Vimr, O. (2019).

Supply-driven translation: compensating for lack of

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AUTHOR’S PRE-PRINT 15/12/2017, TO BE PUBLISHED IN
Rajendra Chitnis (ed.): Translating the Literatures of Small European Nations, Liverpool
University Press

Supply-driven Translation: Compensating for Lack of Demand1

By Ondřej Vimr (University of Bristol)

Introduction

The most widespread translation practice is non-translation. It is quite normal that most

texts and utterances are never translated. If everything had to be translated, the resource

implications alone would leave humanity in serious trouble. It nevertheless makes sense to

study the phenomenon in two contexts: 1) when it is artificially induced (through censorship

or ideological embargo) (see Duarte 2000; Špirk 2014) and 2) as in this chapter, when

individuals or institutions struggle against non-translation, as in the case of less widely

translated European literatures. To understand the logic of these interventions into

international literary flows, I will approach translation from the perspective of supply and

demand.

Because of the time and effort required, it is much easier to find a reason for not

translating a text or utterance. Demand is widely considered a key motivation for literary

translation; someone (a particular person or an undefined set of individuals) in the target

culture sees a book or a series of books (a repertoire, genre) in another culture, observes

that it is missing in the target culture and that it may be useful in some way, and makes the

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decision to get it translated. As Gideon Toury, a key theorist of Descriptive Translation

Studies, puts it:

[…] cultures resort to translating precisely as a way of filling in gaps, whenever or

wherever such gaps may manifest themselves: either in themselves, or (more often)

in view of a corresponding non-gap in another culture that the target culture in

question has reasons to look up to and try to exploit for its own needs. (Toury, 2012,

21–22)

Taking an example from smaller European literatures, let us imagine the German interest in

Scandinavian literature and Henrik Ibsen in particular in the nineteenth century. Although

the German openness towards Scandinavian literature was to some extent rooted in pan-

Germanic cultural affinity, Henrik Ibsen and other Scandinavian authors of the late

nineteenth century boom were translated as a result of a genuine interest in the novel and

radical voices of the source cultures. The demand-driven nature of these translations is not

in conflict with the fact that these translations were read in ways that somewhat

contradicted the original works and their interpretation interpreted in their source cultures

(see, for instance, Bruns, 1977; Gentikow, 1978; Baumgartner, 1979; Zernack, 1997).

This straightforward account of what might be called demand-driven translation

becomes problematic, however, when applied to contemporary book-industry practice. In

Toury’s view, three important aspects are involved: the existence of a gap in the target

culture vis-à-vis a non-gap in the source culture, the prestige of the source culture and the

‘needs’ of the target culture. The following anonymized letter, however, sent by a large

supranational literary agency to a mid-sized publishing house in a semi-peripheral country,

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offering publishing rights for a three-book series, gives a rather different idea of why a book

might be translated:

We have just signed an extraordinary debut author.

[The debut author] is the first [semi-periphery nation] crime author that we have

taken on since 2005, which was when we signed [a world famous crime author].

Incidentally, [the debut author] has the same [national] publishing house, publisher

and editor as [the famous author].

[The debut author]’s [book title] is the most ambitious, well-written and suspenseful

[national] crime debut of the past decade. The first book of a planned trilogy, [the

book title] was published in [the source country] some weeks ago to rave reviews,

and the book was reprinted after only three days.

Attached please find the following material:

- English sample translation

- English detailed synopsis

- English translation of a review from [a newspaper] ([source country]’s

biggest newspaper)

- English review quotes

- [The] original manuscript

We are looking for closing [sic] a three-book deal.2

This letter exemplifies how part of the contemporary book industry works. It opens

with a favourable comparison with a world-famous author, highlighting the similarities on

multiple levels, including the genre, nationality, publishing house and editor. Then it

stresses the quality and success of the first book using positive domestic reviews and sales.

Lastly, it highlights that the whole package of three books must be taken, when only the first

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has been written and published. The language of the attached documents reveals that the

acquisition editor at the target publishing house is not expected to know the source

language, but the original manuscript is attached too, should there be any doubts and an

expert (such as a translator, should we assume) at hand. In relation to Toury’s account, the

letter prompts questions like: Where in the target culture is a gap for books not written yet

or books that are actually almost the same as a previous one? Moreover, the prestige of the

source culture, envisaged by Toury, seems to be replaced by the prestige of the previous

author on the world market. Likewise, the exploiting of the non-gap in the source culture

(the original book) for its own needs seems to apply to the target publisher, literary agency,

original author and many more, but definitely not the target culture.

The descriptive model explaining the process of translation as filling in gaps of the

target culture vis-à-vis non-gaps in the source culture seems to work best retrospectively for

the purposes of comparative literature, literary history or theory of translation, as in the

example of Henrik Ibsen. It also seems to explain the overall tendency of literary flows in

terms of highbrow literature, where the status of particular literary works in both source

and target literary systems is scrutinised by literary experts, while other rules may apply to

strata of literary production such as popular fiction, as we will see with the examples of

Emily Flygare-Carlén and Sophie Schwartz.

The practice exemplified by the letter suggests a model where the international

circulation of literature is not shaped exclusively by demand on the target side, but is

heavily influenced by the source or supply side. In cases of supply-driven translation, the key

impulse for a translation does not come from within the target literary system, based on the

reflection on what source systems have to offer and what the target culture may need.

Rather, it comes from an entity positioned outside the target literary system with limited

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interest in and knowledge of the target literary system, including its ‘gaps’. With supply-

driven translations, economic and other non-aesthetic factors come into consideration on

the supply side and may become the driving force behind the international circulation of

literature.

Gideon Toury rightly acknowledges that ‘sometimes – e.g. in so-called “colonial”

situations – an alleged gap may be pointed out for that culture by a patron of sorts, who

also purports to know better how the gap may best be filled’ (Toury, 2012, 22). However,

the author of the letter – a literary agency – can hardly be considered a ‘patron of sorts’, nor

the practice labelled a ‘colonial’ situation. The supply-driven model seems rather

widespread for so-called ‘big books’, where it applies not only to translations but also the

production of original books (see Thompson, 2013). Importantly, in supply-driven

translation, the supplier does not point to a gap in the target literary system or culture as a

whole. Indeed, the supplier may very well emphasise the sameness of the proposed work of

literature, revealing the systemic redundancy of the work for the target culture. Such a work

may nevertheless prove a gap-creator as well as gap-filler for the target book market, if

appropriate marketing measures are put into practice.

For both demand- and supply-driven translations, the actual function of a translated

literary work in the target cultural and literary system is a matter of multiple factors and

cannot be reliably foreseen. Demand-driven translation, however, envisages a function from

the outset, an idea of where the translation would be positioned in the dynamic target

cultural and literary system once it is published, while supply-driven translation has no such

intention in relation to the target cultural and literary system. The presupposed function of

a supply-driven translation is derived from factors that apply to its function in the source

and global markets for this or similar works.

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 Although borrowed from economics, the terms of supply and demand applied to

literary flows do not reduce literary circulation to a matter of buy-and-sell. The terms also

have political and socio-cultural dimensions. The dynamics of supply and demand in literary

flows, inherent to literary circulation, expose the importance of translations for both source

and target countries, cultures, institutions and individuals. Some translations are more

important for the target side, others for the source side, while yet others are mutually

important, but with different emphases. For each translation, there needs to be supply (at

least the original text) and demand (someone willing to execute the translation), with

possible extra stimuli and motivations on both sides of the spectrum. The range of stimuli

on the supply side is variegated and includes, for example, letters sent by authors to foreign

editors promoting their own work, public agencies subsidising translation and author visits,

literary agents stimulating competition on the target book market with auctions, state

funded publishers who publish translations in the source country and export them, etc. The

scope of motivations on the supply side is also differentiated and includes economic and

prestige benefits for the author, publisher, literary agent, culture and country. From this

perspective, rather than the facts of the target culture in Toury’s understanding, it seems

more accurate to understand translations as cross-national transfers that imply the

existence of a field of international relations of exchange (see Heilbron & Sapiro, 2007). It is

in the field of relations and exchange that translation projects are negotiated and executed

by both individuals and depersonalized institutions with their unstable position in the field

and their own interests and needs. Translations are facts of the international field of

relations of exchange and should be studied as such.

Supply-driven translations in the late 19th century: individual actors

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A peek into the recent history of translation reveals that, broadly understood, supply-driven

translations are not an innovation of the globalized and market-driven book industry.

Rather, supplying translations is a practice consistently explored and used by various actors

from smaller source cultures to fight non-translation and stimulate a lower-than-expected

demand in potential target cultures for over a century. The following examples from the

Scandinavian and Czech history of translation give us a sense of the phenomenon, its

diverse facets and its historical dimension. It also underscores the importance and

complexity of agency in the international circulation of literature.

The strategy illustrated by the letter quoted above, where translation seeks to meet

the needs of the target publisher (rather than culture) and is promoted on the basis of

similarity to other successful authors, rather than filling a gap, can be seen in a Czech

publisher’s efforts to promote Czech translations of the Swedish popular novelist Emily

Flygare-Carlén in 1875. A promotional article in a Czech newspaper stated:

The Swedish are actually very much like us in terms of their efforts, especially when

it comes to the family literature. The writings of Flygare-Carlén, in particular, appear

to stem from the Czech spirit and are equally popular in Czech translation as the

work of the best Czech male and female authors. (Anon., 1875)

The major quality of the translated work, as presented in the article, is the alleged spiritual

similarity between the translated author and Czech authors, including their popularity

among readers. The aspects of otherness, originality and novelty are disregarded altogether.

Unlike the recent letter cited above, however, the promotional article is produced by the

target publisher to increase the sales of a translated work chosen and published by the

same publisher; the article operates within the target system and is not a case of supply-

driven translation. The letter, on the other hand, works across national literary systems and

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is supposed to stimulate the target-system literary-field actors to translate and publish a

work preferred and suggested by the supply side.

Supply-side interventions in international literary flows can take many forms and can

be easily traced to the latter half of the nineteenth century. While the institution of literary

agents was in its infancy (Thompson, 2012, 59-61), the authors themselves helped to pave

the way for their international success in the late 1800s. A number of authors did not need

to promote their work at all and were still widely translated, some took minor steps, while

others promoted their work vigorously. Importantly, for a number of authors from smaller

European nations with limited national language readership, translation (into German and

French in particular) was the only means of gaining international fame and prestige as well

as making their living. August Strindberg made every effort to get published in French,

which he considered prestigious and important for the dissemination of his work. He

employed three strategies while living outside of Sweden: he wrote in French, self-

translated his works into French and commissioned translations of his works into French:

‘Everything that was published in French between 1884 and 1894 is either written directly in

French, or translated by the author or by others at his instigation’ (Balzamo, 2013, 172).3

Strindberg’s work was, however, translated extensively into German during the very same

years without any intervention from his side. In other cases, like Flygare-Carlén, discussed

by Hermansson and Leffler in Chapter Eight, she had no need to promote herself, but her

comparably famous compatriot Marie Sophie Schwartz wrote incessantly to foreign

publishers to promote her own work and solicit about the translation right fees. 4

Interwar era: the rise of institutional interventions5

Supply-driven translations are not merely a matter of individual actors such as authors

eager to earn international prestige and recognition (like Strindberg) as well as revenues

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(like Schwartz). This became apparent in the wake of World War I when a number of new

countries emerged in Europe, fighting for their international status. As Chitnis demonstrates

in the next chapter through the example of Czechoslovakia, it was in this period that the

first coherent attempts were made at using literary translation in cultural diplomacy, thus

moving the supply-driven stimuli from an individual to an institutional level.6 Proactive

bilateral support for fiction and non-fiction translation was gradually incorporated into

bilateral cultural agreements, a new and popular tool of the then cultural diplomacy.7 Until

the outburst of World War II, the four most active countries to enter into such agreements

were France (with 13 signed bilateral agreements), Poland (10), Czechoslovakia (9) and

Belgium (8) (Haigh, 1974, 47).

It is difficult to assess the immediate statistical impact of these agreements on the

translation production. The agreements did not include any procedure for the production

and promotion of translations; rather, they were an open, mutual acknowledgement of the

significance of translation for both the source and target countries and provided a

diplomatic and political frame of reference. It was the diplomats’ and officials’ duty to seek

their ways of doing the practical side of supplying translations and supporting translation

activity. These would range from forwarding original books (or translations into generally

known languages, such as English or French) to the cultural gatekeepers in the intended

target countries, to publishing translations in the source country and exporting them.

The importance of translation for (cultural) diplomacy and for the construction of

the international image of a country grew in the interwar era, and it was most natural for

diplomats and politicians from minor countries to provide source-side support for

translation, with the printed word as the only major source of knowledge about the

unknown and unseen. Countries with unfavourable asymmetrical representation in the

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target countries therefore welcomed bilateral agreements heartily. Negotiating the cultural

agreement between Czechoslovakia and Sweden, the Czechoslovak diplomats internally

assessed its potential benefit quite frankly:

We [the Czechoslovak Republic] will, moreover, be the main beneficiaries of the

agreement, especially since not only the exchange of translations (300 books have

been translated into the Czechoslovak language, compared to 15 translations in the

opposite direction), but also other promotion work has always been completed

swiftly on the Czechoslovak side, while fundamentally struggling in Sweden.8

The content of these agreements was rather similar across the European continent; they

were short (about one page) and were built on the principle of reciprocity and openness.

Cultural agreements were also of importance to Nazi Germany, which began concluding

them with its allies soon after Joseph Goebbels became Minister of Propaganda (Hungary

1936, Japan 1938, Italy 1938, Spain 1939). These agreements, however, were much longer

and featured detailed paragraphs on the censorship of texts unfavourable to the source

country regime. The use and meticulous design of such agreements by Nazi Germany only

stresses the perceived importance of cultural diplomacy and translation for the source

country at the time.

Between the wars, the first attempts were also made to establish support for fiction

and non-fiction translation multi-nationally. Czechoslovakia, Romania and Yugoslavia, for

instance, triangulated a more detailed version of the bilateral agreement for the Little

Entente, the political and cultural entity, and planned to co-publish bilingual editions of

their most prestigious authors and works, supporting financially the translations and

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publishing as well as supplying the published books to the public libraries across the three

countries (Vimr, 2014, 112-117).

The League of Nations and its International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation

(the predecessor of UNESCO, established 1922) took the first practical steps in supporting

translation on a supranational level by launching the Index Translationum (1932), a

coordinated record of published translations. More importantly, it also introduced

programmes for the active support of translation in the latter half of 1930s. The initiative

did not arise from the centre of the West European centre of the Committee but from non-

European and small European countries which also financed the programmes. With the

clear aim of supplying the most important works of the respective non-European national

literatures in a world language (French), two collections of translations appeared: Japanese

and Ibero-American. In Europe, the Romanian delegation proposed in 1936 that the

Committee should ‘publish a collection of translations into one or more big universal

languages of representative and classical works taken from various European literatures in

regional languages’.9 Both large and small nations were supposed to benefit from the

translations from smaller European languages into more widely used languages. The benefit

for the latter (except for the source-country) would, however, be indirect, since they were

supposed to ‘have easier access to the literature and consequently be more able to acquaint

themselves with the spirit of their neighbours, which may help in reciprocal understanding’.

This initiative came too close to the outbreak of World War II for any volumes to be

published.

Despite their limited practical impact as the world moved again to war, both bilateral

and multilateral interwar attempts to support supply-driven translations, including their

justification, are crucial for understanding the European modes of literary translation

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support attempted and practised since the second half of the twentieth century. In the

interwar era, three important aspects came to the fore: 1) Literature is a tool of diplomacy:

literature in translation is important for the source culture and country since it helps

establish and develop its international image and position in the field of international

relations, and is of benefit for both parties as a path to mutual understanding and conflict

prevention; 2) If the source country is in an asymmetrically weaker position in the

international field of (cultural, political, economic) relations, interventions from the source

side are needed and justifiable, supplying information and/or translations to the target

countries to overcome the asymmetries; 3) The common issue arising from more detailed

discussions and plans was how to choose works for promotion and translation. The most

widespread cultural agreements did not feature any suggestions at all; Nazi-German

agreements only featured suggestions of the types of works to censor. The Little Entente

and League of Nations projects suggested a focus on the national canon as determined by

the source country, paying practically no attention to the tastes and expectations of the

target readership or the ‘needs’ of the target system.

Post World War II: experimenting on the path towards the current practices

After World War II, various projects emerged to support the translation of smaller European

literatures, the earliest of which all shared one thing in common: failure. Perhaps the most

ambitious was the Bridge project proposed and organised by the Prague publisher Bohumil

Janda (Sfinx and ELK imprints) and the renowned editor and literary agent Max Tau, a

German Jewish émigré to Oslo.10 It was supposed to involve selected publishers from all

small European countries in a publishing and marketing network scheme. The key idea was

to choose the ‘best books’ from the participating countries on a yearly basis, have them

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translated into all other participating languages and publish them simultaneously, with a

multiplying marketing effect. One of the important goals was to have passive members in

large countries (Germany, France, UK and USA) who would publish a selection of the yearly

Bridge production. Janda and Tau initiated the project in 1947. In March 1948, publishers

from seven countries (Belgium, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway

and Sweden) were supposed to attend the initial convention in Prague, with contact also

established with publishers from seven other countries (Hungary, Romania, Finland, Iceland,

Poland, Switzerland, Yugoslavia). The Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia and the rise of

the Iron Curtain put an end to the project.

The Bridge project is unique in supply-driven translation because: 1) It reveals that

publishers across countries were used to networking and were quick to realise the potential

of a complex networking scheme in terms of information exchange (tips about promising

authors and works) and coordinated promotion. The scheme was proposed and promoted

within a group of individuals that had known each other personally and the literary agent

(Max Tau) seems to have functioned as advisor and negotiator rather than promoter of

particular authors’ or publishers’ interests. 2) Even in the 1940s, publishers were open to

imitate the publishing catalogues of similarly positioned publishers across countries to

reduce the risk of making the wrong choice (cf. Franssen 2015), since Janda and Tau

deliberately chose publishers they knew had similar literary tastes and status in their

national literary fields. 3) In contrast to most other supply-oriented schemes, it was a

private project with the proponents fully aware of the commercial dimension of publishing.

There is not much information on the process of selecting the ‘best books’, but the few

names that appeared in the discussions suggest a focus on well-established contemporary

authors (Sigrid Undset, A. den Doolaard), while the plan was to have Max Tau as the final

13/25
arbiter of the quality and suitability of the works proposed by the individual participating

publishers. When trying to supply books from small countries to large countries, Janda and

Tau did not want to rely on the fame and success of a particular work or author in the

source country. Rather, they intended to build international fame within the group of

smaller countries, supplying an internationally visible pre-selection of books from small

countries for publishers from larger countries to choose from.

The 1950s saw the establishment of the first organizations charged with promoting

national literatures abroad, and their agendas are almost identical to similar institutions

today. In 1954, a publicly funded foundation was created in the Netherlands for the

promotion of Dutch literature, that ‘subsidized translations, established contacts with

foreign publishers, commissioned trial translations, and diffused information about authors

and their work’ (Heilbron, 2008, 193). At the time, other similar organizations for the

promotion of Dutch and Flemish literature were privately funded. Far from being the only

way of supporting literary export to the target countries, similar publicly funded agencies

are probably the most visible means of supply-driven translation today. The Dutch

organizations, however, faced fierce criticism as early as the 1980s: the number of

translations remained low, the quality of translation was mediocre, the foreign publishers

were obscure and only interested in the subsidies, and literary fame did not ensue.

Wolters’s discussion of the Biblioteca Neerlandica in Chapter Five gives a plethora of

answers to why a translation project driven by the source country may fail, including book

design and the choice of works that may well represent the source country’s canon, but do

not appeal to the target audience.

Despite criticism of the early Dutch foundation, comparable agencies for the

promotion of literature that supply information, subsidise translations and perform other

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supporting activities have been on the rise in recent decades, with many new agencies

established after the fall of the Iron Curtain.11 Recent research shows modest, yet positive

impact of some agencies in semi-peripheral and peripheral countries and literatures like the

Netherlands (Hacohen, 2014), Turkey (Akbatur, 2016), Flemish literature (McMartin, 2016)

or Catalan literature (Roig Sanz, 2016). Especially revealing is Ran Hacohen’s study of the

mutual exchange between two peripheral literatures, Dutch and Hebrew from 1991 to

2010, which shows asymmetrically higher numbers of translation into Hebrew than in the

other direction and links the fact to the labour conditions and state subsidies in the

respective countries. Although supplying translations through national public funded

agencies for the promotion of literature abroad is widely practised today, more extensive

research on the topic is not available.

Multi-nationally, the UNESCO Catalogue of Representative Works was established in

1948 and discontinued in 2005 due to lack of funds. ‘The project’s purpose was to translate

masterpieces of world literature, primarily from a lesser known language into a more

international language such as English and/or French. There were 1060 works in the

catalogue representing over sixty-five different literatures and representing around fifty

Oriental languages, twenty European languages as well as a number of African and

Oceanian literatures and languages’ (cf. Unesco n.d.). The end of the project may indicate

the limited impact of such a broad initiative in respect to the funds and other resources

needed. Likewise, through the Creative Europe action programme, the European Union

supports literary translation (cf. Creative Europe n.d.). The data or scholarly research on

these programmes is scarce.

Typology, paradigm-shift and agency in translation

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More complex research is needed to provide a comprehensive evaluation of supply-driven

translation and its impact. This brief account nevertheless highlights the intricate nature of

agency in translation as it has developed over the twentieth century, and also reveals the

following. First, it facilitates the creation of a typology of intervention in supply-driven

translations, illuminating the complexity of the phenomenon (see Table 1). There are two

basic types of agents on the source side involved in supply-driven translations: individuals

(such as authors or individual literary agents) and institutions (publishing houses, public or

private foundations, state departments etc.). Whereas individuals are usually privately

funded, institutions may be financially backed by the private or the public sectors.

Table 1: Supply-driven Translations: A typology

Type of agent Individual Institutional

Source of funding Private Public

Anchoring Multination National

Focus Periphery-periphery Periphery-centre

In terms of networking, cooperation and coordination, the national or international

anchoring of supply-driven projects reveals different approaches to the management and

control of the project. The multi-national nature of some projects reveals that publishers

from many small countries share unrealistic expectations of target countries’ translation

catalogues, and bring them repeatedly to both publicly and privately funded projects aimed

at fighting non-translation.

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 When we focus on the size of particular literatures and apply Heilbron’s (1999)

system of cultures ranging from hyper-central (English) to peripheral cultures, it is no

surprise that projects in smaller European countries target both other peripheral countries

and more central countries, as we have seen in the case of the Bridge project. The

justification and aims, however, seem to differ. Both public and private projects aimed at

the dissemination in peripheral countries seem to be connected by symbolic value and seek

to accumulate symbolic capital. This symbolic capital can be an asset in supplying

translations to the more central countries. The focus on the central countries and

languages, on the other hand, is twofold, since these countries and languages act as both

targets and mediators. A successful translation into a central (German, French) or hyper-

central (English) language brings both financial and symbolic capital. The latter is of

particular importance, since it may also help to provoke demand in other countries by

gaining access to the peripheral countries either directly (via new translations into the

peripheral countries prompted by success) or indirectly (benefiting from the fact that a

more central language has a number of non-native speakers).

The second important aspect elucidated by the brief history of supply-driven

translations is its development over time. Assuming that demand-driven translations were a

standard paradigm in the nineteenth century, with only individual authors gradually trying

to influence the literary circulation, we can see a clear paradigm shift towards a more multi-

faceted model for literary exchange, with varied and ever more complex attempts at supply-

driven translation during the twentieth century. This shift accompanied the rise of many

important actors in the field of international literary exchange with the aims, roles and

strategies of these actors being defined and redefined continuously. The supply-demand

distinction makes it easier to account for the new and varied actors that have emerged in

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the past century and operate in the translation and publishing fields. Let us briefly focus on

three of them: literary agents, the agents of cultural politics and diplomacy.

Setting up the first shop as a literary agency in the world in 1875, A. P. Watt

reformed the working relationship between author and publisher, destabilising their dyad.

While, in the beginning, literary agents saw themselves as mediators between the producers

and publishers of literature, with both parties being their clients, in the latter half of the 20th

century they started to act as representatives first and foremost of the author’s interests

(Hepburn, 1968; Gillies, 2007; Thompson, 2012, 59–100). As evidenced by the

aforementioned letter, literary agents are one of the most obvious, active actors in supply-

driven translation nowadays. Judging from their capability to sell the unwritten, they also

appear efficient and powerful, at least with respect to genre literature.

The international diplomatic and political use of literature has also witnessed

profound development. In the interwar period, cultural diplomacy was gradually being

established, yet attempts at international cultural promotion were probably based on

intuition, with literary translation not more than a fraction of the agenda. It was only in the

wake of World War II that cultural diplomacy gained a central status also for a hyper-central

language country: ‘When the United States assumed the mantle of global leadership after

World War II, cultural diplomacy was considered a central part of its strategy’ (Finn, 2003,

16). In many European countries, the latter half of the twentieth century gave rise to the

national agencies supporting literary export. These have become the main engines of’

supply-driven translation in non-genre fiction. In the past decades, one of the ambitious and

expensive goals of a country (represented by its institution for the international promotion

of literature) is to become Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair. This makes the link

between the literary, political and diplomatic dimensions ever more visible. The link is

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clearly mirrored in a speech given by the Norwegian State Secretary Tone Skogen on the

occasion of the signing ceremony confirming Norway’s guest status for 2019: ‘When the

government has chosen to support the Norwegian literature’s big dream – Frankfurt 2019 –

it is also based on the idea that culture is a part of politics – and that culture is also

diplomacy’ (Skogen, 2016).

Thirdly, it would be a mistake to understand the distinction between supply- and

demand-driven translation models as an opposition. Rather than two polarities, they are

intertwined approaches to the practical management of the international literary circulation

system reflecting the complexity of the day-to-day decision processes in the translation and

publishing business and the long-term impact these decisions have on the creation and

reinforcement of the literary and cultural representations of the source countries. At the

same time, economic aspects of the original and translated production are at play, which

only underscores the interdependence of the supply and demand side, the source system,

target system and the intermediaries.

While it may seem that translators suffer most from this convoluted practical side of

global literary circulation, this does not necessarily need to be so. The most decisive

moment for a translation is the acquisition of translation rights that allow a publisher to

publish a particular book. Such decisions are taken by acquisition editors positioned in the

virtual centre of a gatekeeping network that provides them with masses of information

about books (Franssen & Kuipers, 2013). Such a network may include literary agents,

national promotion agencies, peer publishing houses as well as translators. Every part of the

network furnishes the final decision-maker with a unique set of information that adds to the

personal credit of the informant. While literary agents and national agencies with their

profit and prestige agendas clearly position themselves on the supply side, and target

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publisher represent the (potential) demand side, translators as well as peer publishers in

other countries may act as more independent opinion-givers in finding the right balance

between supply and demand. A peer publishing house may give important information as to

the success of a particular title in another country. A translator, however, has a unique

position – especially with minor languages – as the expert on both source and target

cultures and literary systems and is supposedly qualified to arbitrate on whether a particular

text may succeed in the particular target culture and whether there would be real readers’

demand for the supply-driven translation. The distinction between supply- and demand-

driven models in translation as well as the historical occurrences and dynamics thereof may

empower translators since it makes the practical processes of global literary circulation

more transparent and helps each party to become aware of their particular position and

power in the system. The transparency that the distinction has the potential to deliver may

also make it easier to see the limits of the struggle against non-translation. That struggle,

from the 1920s to the present, forms the subject of the next four chapters.

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Footnotes

1. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research

and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No

749871.

2. E-mail from a large supranational literary agency to a mid-sized publishing house in a

semi-peripheral country, March, 2015. The three-book series was sold to 20

countries as of February 2016, with the second and third book still unpublished.

3. For other recent studies on Strindberg in translation see Gedin et al. 2013.

4. My thanks to Yvonne Leffler for bringing the case of Marie Sophie Schwartz to my

attention.

5. For a more detailed discussion see Vimr, forthcoming.

6. The concepts and terms of cultural diplomacy and soft power as known today were

not in use at the time. Technically, the agenda was often shared between the

department of foreign affairs and the department of education, usually referred to

as propaganda (with neutral connotation) or simply promotion. (This information is

based on my research in the archives of Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Norway and

Sweden.) See also discussion in the following chapter by Rajendra Chitnis.

7. The topic of bilateral cultural agreements and the institutional support for literary

translation in the interwar era is further developed in Vimr, forthcoming.

8. „Zpráva periodická č. 4 za 4. čtvrtletí 1935’ [Periodical report no. 4 for the 4th

quarter 1935], February 7, 1936, AMZV (Archive of the Czechoslovak Ministry of

Foreign Affairs), Politické zprávy 1918-1939, Švédsko, Stockholm 1929-1939,

Stockholm 1936, č. 90dův/1936.

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 9. Rapport de la commission sur les travaux de sa dix-huitième session plénière, 1936, p.

8.

10. For a more detailed analysis see Vimr 2014, 123-140.

11. While the Dutch Foundation for Literature has its roots in 1960, the Finnish FILI and

Norwegian NORLA are perhaps the oldest institutions of the kind that have not

undergone a major transformation (established in 1977 and 1978 respectively). The

majority of current agencies in Europe were, however, established or transformed in

the last twenty-five years (Cf. Survey of Key National Organizations Supporting

Literary Exchange and Translation in Europe, Budapest: Literature Across Frontiers,

December 2012).

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