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RE: Cultures and books as bridges OR If beautiful, not true, If true, not beautiful
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From: Charles Bayless <charles.bayless_at_gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2014 22:11:08 -0500
Christine,
Apparently my argument was not clear. I did not conclude that "that books written ABOUT minorities BY the dominant culture are preferable." I pointed out that the accommodations that one makes for translating a work from one cultural audience to another culture to make it more accessible/engaging also reduce the degree to which that work is true to the original. Translating across cultures is fraught with trade-off decisions between accommodation of the reading culture which you are targeting and accuracy to the originating culture. While in the context of this conversation it is about dominant culture and minority, the same issue of bridges and ambassadors is true across cultures where there is not the dominant/minority culture issue.
Let me try and make it clearer that it is not about minority/dominant but cross cultural translation. And to be clear, I am not talking about linguistic translation, though that can come into it. When I say cross cultural translation, I mean the capacity to tell a story originating in Culture X in such a way that it is understood and engaged with by Culture Y. I assume we can agree that the US and China do not have a dominant/minority cultural relationship. Translating a story from China into American English for an American audience is going to have exactly the same issues of not only linguistic translation but cultural translation as well. So who is better able to do that cultural translation? The American who has lived in China for twenty years with an intimate knowledge of Chinese culture or a Chinese author who has lived in the US for twenty years with an intimate knowledge of American culture? They will likely produce a cultural translation that is 95% the same. And the difference between accessibility and sales may rest entirely in the 5% difference. I do not know which would do the better job in terms of a version that engages the audience. My observation is that the translator usually appears to follow the targeted audience, i.e. that if the book set in China is to be sold in America, the likely cultural translator is American whereas if it were to be a story set in America for the Chinese market it would be told by a Chinese author for the Chinese market. Are there exceptions? Sure. Great authors overcome such barriers all the time. But that seems to be the general approach that I see taken.
While in some circumstances such as Australia with its small population of Aborigines, or the US, you can't avoid the fact that there is a dominant/minority dynamic going on, my point is that there is always the issue of cultural translation and that it is unclear how that can best be done and by whom. But better that it happens a lot rather than artificially restricting who can make contributions to bridge the gaps.
Please note that I explicitly said "And this is not to say that both the authors, dominant and minority, can't be equally effective in their story telling to different audiences." I was pointing out that each can be effective but each necessarily is bringing something different to the table which might or might not affect the end result.
I did not say that my kids had a negative reaction, I said that they didn't engage - not the same thing.
I think it is indisputable that when you publish something, you want to sell as much of it as possible to as large an audience as possible. I did not conclude that books about minorities had to be written by dominant culture. I was observing that if the targeted audience is of Culture A, then the translator of the story tends to be from Culture A as well.
I speak or have had passing fluency in five languages. Between them my three children speak or have had some fluency in four other languages. I am not sure why that is either relevant or why you would have come to the conclusion that they have not been taught different languages.
I believe we agree on the conclusion that the challenges faced by CSK is a function of narrow subject matter. There is no way to measure quality per se but we do know that the CSK is tightly limited in the number of participants and the range of topics, and we know that CSK books tend to go out of print much sooner than other books winning comparable awards. I do not know whether marketing has anything to do with it as I do not know what the average marketing budget is for a CSK winner versus any other book. Could be an issue or it might not be. My speculation (not conclusion) to explain the low demand for CSK winners follows from standard economics. Markets that are smaller and, more critically, have less competing participants (the consequence of the CSK requirements) do generally suffer from higher costs and lower quality. That is a general issue in all markets and I am speculating that that might be something that is occurring with CSK as well. The policy response to such a situation would be to increase competition with the likely probability that costs will go down and quality will go up. All that is vanilla economics. The implication being, if CSK wants to increase duration in print (i.e. demand), the likely approach would be to increase competition by relaxing the tight restrictions.
Hopefully that clarifies at least the most important elements.
Charles
-----Original Message----- From: Christine Taylor-Butler [mailto:kansascitymom_at_earthlink.net] Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2014 6:02 PM To: CCBC-Net Network Subject: Re: [ccbc-net] Cultures and books as bridges OR If beautiful, not true, If true, not beautiful
I don't even know where to start.
Date: Thu, 27 Feb 2014 22:11:08 -0500
Christine,
Apparently my argument was not clear. I did not conclude that "that books written ABOUT minorities BY the dominant culture are preferable." I pointed out that the accommodations that one makes for translating a work from one cultural audience to another culture to make it more accessible/engaging also reduce the degree to which that work is true to the original. Translating across cultures is fraught with trade-off decisions between accommodation of the reading culture which you are targeting and accuracy to the originating culture. While in the context of this conversation it is about dominant culture and minority, the same issue of bridges and ambassadors is true across cultures where there is not the dominant/minority culture issue.
Let me try and make it clearer that it is not about minority/dominant but cross cultural translation. And to be clear, I am not talking about linguistic translation, though that can come into it. When I say cross cultural translation, I mean the capacity to tell a story originating in Culture X in such a way that it is understood and engaged with by Culture Y. I assume we can agree that the US and China do not have a dominant/minority cultural relationship. Translating a story from China into American English for an American audience is going to have exactly the same issues of not only linguistic translation but cultural translation as well. So who is better able to do that cultural translation? The American who has lived in China for twenty years with an intimate knowledge of Chinese culture or a Chinese author who has lived in the US for twenty years with an intimate knowledge of American culture? They will likely produce a cultural translation that is 95% the same. And the difference between accessibility and sales may rest entirely in the 5% difference. I do not know which would do the better job in terms of a version that engages the audience. My observation is that the translator usually appears to follow the targeted audience, i.e. that if the book set in China is to be sold in America, the likely cultural translator is American whereas if it were to be a story set in America for the Chinese market it would be told by a Chinese author for the Chinese market. Are there exceptions? Sure. Great authors overcome such barriers all the time. But that seems to be the general approach that I see taken.
While in some circumstances such as Australia with its small population of Aborigines, or the US, you can't avoid the fact that there is a dominant/minority dynamic going on, my point is that there is always the issue of cultural translation and that it is unclear how that can best be done and by whom. But better that it happens a lot rather than artificially restricting who can make contributions to bridge the gaps.
Please note that I explicitly said "And this is not to say that both the authors, dominant and minority, can't be equally effective in their story telling to different audiences." I was pointing out that each can be effective but each necessarily is bringing something different to the table which might or might not affect the end result.
I did not say that my kids had a negative reaction, I said that they didn't engage - not the same thing.
I think it is indisputable that when you publish something, you want to sell as much of it as possible to as large an audience as possible. I did not conclude that books about minorities had to be written by dominant culture. I was observing that if the targeted audience is of Culture A, then the translator of the story tends to be from Culture A as well.
I speak or have had passing fluency in five languages. Between them my three children speak or have had some fluency in four other languages. I am not sure why that is either relevant or why you would have come to the conclusion that they have not been taught different languages.
I believe we agree on the conclusion that the challenges faced by CSK is a function of narrow subject matter. There is no way to measure quality per se but we do know that the CSK is tightly limited in the number of participants and the range of topics, and we know that CSK books tend to go out of print much sooner than other books winning comparable awards. I do not know whether marketing has anything to do with it as I do not know what the average marketing budget is for a CSK winner versus any other book. Could be an issue or it might not be. My speculation (not conclusion) to explain the low demand for CSK winners follows from standard economics. Markets that are smaller and, more critically, have less competing participants (the consequence of the CSK requirements) do generally suffer from higher costs and lower quality. That is a general issue in all markets and I am speculating that that might be something that is occurring with CSK as well. The policy response to such a situation would be to increase competition with the likely probability that costs will go down and quality will go up. All that is vanilla economics. The implication being, if CSK wants to increase duration in print (i.e. demand), the likely approach would be to increase competition by relaxing the tight restrictions.
Hopefully that clarifies at least the most important elements.
Charles
-----Original Message----- From: Christine Taylor-Butler [mailto:kansascitymom_at_earthlink.net] Sent: Thursday, February 27, 2014 6:02 PM To: CCBC-Net Network Subject: Re: [ccbc-net] Cultures and books as bridges OR If beautiful, not true, If true, not beautiful
I don't even know where to start.
---
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Received on Thu 27 Feb 2014 09:12:42 PM CST
