exchange to occur. There are many good examples in the world: France has excellent subsidized programs for the translation of French authors that have been in place for more than a century, which continue to have great results and to serve as an example for many programs in other countries. So-called “minor” languages, like Dutch or Catalan, are highlighted through activities of cultural promotion that make their authors visible in many corners of the world. Nations with other literary traditions, like Korea, have put impeccable information centers in place in order to spread the word about their editorial production. There are many, many awards, grants, trips, publications, and networks that have proven successful and are almost always sustained by public organizations, though sometimes private as well. It also takes reliable and updated data and the commitment of local editors who, together with agents and translators, are a fundamental knot in the network. 

From our various positions, we’ve contributed what we could to this process, and we intend to continue to do so, because we are convinced that the wider the variety of texts in the world, the more open the minds of the readers will be, and the broader the possibilities for a more tolerant and caring coexistence. In this day and age, this is an urgent priority. At the TyPA Foundation, in the meantime, we continue our research work: together with other organizations, we are working to disseminate and further education; and we anxiously hope the Argentine government continues supporting the invaluable efforts made by the translation enterprise Programa Sur. 

To finish, one last anecdote: during the first edition of the TyPA Editors’ Week, back in 2003, after an event full of activities and information about dozens of authors, the departure day ultimately arrived. At the airport, while waiting to board the plane that would take her back home, one of the participants ran into a title that caught her eye. She read a couple of pages, got excited, and decided to contact the author at once. That is how esteemed German editor Michi Straussfeld, of the prestigious publisher Suhrkamp, discovered Sergio Olguín in the Buenos Aires airport; and soon enough, El equipo de los sueños became Die Traummanschaft, by translator Mathias Strobel.

We might never manage to decipher the exact formula for a book’s arrival into another language. But can we laboriously build up the infrastructure? Yes. And believe in the magic of books? That too. 

Translated by Elena Schafer

Photos: Editors at work at the TyPA Editors’ Week.