Thread by @Joannechocolat

And on International Translation Day, we're going to be talking about translators, a sector of the literary world that deserves maximum attention, respect and gratitude, but which is often overlooked.

Any author lucky enough to be published in non-English-speaking countries has at least one translator. However, most authors don't get to meet or speak with their translators, and many don't even know their names.

This is a pity, because a good translation can make a book, just as a bad one can sink it; and the more help an author can give their translator, the better the result is likely to be.

It takes enormous skill to be a translator. A translator needs to understand and reproduce, not only the nuance and meaning of both languages involved, but the individual style and tone of the original. That's why translators need to be linguists and writers, too.

They need to be able to take a colloquial expression, slang word or pop culture reference from one language and replace it by an equivalent in the other, in order to keep the text sounding natural. It's like arranging a piece of music and transposing it into another key.

You'd think that this kind of skill would be celebrated by publishers, but in fact translators are poorly paid, and are often given ridiculously tight deadlines for their work. Some publishers even forbid the translator to approach the author with queries about the text.

And at the end of it all, when the book comes out, you'll most often find the translator's name tucked away in small print somewhere, but seldom on the jacket, where it belongs.

How can you help? Well, there are a couple of easy things that translated authors can do.
1. Write a short letter to your translator via your agent, giving your contact details, and telling them you're happy to answer questions. That helps enormously.

2. Insert your translator into the Acknowledgements page of the book. Just give them a little sentence to translate on their own behalf, such as: "Thanks to my amazing translator, X...."

3. Ask your publisher to consider putting your translator's name on the book jacket. Translations are effectively collaborations between two authors: it just isn't fair that one of them should take all the credit.

This is a link to an open letter, asking publishers to acknowledge translators by publishing their names on the covers of their books. Authors, please add your names to the list! The campaign is #TranslatorsOnTheCover. Let's do this. www2.societyofauthors.org/translators-on…