#when you see much smaller countries release translations in the thousands or tens of thousands

[hedgehog-moss]

[1] `there are often translations available in other languages long before English ones` This is really interesting! I'm familiar with translation in games, where english is often a very early target (a small game might get 0-5 translations, depending on amount of text) because the size of the market is larger.

[2] Do you happen to know why this is different for books? Is it faster to come to a deal about publication rights for some other languages to get started on the translation? Is translation to english harder (at least from French) than to say, Spanish?

The literary translation situation has long been very dismal in the English-speaking world! I don’t know a lot about video games, but are localisations provided by the company that makes the game? Because if that's the case it makes sense that games would get translated into English as a priority. For literary translations which are imported rather than exported, other countries have to decide to translate a foreign author and anglo countries (US, UK and Canada at least) are not very interested in foreign literature. There's something known as the "3% rule" in translation—i.e. about 3% of all published books in the US in any given year are translations. Some recent sources say this figure is outdated and it’s now something like 5% (... god) but note that it encompasses all translations, and most of it is technical translation (instruction manuals, etc). The percentage of novels in translation published in the UK is 5-6% from what I’ve read and it’s lower in the US. In France it's 33%, and that’s not unusually high compared to other European countries.

I don't think it's only because of the global influence of English* and the higher proportion of English speakers in other countries than [insert language] speakers in the US, or poor language education in schools etc, because just consider how many people in the US speak Spanish—I just looked it up and native Spanish speakers in the US represent nearly 2/3rds of the population of France, and yet in 2014 (most recent solid stat I could find) the US published only 67 books translated from Spanish. France with a much smaller % of native Spanish speakers (and literary market) published ~370 translations from Spanish that same year. All languages combined, the total number of new translations published in France in 2014 was 11,859; in Spain it was 19,865; the same year the US published 618 new translations. France translated more books from German alone (754) than the US did from all languages combined, and German is only our 3rd most translated language (and a distant third at that!). The number of new translations I found in the US in 2018 was 632 so the 3% figure is probably still accurate enough.

* When I say it’s not just about the global influence of English—obviously that plays a huge role but I mean there’s also a factor of cultural isolationism at play. If you take English out of the equation there’s still a lot more cultural exchange (in terms of literature) between other countries. Take Olga Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead; it was published in 2009, and (to give a few examples) translated in Swedish 1 year later, in Russian & German 2 years later, in French, Danish & Italian 3 years later, in English 10 years later—only after she won the Nobel. I’m reminded of the former secretary for the Nobel Prize who said Americans “don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature” because they don’t translate enough. I think it's a similar phenomenon as the one described in the "How US culture ate the world" article; the US is more interested in exporting its culture than in importing cultural products from the rest of the world. And sure, anglo culture is spread over most continents so there’s still a diversity of voices that write in English (from India, South Africa, etc etc) but that creates pressure for authors to adopt English as their literary language. The dearth of English translation doesn’t just mean that monolingual anglophones are cut off from a lot of great literature, but also that authors who write in minority languages are cut off from the global visibility an English translation could give them, as it could serve as a bridge to be translated in a lot more languages, and as a way to become eligible for major literary prizes including the Nobel.

Considering that women are less translated than men and represent a minority (about 1/3) of that already abysmally low 3% figure, I find the recent successes of English translations of women writers encouraging—Olga Tokarczuk, Banana Yoshimoto, Han Kang, Valeria Luiselli, Samanta Schweblin, Sayaka Murata, Leila Slimani, of course Elena Ferrante... Hopefully this is a trend that continues & increases! I remember this New Yorker article from years ago, “Do You Have to Win the Nobel Prize to Be Translated?”, in which a US small press owner said “there’s just no demand in this country” (for translated works); but the article acknowledged that it’s also a chicken-and-egg problem. Traditional publishers who have the budget to market them properly don’t release many translations as (among other things) they think US readers are reluctant to read translated foreign literature, and the indie presses who release the lion’s share of translated works (I read it was about 80%) don’t have the budget to promote them so people don’t buy them so the assumption that readers aren’t interested lives on. So maybe social media can slowly change the situation by showing that anglo readers are interested in translated books if they just get to find out about them...

#ask #anyway it's difficult to find accurate stats for translation and compare between countries because some % you see are #for all translations and as i said technical translations / computer manuals etc make up the bulk of it #some % are averages over decades; others only for fiction or for novels & poetry etc so you end up comparing apples and oranges #but the fact remains that the three percent website (translation database) was able to list every single literary translation #published in the us year after year and it was never higher than 600-ish titles in the 2010s. it's not great #when you see much smaller countries release translations in the thousands or tens of thousands #it's also not a huge improvement over the 400-ish yearly US translations in the 00s #but they haven't released numbers for the past few years and maybe the situation is a bit better now

[oh-boleyn]

overdramatic and true (words)

words: 2902, one shot, language: english. f/f (parrlyn)

tw: swearing

Catherine Parr was a writer; she had always been.

She was a writer because she loved the sweet feeling of release she could gain after a poem, or a short story. She was a writer because there was something so unique and magical about escaping her world and go to another. She was a writer because she wanted to save memories of a lost world, to save history in a way other could later go back to it.

But mostly, before anything, Catherine Parr was a writer because she loved words.

It was as simple as it, just for words.

Word, or plural, words is a noun. It means a speech sound or series of speech sounds that symbolizes and communicates a meaning usually without being divisible into smaller units capable of independent use.

Any free time Catherine had in her new life would be used to use her laptop and write.

Sometimes she did research, about her old life, to try to find anything she could have missed the first time. Nowadays there was a lot of information everywhere, no need to even move from your house even when she truly, honestly loved going to the library.

Library is also a noun. It means a place in which literary, musical, artistic, or reference materials are kept for use but not for sale.

Other times her research wasn’t about her previous life but rather about the things that were oddly still there nowadays, and even when they changed, they didn’t change enough. Such as languages. For example, her favorites words in every language.

“Cada loco con su tema” is a Spanish idiom. It can be translated as “Every crazy person with their own thing” and it’s used for when someone does something weird, meaning that everyone has their own (odd) thing. This quote also can imply that everyone is crazy.

At night she usually would write fairytales or short night lullabies. In her old life she did so while pregnant, wiling to teach Mae how to write, and read her a different story every night. Now she did it to herself when nights were too dark and she couldn’t sleep.

Insomnia is a prolonged and usually abnormal inability to get enough sleep. It can become serious depending on how much time the patient has it.

In the morning she loved playing rather than just working. Every one needed break, and crazy geniuses did too. Parr liked words so much she loved doing crosswords. After the first few weeks, Katherine (Not with a C, but with a K. It happened when some names were translated, or for a mistake when someone was writing.) started doing them too. It was their way of bonding.

“Ten. Extravagant.” Katherine says one morning, while drinking her half coffee half milk, and a ton of sugar.

“Flamboyant.” Catherine easily says, drinking her black coffee, no sugar.

“No.” Katherine says.

“What do you mean no?”

“It doesn’t match the other words. It has to start with an O.”

“Outlandish.” Anne easily slides into the conversation, while serving herself a chocolate milk.

Outlandish is not a noun, but an adjective. It can mean of or relating to another country, synonym of foreign. But it can also mean strikingly out of the ordinary, such as bizarre.

“Thank you, Anne, it matches really well.”

Anne is a name. Alternatively, spelled Ann, is a form of the Latin female given name Anna. This in turn is a representation of the Hebrew Hannah, which means 'favour' or 'grace.'

“How did you know it?” Parr asks.

“I know English.” Anne laughs.

For Parr, Anne used to just be an echo of a name nobody says. People would talk about Catherine’s namesake, the first queen. But nobody dared to speak even a word about Anne Boleyn. Strange enough, for a ghost, everyone knew her story. Born into a noble house, moved to the France court when she was young. Enchanted everyone there, came back to England later in life. Her sister was one of the king’s mistresses, and as such she was married to a fellow noble. But Anne wanted more, and she could just have it all.

Charming means extremely pleasing or delightful.

Things went wrong as everyone knew. You don’t have to argue with a king, but she did. And it costed her head.

Getting to know Anne was weird. There was just a light in her, something captivating. You couldn’t just take your eyes away from her. She didn’t even need words sometime to make you feel enchanted by her presence. You would just know when she walked into a room because it was impossible not to see her.

Attractive means having or relating to the power to attract. For example, “attractive forces between molecules”. Carl Sagan (an American astronomer, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, science popularizer, and science communicator) once said: “But the essence of life is not so much the atoms and simple molecules that make us up as the way in which they are put together.”. What leads us to other meaning of the word, which is arousing interest or pleasure, appealing.

The way Anne molecules and atoms were put together was really appealing, Cathy would say. That could give the conclusion that Anne Boleyn was an arousing interest or pleasure, what people would like to describe as attractive.

Catherine Parr thought Anne Boleyn was attractive.

Crush is a transitive verb, that means to squeeze or force by pressure so as to alter or destroy structure.

Crush, described by Urban Dictionary meant a person who gives you butterflies and makes your heart beat faster. A person that you can’t describe in a word, but multiple words. A person you can’t get off your mind.

Maybe Catherine had a crush on Anne. And maybe that’s why she couldn’t pick up a word for her, but the problem was that even choosing a thousand different words, she still couldn’t describe the queen. It wasn’t a matter of quantity, but rather quality. There was no word good enough for Anne, even if Catherine loved words, she loved Anne even more.

(…)

Catherine of Aragon was wardship.

Wardship means care and protection of a ward.

It was an elegant word, not so used nowadays, that made Cathy think about her past life.

Mary was four years younger than Cathy. And Catherine was twenty-seven years older. Maybe that’s why when they reincarnated Catherine took Cathy like the daughter she lost. Giving her protection, even when Parr was the second more aware of what went down in history, the first being Anna.

Catherine really became in that life the godmother she wasn’t in the past one, helping Cathy and taking care of her. Buying gifts and planning short trips. Talking her out of bad decisions and offering advice.

Her word was wardship, because it was an echo of an old life, but turned into the new one. It was her word because she made Cathy thought of her as someone she could go to and be safe.

(…)

Jane Seymour was loving.

Loving could mean affectionate (feeling or showing affection or warm regard) or painstaking (taking pains: expending, showing, or involving diligent care and effort).

In a first life, Catherine would have added a self before that word. After all, deep, really deep down they knew Jane loved Henry, even if he was gruesome, hideous, repulsive, poor excuse of a man, Jane did. And she did what she had to do to get him. That included Anne’s execution.

But now Jane had changed. The love of a mother some might say, even if she wasn’t a mother for a long time. She sure acted like a mother to Katherine, helping her through nightmares and panic attacks.

Jane tried to show her love to everyone. She was open about her feelings. Loved to make gifts that demonstrated how much thought she put into it.

Her word was loving because of the sweet warm that emanated from her. Not exactly a mother to Parr, but definitely someone she could go after a long night and know she would receive the attention she sometimes craved.

(…)

Anna of Cleves was a bitch.

Bitch is informal, often offensive: a malicious, spiteful, or overbearing woman.

Anna was a total bitch because she could see through Catherine’s feelings. And totally mocked her about her crush on Boleyn.

Anna of Cleve’s word was bitch, and there is no need explanation.

(…)

Katherine Howard’s word was shatterable.

Shatterable means capable of being shattered. To break at once into pieces.

Catherine saw Howard break too many times, into too many pieces, into too many times.

Howard shattered in two pieces, her body and her head. Luckily beheading was not a thing in modern times.

But outside that, Parr always feared for Kat. She wanted nothing more to try to help and protect her from any harm that might come to her. Too many bad things had already happened to the young girl, she didn’t deserve anymore harm.

Katherine’s word was shatterable because Catherine always feared she might shatter at any moment.

(…)

None of them were just a word, of course. It would be offensive and totally not okay. But for Catherine they could still be described by the words she knew. Not even in the new words she found out the world created.

Internet says there are one hundred seventy-one thousand four hundred seventy-six words in use nowadays and forty-seven thousand one hundred fifty-six obsolete words. That just being in English. In Spanish there are about one hundred fifty thousand words. This leads to a total of at least three hundred sixty-eight thousand six hundred thirty-two words. And still it wasn’t enough for Parr to describe Anne Boleyn.

Impossible means incapable of being or of occurring.

(…)

Working in her research at night was something that she noticed helped her. Tiring her brain after reading a lot of new sources of material was what she usually needed before a peaceful sleep. If she wasn’t tired enough, nightmares were a normal occurrence.

That’s why she was awake and could hear steps in the kitchen, so she decided to investigate.

Unsettling means having the effect of upsetting, disturbing, or discomposing.

Luckily, it wasn’t a ghost. Just Anne grabbing a snack.

“Why are you awake?” Boleyn asks, taking a bite of her chocolate bar.

“I don’t sleep a lot.” Parr replies, sitting beside the woman. “Why are you awake?”

“Just can’t sleep, my mind doesn’t let me.” She takes a deep breath.

“Why don’t we go to bed and I will sing you a song.”

They both laughed lightly, but Anne nodded. They headed to her room, and in the dark of the night Catherine started thinking.

Lullaby can be a noun or a verb. The noun lullaby means a song to quiet children or lull them to sleep. The verb lullaby means to quiet with or as if with a lullaby.

“There is this really dark lullaby, called duermete niño, it’s in Spanish as you can imagine.”

“Isn’t it like ‘Sleep, child’?” Anne questions. “My Spanish is really rusty.”

“Yes, it’s that. Except that the lyrics are ‘duérmete ya, que viene el coco y te comerá’ which is basically ‘sleep now, or a monster will come and eat you’.”

“It sounds terrifying for kids.” Boleyn waits a minute before talking. “I used to sing French lullabies to Elizabeth.”

“She loved lullabies.”

“Really?”

“Yes, her favourite was a French one.”

Añoranza is a Spanish word. It is a feeling of sadness about the remoteness, absence, privation or loss of someone or something dear. Synonyms in English could be nostalgia, yearning, longing. Sense of loss.

(…)

Catherine Parr loved words, because words hold so much power.

That is something she learnt in her past life.

"Off with their heads!” is a phrase spoken by the Queen of Hearts in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Somebody who also knew the power of words was Anna of Cleves. What someone says to you, even if that person is the embodiment of stupidity, can cause problems. Maybe that’s why she was the one who liked make-up the most in their group.

“You should tell Boleyn how you feel about her” Parr denies with her head.

“No, no way.”

“I thought it was Aragon’s quote.” Cleves mocks. “But really, you should tell her. It’s painful to watch you following her around as if she was, I don’t know, the queen.”

“Funny” Catherine says, rolling her eyes. “I don’t know how to say it.”

“Yes, you do.”

“I really don’t.” Cathy stares at the nothing, trying to process thoughts into words. “It’s like when she in front of me I go totally numb. I have no way to move, or talk, or thinking. Every single part of her is distracting, and I can’t take my eyes or my brain away from her. I start searching for words but nothing is enough. She is more of what I can explain.”

“Then, my friend, you are in deep shit.”

Deep shit means to be in trouble.

Cleves stands up to leave the room.

“Anna” Catherine calls. “Can you not tell this to anyone?”

There is nervousness in her voice, she can totally feel it.

“I wasn’t planning telling anyone.”

“Thank you.”

“That’s what friends are for.”

Friendship means the state of being friends.

Catherine Parr considered Anna a bitch, but she also considered her a friend, a close friend, if not the closest. Once upon a time she would think it was weird to think of someone as both of those things, but it was as simply as that. You can love to pieces and still know that they have flaws.

Realism is the theory or practice of fidelity in art and literature to nature or to real life and to accurate representation without idealization.

And if Catherine was going to be honest, she knew that Anna was just making what she thought was correct, even when it bothered Parr. Anna always tried to do the good, right thing, and that’s what they all loved her.

(…)

Writing has always been her thing, but when her mind could not longer escape the thoughts about Anne, she decided it was a time to stop. Of course, she tried writing to Anne, but nothing convinced her to send it. So now, with everyone asleep, was the perfect moment to tell her.

Or maybe it wasn’t, but she couldn’t wait.

Midnight is the middle of the night, more specifically, 12 o’clock at night.

Parr knocks the door twice. “Anne?”

She hears nothing, and is about to go back to her room, just as the door opens.

Unexpected means not expected. Expect means to consider probable or certain. Probable means establishing a probability. Probability means something (such as an event or circumstance) that is probable.

“Cathy? Are you here?” Anne is moving a hand in front of her eyes. “You zoomed out.”

“I- Yes- Sorry- Just-“

“Breathe Catherine, come in.”

She opens the door to let her in and then closes, trying not to make noise.

“What’s going on?”

“I have to tell you something.”

There is some tension in the air. Something not said between them.

“I’m in love with you.” Anne says first.

Unexpected, could be use for example as: “Anne Boleyn being in love with her was totally unexpected for Catherine Parr.”

“Good.” Catherine does not smile, instead looks at Anne.

“Just good? That’s all?” her face falls.

Catherine makes a sudden move, kissing Anne. At first, she doesn’t respond, but after a second she does. Soon it starts getting more, and more comfortable, relaxing into the kiss. Anne’s hands go to Cathy’s hair and neck, while Parr’s goes to Boleyn’s waist. They break the kiss laughing.

They let themselves fall into the bed once again.

Probability means a logical relation between statements such that evidence confirming one confirms the other to some degree.

“I came to tell you that I am in love with you” Catherine says, she moved forward to cup Anne’s cheek with her hand. “I am so in love with you that I have no words to describe it, I can’t explain how much I admire you. I think that you are smart, and kind, and so, so beautiful. You are also sarcastic, and can be bloody difficult to deal with, but I still love when you are like that. Because I am in love with every single piece of you. I love the good, the bad, the neutral things. I love your eyes, and I love it when you are mad and your crinkle. I love you truly, the real you. Not what you show, or what you like of you. I love everything, and I want to have the chance to keep loving you. Because, Anne Boleyn, I’m head over heels for you.”

Head over heels means in love. Love can mean attraction based on sexual desire: affection and tenderness felt by lovers.

Love is also what Catherine Parr feels for Anne Boleyn, and love is not something you plan or define like words. Intense love can’t be defined by just words, so they define it every day, with actions, with kisses, with thoughts, and sometimes, they also rely in words.

Catherine Parr was a writer; has always been.

She is also a lover; Anne Boleyn turned her into one.

#six the musical #six the musical fanfiction #anne boleyn #catherine parr #minor anna of cleves #minor katherine howard #parrlyn #also posted on ao3