Nobody can speak every language on earth, not even all those languages that boast of a written literary tradition - which is surely fewer than the over 7,000 languages catalogued by Ethnologue, but greater than the 46 or so included in the Translation Index by Three Percent. Thus the need for literature in translation. And with translation comes another set of problems.
Publishers not just willing, but eager to put out works in translation-and, as I detailed in an earlier article, the number of is growing - can encounter problems in the research phase. There are various ways a publisher hears about an author who piques their interest: a newspaper article with a fleeting mention of a once-popular foreign author; a glance at the bookshelf of a great-aunt who immigrated from Hungary; a rave from a foreign friend or acquaintance; a tip or submission from a translator; an agent. If a publisher is interested, then the questions that follow are: Is anything available in English? Where can I read it? Has anything by Author X been translated before? Is anybody working on it now?
