As a reader more or less confined to English, I come across things I want to but can’t read, not knowing exactly what they say, all the time. A practical and real-life example: I’m interested in the rather abstruse history of Guyana’s boundary disputes with Venezuela, Brazil, and Suriname. I’ve read a lot of material on this in English, but there’s masses more written in Spanish, Portuguese, and Dutch, much of which has not been translated. I can read very basic Spanish, and with the aid of a dictionary I might be able to get through some of the documents in that language. You could argue that I ought to try to become more fluent in Spanish, to make this material accessible. But realistically this won’t happen very soon, and that still leaves me unable to read documents in Portuguese and Dutch.

Now, this probably isn’t the kind of information the GV translation exchange is aimed at. But if the project gets a few steps closer to some kind of human-powered universal translation engine, I for one will be pleased.

“with sadness and frustration I realized that in my life I would only come into contact with a small percentage of that culture”

Tras el cristal ya gris la noche cesa
Y del alto de libros que una trunca
Sombra dilata por la vaga mesa,
Alguno habrá que no leermos nunca.

Borges, “Limites”

(Which I first read in a translation by Alastair Reid.)

The subject is important and finally getting some global attention.

Keep up the good work.

Michael

Which is my second reason for optimism. If you’re insanely interested in j-pop, you learn Japanese. Unless you don’t have to. Lowering information costs is a valuable service. I suspect some mid-size audiences know, or at least strongly suspect, that other markets exist than the supermarket.

About El Ateneo: I had a deal to write a book about Indonesia. I had it because very few such books exist in English. So I went to Indonesia. I walked into QB Books, a big store in Jakarta, and saw there were about 20 books like the one I was contracted to write. No one had translated them. The reason so few books existed on US shelves about Indonesia wasn’t information overload, I’m convinced. It’s that a US editor with the power to commission work hadn’t been to QB books. If you look at US book publishing, the big international booms — UK commonwealth voices, the Indian authors, now Nigerian — are books editors could read in English. Give them the ability to read more broadly, they’ll buy more broadly. I hope. I’ll be mulling this post a good long while.

I worry the Pringle Chip people admitted to anal leakage from weird food additives to avoid talking about colon cancer.