Once More, in English Please

The recent announcement that Herta Muller won the 2009 Nobel Prize in Literature came as a huge surprise to me as I’m sure it did to many Americans. While Muller has written twenty books, only 5, according to the New York Times, have been translated into English. The tiny percentage of Muller’s work translated into English is hardly an aberration. Rather, it is a sad symptom of a much larger problem. There has been a steady decline in the number of literary works translated into English, and in the United States the decline has perhaps been even more precipitous than in other English speaking nations.

The PEN World Voices conference in 2005, cited this disturbing statistic from an NEA study: “Out of the more than 10,000 works of fiction and poetry published in the United States in 1999, only 300 were works in translation.

UNESCO figures showed that while 50 percent of all translations published worldwide are translated from English, only 6 percent are translated into English. “Clearly,” the report concludes, “in the dialogue with the world’s non-English-speaking majority, we are not very good listeners.”

More recent statistics are no more encouraging. The on-line journal Publishing Perspectives predicts that “literature in translation will [face] a drop off this year – as much as 10%."  The same publication also found that while 117 independent presses published at least one work of fiction or poetry in translation in 2008, only be 95 such presses will translate a literary work in 2009.

Why does this matter -- particularly to the United States? Speaking at that same PEN conference, Salman Rushdie put it this way: “It has perhaps never been more important for the world's voices to be heard in America, never more important for the world's ideas and dreams to be known and thought about and discussed, never more important for a global dialogue to be fostered. Yet one has the sense of things shutting down, of barriers being erected, of that dialogue being stifled precisely when we should be doing our best to amplify it. The cold war is over, but a stranger war has begun. Alienation has perhaps never been so widespread; all the more reason for getting together and seeing what bridges can be built. “

Or consider this excerpt from a poem called “Under this Same Sky” by Bangaladeshi poet Zia Hyder (translated by Naomi Shihab Nye and Bhabani Sengupta):

There’s an enormous comfort in knowing
we all live under this same sky,
whether in new York or Dhaka
we see the same sun and same moon.

This poem became the title poem for Nye's beautiful collection of world poetry, Under this Same Sky.  What a small but potent first step it would be if all people recognized each other as co-inhabitants of our planet.  As Nye puts in the book's final page:  "Don't ever believe what anyone told you about not talking to strangers.  Talking and listening to 'strangers' may be the most important thing you do in life."

The Obama administration has promised to end an era of political and diplomatic isolation even as it oversees two wars. Has there ever been a better time to open our ears and our hearts to world literature? Is there any better way for every nation to appreciate the full humanity of all the world’s peoples than by sharing each other’s literature?