Found in translation

Shaylee from the customer support and success team here! This week, let’s talk books in translation.

One of my reading goals this year was to read more translated fiction. I love reading, but I started to notice myself falling into a literary comfort zone of stories from perspectives that are similar to my own. So I wanted to diversify my to-be-read list as a personal challenge.

Translated works are one route to that end, since they are by definition a book from a different language perspective. Even if I reach for a story with themes or characters within my typical wheelhouse, the context of the original language can add a layer of something new or unexpected.

That said, actually deciding on a new book can be overwhelming. There’s simply not enough time in one wild and precious life to read even half of all the books originally published in English, and the iceberg grows bigger when we explicitly include translated works. Particularly when entering a new-to-me category, I’ll often look to literary awards lists to take cues from experts.

Best of translated literature

Enter: the International Booker Prize, a prestigious award granted yearly for a book originally written in another language, which has been translated and published in English. If you’re not yet sold on the concept of translated fiction, you don’t have to take my word for it; the longlisted authors and translators can speak for themselves.

The current format of the International Booker Prize has been in place since 2016, and it celebrates both the original author and the translator of quality fiction in equal measure. Each year, a longlist of 12 or 13 books is published, cropped down to a shortlist, and finally, a winner.

That’s ten years of data, ten lists of books that are inherently different from one another. So I wondered, what do they have in common? Are there specific places or languages that are more represented, even in my attempt to broaden my horizons?

Patchwork of languages and books

Breaking down the finalists on the longlist into their language families (and subfamilies) revealed some patterns. When visualized as an area chart, they resemble a colorful patchwork quilt of literature:

Romance languages like French, Spanish, and Portuguese cover a lot of this area chart in blue, meaning they’re the most represented languages in the longlists. The language used in the original work isn’t necessarily indicative of which country the book was published in, though. Due to colonialism, a book written in Spanish could be from any of 20 or so countries around the world.

If we map out the country that each work was first published in, we’ll see Romance languages in four continents, contrasted by a rainbow of distinct language families in Asia:

Some language families span entire continents, whereas individual countries can contain multiple branches of the language tree. (I’m sure there are fascinating non-fiction books on the topic, and I’ll happily accept recommendations in the comments!)

Take, for example, India, where each of the three finalists was originally written in a different language. That includes Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree, translated by Daisy Rockwell, which won the 2022 prize. It was the first novel translated from Hindi that was ever longlisted!

Regardless of the original language or the recognition awarded to a book, exploring these titles has proven that there is a world of literature out there, ready to be checked out from the library.

Personally, Taiwan Travelogue is at the top of my reading list, with its rich, mouthwatering descriptions; I’m also looking forward to checking out Fever Dream, a short ghost story, and Standing Heavy, a searing satire.

That’s all she wrote. I’ll have my nose in a (translated) book until further notice! Let me know what you’re reading in the comments, and make sure to come back next week for another Weekly Chart.