Translation, Not Caring About

Whew, I'm currently dealing with the cold hard in-the-flesh nobody-cares-about-translation phenomenon (and thereby posting probably my only vaguely libellous post here)-- I'm working on a book by a Polish author who won last year Poland's most important prize, the NIKE award. He's the author of many books, contributes to many periodicals, has a fascinating and significant life-story (he was imprisoned for deserting the army under the Communist regime and his first book was written in prison). He's a prominent individual.

As far as I can tell (and this may simply be bitterness caused by ignorance, but I somehow doubt it), the Marketing Department has done zero thinking about this book since it was presented to the house a whole year ago. Zero, zero, zero. We (editors of said book) have heard nothing. No ideas, no comments. Ok, well, fine. Maybe they're just not interested.

But in the last stages of production, I suggested that we use the author's photo on the back cover, because he is good-looking and interesting-looking (which had been widely known but ignored before). Thus, potentially drawing more readers than a cover of three, center-formatted quotes on a black background. Call me crazy but...

So resistance was put up and then caved away, and then I was asked for a reading line. I came up with one, and then it didn't seem to work. Ok, ok. This is how production things go. Of course this is happening late because no one whose job this is has bothered to look at the book before.

So quotes are proposed again. Including a quote that does quite reasonably compare this author to Borges and Marquez. Head of Sales says to me: how about reworking one of these quotes into a reading line, because if we have those sources (two German newspapers, an international lit mag) it emphasizes the foreignness of the book. This is laughably and pathetically parochial. Are you kidding me?? But ok, I know what she's talking about: foreign books, foreign authors, foreign blah blah apparently scares Americans. Is this true? Maybe. If so, it's stupid and sad. I always have my doubts though.

So this is all going back & forth and the publisher who has to sign off on it all is pissed at me because this is late. Honestly she has not said a word about this book until now. The only thing she cares about about the book is that the jacket is late. Never mind that I'm talking to the production person right now who's telling me there's a little time. But it's the publisher's job to light a fire under everybody, and it *is* late, so essentially this too is ok.

But what really gets to me in the end is that all of this is done between these two people talking about their weekends, making jokes, dealing with other things, etc. Clearly, at this last minute situation, to make a decision, someone needs to hold a meeting, pull all the people involved into one room & thresh it all out in ten minutes. But these people can't be bothered. All this book is to them is 1)foreign, 2)late. And then I get blamed for the time it's taking to resolve this. Nobody's interested enough in the fate of this book to pay attention to it for more than two seconds.

Leadership: I have a lot of ideas about it. This is an example of bad leadership. Not knowing when to care about something.

Of course, I know that these people have a lot to care about, tons, way more than me, and that I'm only showing the story from my tiny, aggrieved, flag-of-translation-waving viewpoint. But I'm still pissed. It's shameful the way this author is being treated. All authors, American or not, are due more.

yours, morosely,

sal