Changing the Landscape. Diversity and Translated Fiction in the UK Publishing Industry


Abstract


Though sales from translated fiction in the UK are worth £20 million per year with a growth of 5.5% per annum, thus outpacing the rest of the publishing industry, focus on literature translated into English has begun to shift from quantity (see, for example, Büchler, Trentacosti 2015) to questions of diversity (see Chitnis et al. 2017). The often-quoted 3% figure, which has traditionally represented the proportion of literature in English originally written in other languages, has risen more recently to around 5% (see Anderson 2019). However, continued emphasis on this statistic risks eclipsing other issues of diversity, and a growing number of voices in both academic and industry contexts have drawn attention to the imperative to address this. Particular areas of discussion are the lack of gender equality, with less than a third of books published in translation being authored by women (see Derbyshire 2016), and linguistic/geopolitical bias, with some regions and languages being much better represented than others (see Patel, Youssef 2022). These issues of diversity are indicative of broader concerns within the publishing industry, where research suggests that diversity has plateaued (Joynson 2021). In this article we aim to identify some of the factors that contribute to the continued lack of diversity in literature translated into English, through the lens of the two activist initiatives with which we have been involved. These have potential to make a significant contribution to changing the landscape of literature in translation, but we will also consider their possible limitations, and where work still needs to be done.

DOI Code: 10.1285/i22390359v64p173

Keywords: translated fiction; diversity; PEN Presents; Warwick Prize for Women in Translation; publishing industry

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