“Translators are like ninjas. If you notice them, they’re no good.”

— Israeli author Etgar Keret

It happens every time I take a shower. 

I have a shower-thought about something that seems irrelevant but then turns into a full-blown mental conversation that can go on for days in my head. Trust me. If overthinking were a sport, I’d win the award for World Champion of Overthinking. 

Eventually my overthinking gets too loud which leads to pouring my opinions on a page. Which is what is happening now. So, I hope this doesn’t get lost in translation. 

Literally. 

Today we are delving into the world of some terrifying tough book translators and whether or not their names should be credited on the cover of the books they have translated, alongside the original author. 

It’s an interesting question, if only because many translators—as you’ll soon read—do believe that if they translated a book, then they also authored that same book.

It’s been just over a week since Annie Ernaux won the Nobel Prize for literature! (Woot!) Of course we should be celebrating a female author's win.(WOOT!) Of course female authors should also be celebrating now knowing that even the most pRE:stigious literary prize in the world, seems to be acknowledging, shall we say, more Re:latable Re:ads, which makes this win extremely exciting.

“Also congratulations for Literature Committee, which here makes a brave choice by choosing someone who writes unabashedly about her sexual life, about women's rights and her experience and sensibility as a woman—and for whom writing is life itself,” Ernaux’s publisher Dan Simon Says (Sorry, I had kids!)

Ernaux’s writing has been translated into numerous languages for decades, but outside the bubble of academia, and a small number of loyal readers, she wasn’t that well known.

That is until the publication of The Years (Les années) originally published in 2008 was translated into English in 2017... by Canadian translator Alison L. Strayer.

I’ve been having non-stop shower-thoughts about Alison L. Strayer.

I’ve become so obsessed with Alison L Strayer, I’ve been stalking her LinkedIn profile daily, waiting to see a profile update. (Not to brag but we have three mutual connections: Lara Hinchberger, Beth Lockley and Andre Picard.) 

And, okay, fine, I sent her a message that…is pending.

My shower-thought started with wondering why the media isn’t celebrating that a Canadian author also won the Nobel Prize for Literature! Sort of. I think. Maybe? Yes. No. Definitely yes. Maybe? Depends on who you talk to? (See how the conversation between me, and me, goes in my head?)

Ask many literary translators and they would share how they think that Canadian Alison L Strayer should be just as widely recognized and commended — including sharing the glory of winning the Nobel Prize for Literature for translating many of Ernaux’s books.

With Canadian Alison L Strayer’s translation of The Years into English, it gave Ernaux international prominence and recognition. And now? Canadian Alison L. Strayer’s name, too, will gain international prominence and recognition. But, as an author or translator? Or some-weird hybrid of both, like a Zonkey (Zebra and Donkey, again, I have kids.) 

Without Canadian Alison L. Strayer translating Ernaux’s works, those of us who can’t read French, would and will not be reading many of her books we madly ordered — or at least I did — after learning about Ernaux, who I wouldn’t know if not for Canadian Alison L. Strayer. 

Which led my shower thought to wonder; whose book will I be reading when they arrive? Annie Eraux’s or Canadian Alison L. Strayer, who translated it?

On LinkedIn, Alison L. Strayer writes “The Year 2022 marks my 36th year of professional translation.” (To be pre:cise, it’s been 36 years and ten months, but who is counting? Oh, LinkedIn is. Don’t forget to read a fascinating Q and A with Canadian Alison L. Strayer on how she got into translating and working with Nobel Prize for Literature Winner Ernaux, in part two deaux!)

On LinkedIn, under Alison L. Strayer's About section, she writes, “I am a Canadian freelance translator and writer. My work has won the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation and the French American Foundation Award for Translations (THE YEARS, by Annie Ernaux), has been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, the Governor General’s Award for Translation for Literature (JARDIN ET PRAIRIE) and for Translation (RECONTRES FORTUITES, by Mavis Gallant…” 

Admittedly, I’m lost in translation not quite clear if these awards and accolades are for her translation skills or if she is also taking credit for awards that numerous authors whose books she has translated, from French into English, have won.

Under her Experience?

She was a language teacher at the University of Regina, Saskatchewan, Language Teaching at Concordia, and an ESL teacher at Carleton University.

Under Education?

She has studied Russian at McGill University, received her teaching certificate in Applied linguistics ( teaching ESL) at Carleton University, and also got her B.A. at McGill University. 

Aside from riding a moose with Wayne Gretzky and Drake, to attend a hockey game, while stopping to buy Maple syrup and a Tim Horton’s coffee, and then apologizing when someone bumps into them? 

Frankly, I’m not sure how much more Canadian Alison L. Strayer can be! (Though she dwells in Paris, eh?) But give the gal a few honorary doctorates at least!

The issue of crediting translators on book covers has been a topic of discussion within the literary translation community for decades.

Interestingly, in Spain, translators are considered “authors” of their versions, and copyright law protects that. 

Another shower-thought I had, after learning this, led to asking myself, “Does that mean I didn’t actually write the books I wrote that were translated into Spanish? And, if I didn’t write the books that I wrote, who did write my books in Spain?”

Truthfully, I don’t caRE: at all if a translator takes credit for translating my books into the 12 or 13 other languages they were translated into. And, candidly, it now makes sense to me why I was a bestseller in Germany and Spain.

Although most translators remain invisible, sometimes they are more well known than the author in their territories or countries, which also led to another shower-thought, that my name on the Chinese cover of one of my memoirs, is really small. Tiny, actually. 

I can’t read the rest of the beautifully designed cover because I don’t read Chinese (don’t get me started on my shower-thought why I think schools should demand students take Chinese as opposed to French. C’est la fucking vie!)

Of the 368 English-language translations of fiction and poetry published in 2021 in Publisher's Weekly Database, only 162, or 44%, credited translators on their front covers, which means…206 didn’t.

Translating books may be way more challenging than I know, but then again, I just use Google Translate. I'm all about the Theory Of Least Effort. 

But, yes, the translator has to remain true to the original text and voice and structure and pacing, creating an entirely unique piece that hopefully evokes the same responses as the original piece. 

So, again, whose book will I be reading exactly, when The Years, one of many Ernaux’s works translated by Canadian Alison L. Strayer?

Ask any literary translator and they’re sure to tell you that sometimes there is no direct translation or there are multiple words with different meanings. The job of a literary translator is to convey not just the content of the original text, but also the flow, without losing the original author’s voice.

Now, while I’m actively trying to track down Alison L. Strayer to congratulate her, I’m also terrified of some translators, whose language I may not understand but their voices cannot be cancelled out with noise-reduction headsets.

One translator whose words will never be lost in translation (and who kinda would want me to cross the street and walk on another sidewalk if I ever saw her) is an author and translator — or maybe just author? — named Jennifer Croft. 

Croft wrote an article titled “Why Translators Should Be Named On Book Covers.” The subtitle? "Publishers avoid highlighting the people who choose every word of the books they bring to English readers. This lack of transparency is misguided and unfair."

“When you read Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights in English, the words are all mine,” Croff writes. 

But what about me? Where's my credit? WAH!

Say quoi? Excuse moi?

Is Croft ballsy? Greedy? Selfish? Or is she right? 

Are the words in Flights hers simply because she translated them? If she honestly believes this to be true, then sure, I’d be pissed and cranky too, if my name wasn’t on the cover.

Croft, an American literary translator, has no problem, it seems, telling everyone that she won the 2018 (Man) Booker International Prize for her translation of Flights…written by Tokarczuk, even though she is not named on the cover.

The Prize — another huge literary award — splits its £50,000 (US$67,389) prize evenly between author and translator. This is significant, they say. It shows the importance of the work of translators. But “work” is another significant word, as you’ll see.

“But we are the ones who control the way a story is told; we’re the people who create and maintain the transplanted book’s style. Generally speaking we are also the most reliable advocates for our books, and we take better care of them than anybody else,”  Croft has said. 

This makes me wonder in the shower, quite frankly, if Croft had ever thought that without Tokarczuk writing Flights, there would have been no book for Croft to translate. And then there would be no book for her to take credit for when they win prizes.

Croft — who I do admire for her conviction if not for her cockiness crankiness — argues that book covers “can’t continue to conceal who we are…” adding that it is “disrespectful not only to translators, but to readers…”

“Often enough, translators receive no royalties – I don’t in the US for Flights – and a surprising number of publishers do not credit translators on the covers of their books. This is where the author’s name always goes; this is where you’ll find the title, too. People tend to be surprised when I mention this, but take another look at the International Booker, and you’ll see what I mean.” So, Croft it seems, not only wants ownership of the book she translated, credit on the book cover, and royalties? (Not to mention credit for “winning” this massive prize.)

I’m not saying she’s greedy wrong to want all of that. I want a lot of things too. But I’m not saying she’s correct either. Maybe she has a right to be bitterly annoyed that her name is not on the cover of Flights as you’ll see above. (Neither the American Cover nor the British Edition published Croft’s name on the cover of Flights, which may be why she sounds a tad frosty?)

Some publishers aren’t willing to negotiate with translators “which goes back to the underlying issue of publishers just not being willing to recognize us as co-creators of the work—as artists in our own right,” says Croft (of the craft?)

Co-creators? Say quoi?

For some reason, thinking about Croft’s words in the shower another day — Yes, I am very clean! — makes her seem off-putting, like which came first, the chicken or the egg, except my shower-thought was, “Which came first? The author or the translator?”

Croft, who translates from Polish and Spanish, writes “words are human and selecting the correct translated word on its own doesn’t make sense; it must be weighed in the balance of the sentence, the paragraph, the whole, and it is the translator who is responsible, from start to finish, and the reality is that a translator is making hundreds of choices.” 

You can see this, Croft points out, in English: “cool” is not identical to “chilly”. “Frosty” has other connotations, other usages, so does “frigid.” 

Speaking of Frosty Crofty — you can translate and use another word — in 2018 The National Book Foundation in the States also added Translated Literature Category Award to acknowledge both author and the translator.

To play devil’s advocate shit disturber, translators on a mission, or campaign, vying to get their names on the cover of the books may want to take a deep breath remind themselves to “Be careful what you wish for!” 

Translators, who are happy to remain invisible, and view translating as a job, are not harmed if a book doesn’t sell. Unlike authors who have poor book sales and may never get another book contract again. 

So perhaps — and I’m just thinking off the top of my head of wet hair here — translators should want remain invisible, for their own good.

Still, more WOKE book buyers apparently are taking notice — demanding to “List the translator,” or commenting that, “Missing is the translator on the cover!”

Since the 2016 launch of the redesigned prize, not one of the six winning works of fiction has displayed the translator’s name on the front, says Croft of the Booker Prize. 

“Granta didn’t name Deborah Smith there; Jonathan Cape didn’t name Jessica Cohen; Fitzcarraldo didn’t name me;” she writes. 

She adds numerous other publishers who don’t give front cover billing to translators, including At Night All Blood is Black written by David Diop, 2021’s winner from Pushkin Press, which doesn’t name translator Anna Moschovakis on its cover, although the cover displays quotes from three reviewers. 

“Four names, in other words, on the cover of a book Moschovakis wrote every word of. But her name would have been too much,” Croft says, or asks? 

Again, I don’t disagree, but does Anna Moschovakis care if her name is on the cover of books she translated? Or do translators only care to be credited when the book they translated wins an award?

In the Summer of 2020, Croft made a resolution she shared on Twitter: “I’m not translating any more books without my name on the cover. Not only is it disrespectful to me, but it is also a disservice to the reader, who should know who chose the words they’re going to read.” Again, Croft makes good points, but she sounds like a child having a tantrum.

“Putting our names on the covers of the books we wrote every word of takes two seconds and zero dollars,” Croft proclaims. “Why not make that change?”

It’s a good question, and one that I had an answer for in the shower, which I now totally forget. 

Actually, it’s a terrible question, meaning how can you say you wrote every word of someone else's book?

Another shower-thought had me wondering if Croft realizes that having the translator’s name on a book cover won’t automatically or guarantee or lead to more pay, more sales, or fame for the translator, which seemingly is what Croft wants by asking to be named on the cover — not to mention she also didn’t come up with the fucking original book in the first place.

No offence to Croft, but I’m an avid reader and I can’t name one fucking translator, aside from Croft and, now Canadian Alison. L. Slaytor. 

Oh, my shower thought! 

And, unless the translator is Celine F***king Dion or Alanis Morissette or even better, Ryan Gosling, I'm not sure putting a translator’s name on the cover is going to help sales all that much.

But Croft’s experience getting her name on book covers perhaps skewed her view. She cited publishers that did put her name on book covers “as a matter of course” and she argues this is how it should be.

“Some publishers aren’t even really willing to negotiate with translators,” Croft explained, “which goes back to the underlying issue of publishers just not being willing to recognize us as co-creators of the work—as artists in our own right.”

If translators do become household names? My shower-thought thought there could be an advantage in making it clear that a book is a translation.

"Some translators have trusted names, which can be commercially advantageous. And while there is certainly part of the public which doesn't want to read translations, my feeling is that if they don't like them, why does making them think that it's not translated before they open the book make them more amenable to it?”

Um, not to point out the obvious, but have you ever skipped a movie because you realized it had subtitles? 

I rest my case.

Alas, translators are a tough feisty bunch. Translator Kira Josefsson, for example, acknowledges that when she's translating from Swedish to English, she doesn't make up the plot, the characters, and the tension.

“Still, the non-Swedish-speaking reader can only experience those elements through the words I choose, in a kind of collaboration across time — between the author’s mind and mine,” she writes in an intriguing piece about being a translator here. 

Another shower thought I had was that, sure, translators can want and demand all they want, but do they recognize that editors, proofreaders, typesetters, cover designers, also aren’t featured on the front cover of a book? Honestly, if we had to list all the names of the people who helped put a book together, there wouldn’t be room for a title, let alone the author’s name. The book would be the size of a large child.

But those jobs, Croft argues, also tend to be compensated in a way that the translator is not…

I could say the same about authors, who aren’t compensated very well either.

“It might mean being paid $5,000 for a 200-page novel — a task that requires perhaps three months of work depending on style and content, plus weeks of edits, and I have heard of colleagues receiving far less than that,” she says.

Now, I don’t doubt that translating is hard work. But in one of my shower-thoughts I also wondered wanted to bite back, “Are you saying that translating a book is harder work than the work of the author who wrote and sat down for years to write a book? 

Again, to play shit disturber devil’s advocate, basically, it seems she’s saying that it’s hard work to be a translator, that translating a 200-page book in three months for $5,000 is an unfair fee — although if this is the case, I then could argue that the author of the book also probably made even less than translators do, on a book that maybe they spent three YEARS writing as opposed to three months translating…a book that if the author hadn't written, then there would be no work for translators.

Not everyone who works in publishing agrees the translator should be named on the cover. In fact, many argue it is bad for business, maintaining that consumers won’t buy a book with a translator’s name on the cover.

Putting a translator’s credit on a cover, some publishers argue but will never say, is a risk — many readers only want literature that originates in their own languages and/or cultures, leading some translators to go as far to say publishers are trying to “trick” readers into purchasing a book by hiding the fact the book was translated.

But this so-called “hiding” has been controversial for decades. Proof? 

In 2003! The Globe and Mail published a piece titled Translators Drop Off Book Fronts. 

The opening sentence? “Purchasers of novels published by Toronto's House of Anansi Press will no longer know if the books they buy are translated or not.”

The almost 20-year old article goes on to say that Anansi will no longer carry the translator's name on the cover of books that originate in French.

Sheila Fischman, who had translated all of Bissonette's novels, was “indignant” at the time. "They say that the public will say, 'Oh, it's a translation, we won't buy it.' So they're going to pretend it's not a translation."

The editor at the time, Martha Sharpe — a very smart cookie and now the publisher of Flying Books — proclaimed at the time that translation was “a strike against the book in the marketplace.” 

The piece goes on to add that House of Anansi’s — or any publisher for that matter — only legal obligation is to place the translator's name inside the book, on the title page.

Publishing is a business, and publishers want to give a book as wide a reach as possible, so removing the name from the book's cover, Sharpe had said, is to persuade readers to glance at a cover “before discovering that it was not originally written in English.”

Kendall Storey, senior editor at Catapult and Soft Skull Press asks: “What is there to be gained by leaving the translator’s name off the cover, anyway?…Is it to trick unsuspecting readers into thinking they’re buying an English-language original? How long will that ruse last?”

Well, apparently this “ruse” has lasted for decades, meaning us readers are all idiots. I mean, really. I don’t think there’s some great conspiracy in publishing in “tricking” readers.

Archipelago Books echoed Storey’s sentiments. “It seems natural to recognize [a translator’s] role in a prominent place, so that any reader who picks up the book knows that they’re holding a work of collaboration.”

I don’t happen to see it that way, but I’m not a translator, although I did think, while showering, that if I were a translator, I wouldn't think of it as an “art” so much as a “skill.” In the shower, imagining myself as a translator, I’d rather the money than credit on a cover. To me — and correct me if you disagree — translation is a job.

Feisty translators are on a mission, including readers at Publishing Perspectives who have used the hashtag #NameTheTranslator for years, in hopes publishers name the translator with full book-cover credit. (Did we really need to translate this #NameTheTranslator hashtag?)

Then came The Open Letter: basically translators protesting that “For too long, we’ve taken translators for granted. It is thanks to translators that we have access to world literatures past and present.” And, “From now on we will be asking, in our contracts and communications, that our publishers ensure, whenever our work is translated, that the name of the translator appears on the front cover.”

 

“It is long past time that translators be acknowledged for their contributions by including their names on the book’s cover,” said Mary Rasenberger, CEO of the Authors Guild in the States. “…Translators play an irreplaceable role in creating a vibrant world literature and introducing new readers to important works by authors across the globe. Yet all too often they’re overlooked by the publishing industry, viewed as neither authors nor editors.”

Correct! They are translators! 

But right now? I’m going to agree with Croft and give a huge congratulations to Canadian translator Alison L. Strayer for also winning the Nobel Prize for Literature! (Even if her name is not credited on the cover. 

Congrats! Bravo! And, tonight, while showering, I’ll decide whose book I’m actually reading.