Table 1. World translation publications: from selected languages, 1982-1984
| 1982 | 1983 | 1984 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | 22,208 | 24,468 | 22,724 |
| French | 6,205 | 6,084 | 4,422 |
| German | 4501 | 4818 | 5311 |
| Russian | 6,238 | 6,370 | 6,230 |
| ltalian | 1,433 | 1,645 | 4,544 |
| Scandinavian*) | 1,057 | 2,176 | 2,192 |
| Spanish | 5 | 847 | 839 |
| Classical, Greek, Latin | 839 | 1,116 | 4,035 |
| Hungarian | 703 | 665 | 879 |
| Arabic | 298 | 922 | 536 |
| Japanese | 208 | 222 | 204 |
| Chinese | 189 | 148 | 163 |
| World totals | 52,198 | 55,618 | 52,405 |
*) Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Islandic
Source: Grannis 1991, p. 24
These translation patterns point to a trade imbalance with serious cultural ramifications. British and American publishers travel every year to international markets like the American Booksellers Convention and the Frankfurt Book Fair, where they sell translation rights for many English-language books, including the global bestsellers, but rarely buy the rights to publish English-language translations of foreign books. British and American publishers have devoted more attention to acquiring bestsellers, and the formation of multinational publishing conglomerates has brought more capital to {15} support this editorial policy (an advance for a predicted bestseller is now in the millions of dollars) while limiting the number of financially risky books, like translations (Whiteside 1981; Feldman 1986). The London literary agent Paul Marsh confirms this trend by urging publishers to concentrate on selling translation rights instead of buying them: “any book with four or five translation sales in the bag at an early stage stands a good chance of at least nine or 10 by the end of the process” (Marsh 1991:27). Marsh adds that “most translation rights deals are done for a modest return” (ibid.), but the fact is that British and American publishers routinely receive lucrative advances for these deals, even when a foreign publisher or agent pressures them to consider other kinds of income (viz. royalties). The Milan-based Antonella Antonelli is one such agent, although the figure she cites as an imprudent Italian investment in an English-language book—“If you pay a $200,000 advance, you can’t make it back in Italy”—actually suggests how profitable translation rights can be for the publishers involved, foreign as well as British and American (Lottman 1991:S6). The sale of English-language books abroad has also been profitable: in 1990, American book exports amounted to more than $1.43 billion, with the export—import ratio at 61 to 39.
The consequences of this trade imbalance are diverse and farreaching. By routinely translating large numbers of the most varied English-language books, foreign publishers have exploited the global drift toward American political and economic hegemony in the postwar period, actively supporting the international expansion of Anglo-American culture. This trend has been reinforced by English-language book imports: the range of foreign countries receiving these books and the various categories into which the books fall show not only the worldwide reach of English, but the depth of its presence in foreign cultures, circulating through the school, the library, the bookstore, determining diverse areas, disciplines, and constituencies—academic and religious, literary and technical, elite and popular, adult and child (see Table 2). British and American publishing, in turn, has reaped the financial benefits of successfully imposing Anglo-American cultural values on a vast foreign readership, while producing cultures in the United Kingdom and the United States that are aggressively monolingual, unreceptive to the foreign, accustomed to fluent translations that invisibly inscribe foreign texts with English-language values and provide readers with the narcissistic experience of recognizing their own culture in a cultural other. The prevalence of fluent {16} domestication has supported these developments because of its economic value: enforced by editors, publishers, and reviewers, fluency results in translations that are eminently readable and therefore consumable on the book market, assisting in their commodification and insuring the neglect of foreign texts and English-language translation discourses that are more resistant to easy readability.
Table 2. US book exports to major countries, 1990: shipments valued at $2500 or more
(Source: Grannis 1991, pp. 21 and 22)
| Country | ($) |
|---|---|
| Canada | 664,448 |
| United Kingdom | 171,391 |
| Australia | 106,274 |
| Japan | 87,562 |
| Germany, West | 42,244 |
| Netherlands | 33,715 |
| Mexico | 32,337 |
| Singapore | 31,321 |
| France | 20,144 |
| India | 17,576 |
| Taiwan | 15,304 |
| Hong Kong | 12,853 |
| Brazil | 12,451 |
| South Africa | 11,378 |
| Philippines | 10,560 |
| Switzerland | 9,854 |
| Italy | 9,799 |
| Spain | 9,687 |
| New Zealand | 9,600 |
| Korea, South | 8,245 |
| Ireland | 7,946 |
| Sweden | 6,597 |
| Argentina | 5,746 |
| Finland | 5,095 |
| Venezuela | 4,772 |
| Israel | 4,324 |
| Denmark | 4,012 |
| Malaysia | 3,998 |
| Portugal | 3,881 |
| Type of book | ($) |
|---|---|
| Dictionaries | 4,659 |
| Encyclopedias | 39,369 |
| Atlases | 6,725 |
| Textbooks | 128,431 |
| Bibtes & other religious | 55,341 |
| Technical, scientific, professional | 322,647 |
| Art & pictorial | 12,242 |
| Music | 17,502 |
| Children’s picture, coloring, drawing | 42,875 |
| Other hardbound | 42,194 |
| Rack-size paperbound | 49,956 |
| Other | 736,063 |
| Total | 1,428,004 |