This
July, The Observer Translation Project leaves its usual
format to present a special CRISIS ISSUE. Things are tough all over.Hard Times suddenly feels like the book of the moment. Theglobal economic crisis
impacts life as we know it, and viewed from Bucharest the effects
reverberate in domains that include geo-politics and publishing inRomania and abroad, with
the crisis at The Observer Translation Project as an instance
of a universal phenomenon.
By all reasonable
accounts, the Republic of Moldova entered a cycle of willful election
fraud and political repression beginning on April 7 this year. Leo
Butnaru, Moldavian journalist and author of literary texts, discusses
the election and its consequences in a "Letter from Chişinau,"
the capital of Moldova, home to the last communist regime in this
part of the world. In Moldova, communism amounts to State capitalism
for the ruthless few. The country's geographic position condemns it
to existence as a buffer state. Bordering Romania and the Ukraine,
Moldova continues to fall under Russian influence. The European Union
(which includes Romania) imports oil from Russia via the Ukraine.
Depending on Russia for oil, the EU finds itself in a delicate
position when it comes to defending human rights in Moldova, a
country rich in agricultural resources that nevertheless exists in
permanent crisis. This crisis is the direct result of Russia's need
to maintain a government in Chişinau that
will not interfere with the Russian sponsored dictatorship in the
Russian-speaking "ghost republic" of Transnistria,
Moldova's neighbor and Russia's client state. In his letter, Butnaru
discusses the sacrifices born by the people of Moldova as a result of
this permanent economic and geo-political struggle. Moldavian
is the official language of Butnaru's country. We read it as
Romanian, however, and responding to an appeal from PEN Bessarabia,
we translate Butnaru's letter as the first in a series of articles
from Moldova.
As regards
literature in translation, English is translation's Moldova. Chad
Post [of Open Letter Books and Three
Percent (http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent),
the influential publishing website] reports that the United States
published 361 book-length works of fiction and poetry in original
translation in 2008, 196 in 2009. Romania contributed 4 titles to the
2009 list: Filip Florian's Little
Fingers (Houghton
Mifflin), Dumitru Tsepeneag's Necessary
Marriage
(Dalkey Archive), Liliana Ursu's Lightwall
(Zephyr) and Ruxandra Cesereanu and Andrei Codrescu's Forgiven
Submarine
(Black Widow). Although three hundred and sixty-one titles looked
like a chronic shortage at something less that three percent of the
US poetry and fiction output, it represented a certain opening of the
market. The one hundred and ninety-six titles published so far this
year register the impact of the global economic crisis in US
publishing as a whole. In
this issue OTP conducts
an online interview with Chad
Post,
internationally known Romanian novelist Norman
Manea
[see http://translations.observatorcultural.ro/index.html?setActiveNumber=13
for fiction by Manea as well as his complete CV and bibliography],
renowned German translator Susan
Bernofsky
[whose bibliography includes such translations as Masquerade
and other Stories by Robert Walser
(Johns Hopkins: 1990) Siddharthaby
Herman Hesse (Modern Library Classics, 2007, with Tom Robbins),
as well as the award winning The
Old Child by
Jenny Erpenbeck (New Directions, 2005) and The
Assistant,
by Robert Walser (New
Directions,
2007)] and Susan
Harris,
Editorial Director of the premier translation site
Words Without Borders (http://www.wordswithoutborders.org)
who describes the short to medium term future of literature in
translation as: Endangered
as is everything else involving funding, literature, arts-but there
will always be a market for international writing.
Those interested in writing from the global crisis would do well to
read WWB's June 2009 number, Writing
from Pakistan.
The crisis effect
resounded through Bookfest 2009, Bucharest's fourth annual summer
book fair, a sales event that hosts a significant number of book
launches. The following remarks from Romania's leading publishers
come from Observator Cultural, Number 222, June 25 - July 1,
2009:
Oana
Boca, Polirom: Against expectations, this year's Polirom
sales compare with last year's. The most-sold title this year was
Adam Michnik's Confessions of a Converted Dissident. Varujan
Vosganian's The Book of Whispers was among the most-sold
Romanian titles. The Enchantress of Florence took first place
in the world literature category. The fact that things went okay at
Bookfest is not, however, a sign that the situation has gotten back
to normal. Even double or triple sales at Bookfest would not work
miracles. There needs to be a monthly normalcy as regards
distribution and sales. What will happen to so many of Romania's
bookstores (with ever fewer visitors in the recent period)? How will
we get through the summer, from the sales point of view? How will the
financial year conclude this year? How and with what difficulty
will publishers recoup their money from bookstores and wholesalers?
Iren Arsene, Curtea
Veche: Per total, Bookfest 2009 was a bit more profitable
[for us] than it was the previous year. Comparatively, we can say
that more books were sold, but the overall value doesn't much exceed
that of the previous year because we had large discounts both by
title (between 15 and 50%) and by package (between 30 and 50 %) for
authors-Jaime Oliver, Orhan Pamuk, Robert Kiyosaki-but also by
"domains:" audio books, children's books. There was no
locomotive author as Orhan Pamuk was last year with over one thousand
copies sold.
Denisa Comănescu, Humanitas: [As the others said] this was a very good fair, in
spite our fears. There were very many visitors and very many
buyers. Humanitas Fiction made the following offer: buy
three, get the cheapest one free. This promotion worked well and it
will go on in July and August in Humanitas bookstores in Bucharest
and around the country. We were happy that the top sellers includedLast Steps, by Jay Parini, The House at Riverton by
Kate Morton, Independence Day by Richard Ford.and The Last
Cato by Matilde Asensi, an international bestseller. Compared
with Bookfest last year, there were fewer publishers represented and
fewer visitors. [As the others said, some of the decline in visitors
was due to the fair's taking place at the end of June when high
school students and some university students were already on
vacation].
Bookfest took
place at RomExpo, June 17-21 after a considerable delay caused by
lack of sponsorships.
And
meanwhile, back at the farm: The Observer Translation
Project is feeling the pinch. Credit goes with grateful thanks to
the Romanian Cultural Institute for its promise to fund the English
language translation of OTP. We offer more grateful thanks to
our tremendous team of translators who have volunteered to see us
over the hump while we commence a long-term project that involves
creating a board charged with maintaining the financial health of The
Observer Translation Project.
We'll be on
vacation in August and back online with fresh translations in
September.
