The Hallyu wave has spread worldwide, people are keen to visit South Korea and find their Oppa or Noona to live their K-Drama fantasy precisely as shown in the shows. After the 2020 lockdown and the sudden surge in K-drama ratings, fans are intrigued by the language. The word 'Saranghae', a finger heart gesture to show your love interest is on every K-fan's lips.
If you are planning to visit South Korea soon, you must gear up yourself with a few common phrases that people often use.
안녕하세요 – An-nyeong-ha-se-yo. – Hello
Although simple, this statement is essential to include because it is the most commonly used phrase in Korea. For the non-Korean speaker, there are dozens of alternatives to adjust for various contexts and respect levels. The secret is to slur the syllables together and speak them quickly. Everyone will understand if you do this.
감사합니다 – Kam-sa-ham-ni-da. – Thank you
This is perhaps the most crucial phrase to learn while travelling in Korea. Use it in the same way you would in English. Don't understand what the smiling halmeoni (grandmother) on the metro next to you is saying? It's most likely praise, grin and thank them.
잠시만요 – Jam-shi-man-yo. – Excuse me./Just a moment
Use the phrase "little time stop" to draw people's attention, ask them to move out of the way, or tell them to wait. For example, if you're trying to exit an elevator but no one is moving, for example. This remark can be used to gracefully navigate your way through a crowd.
최성합니다/미안합니다 – Chway-seong-ham-ni-da./Mi-an-ham-ni-da. – I'm sorry
In Korean, there are two methods to express regret. The first is an "I'm sorry I ran into you" apology, but the second is more of an "I'm truly sorry I forgot about your birthday, please forgive me".
어디예요 – Eo-di-ye-yo...? – Where is the...?
Unless you're a hermit, you'll almost certainly employ this phrase at some point, if only to locate the hwajangsil (bathroom). You can also use it to find a specific item in the grocery, the nearby subway stop, or a decent noraebang (karaoke room).
사랑해 – Sa-rang-hae – I love you
This is an informal way of saying "I love you," It is widely used amongst close friends or lovers, making it one of the most prevalent expressions in Korean dramas. If someone in Korean says "I love you," you can respond with "Na-do sa-rang-hae," which means "I love you, too." Simply phrase it with a rising tone (Sa-rang-hae?) to turn it into an inquiry (Do you adore me?).
화이팅 – Hwa-it-ting – You can do it!
While the word is derived from the English word "fighting," it is more of a cheer used by Koreans to express encouragement and passion. It can also be used in athletics to encourage someone if they had a bad day or wish a pal luck on a blind date.
얼마예요 – Eol-ma-ye-yo? – How much is it?
Travelling and shopping in South Korea the mandatory things to do. A must-know for any shopping trip, this expression is pretty much all you need since most vendors have calculators on hand to help out with the numbers.
모두 제일 좋다 (modu jeil johda) with your Korean language skills.
Traditionally, website translation involved long manual processes. Hiring a professional translator was just one aspect, the other side was ensuring that translated content was displayed on your site – taking up valuable developer resources.
The whole process was painstaking and for many business owners, reason enough to delay a global business expansion. After all, if your website isn’t displayed in multiple languages, you have little chance of appealing to those in new markets as they won’t be able to understand your offering.
While the traditional way of translating a website can still be used, website translation tools make translating websites effortless. But how do they exactly work to deliver such results?
The technological trifecta
Like most technologies, translation technology always introduces something new every year. However, experts believe the tools in use today are based on three leading technologies.
Machine translation (MT)
The first translation tools were machine-based, meaning they conducted translations with rules and conditions inputted in the device beforehand. Old as this technology may seem (first introduced in the 1950s), MT remains widely used today for its speedy translation, extensive language options, and lower operational costs.
One significant factor in MT’s continued use is artificial intelligence, giving rise to the neural-based MT. By creating a neural network that can mimic the functions of a human brain, developers can input vast quantities of linguistic data. As a result, translation tools can translate whole paragraphs with acceptable, if not high, accuracy.
In fact, long gone are the days of MT making laughable mistakes, neural-based MT is leading the way for many marketing teams looking for fast and accurate website translation.
Computer-assisted translation (CAT)
CAT involves employing translation software, which may seem similar to MT. However, whereas MT is fully autonomous, CAT works with human users to deliver more accurate translations. In this setup, machine-based translation plays second fiddle to the extensive contextual knowledge of human translators, generally as reference material.
One downside of CAT is its limited application. Unlike MT, which can benefit anyone with enough know-how, CAT is designed for expert translators.
Translation Management System (TMS)
A TMS combines the best of both worlds, particularly the automated efficiency of MT and human understanding present in CAT. The machine does most of the heavy lifting while the user reviews the result and makes creative changes as necessary. A TMS may also go by other names like a globalization management system (GMS).
This technology goes beyond translating content. Companies that conduct transactions in foreign markets find TMS tools useful because of their ability to streamline workflows and develop effective business strategies. It won’t be unusual for TMS software to feature functions to enhance multilingual search engine optimization.
One such website translation tool leading the way in the industry combines neural-based MT with professional translators and full-editing control allowing you to translate the whole of your website in minutes. Weglot, a WordPress translation plugin, also translates any website technology, both translating and displaying the content of your site.
Will human translators be obsolete?
Improvements in the results that translation technology gives are all but apparent. According to one industry source, based on edit distance, neural MT systems are getting better at their jobs by 3% to 7% every year. Edit distance refers to how much a developer has to change a translation system’s code to deliver a result that rivals human translation.
These figures may appear insignificant, but these incremental improvements compound every year that technology improves. The more accurate translation technology grows, the less need for humans to review their results, at least in theory. But if the technologies discussed earlier are any indication, it’ll take a while before translation technology can be completely independent of human intervention for several reasons.
First, multiple studies found that neural MTs tend to “hallucinate” or yield results that don’t come from the source material. These hallucinations may be grammatically sound, but they barely make any sense in context. Businesses and organizations using translation software can’t afford such outputs, namely when translating crucial documents.
Second, automation has yet to reach its zenith despite significant strides in multiple industries. Even as humans won’t be translating as much in the following decades, they’ll still have a hand in creating better translation technologies. Their ability to understand contexts more deeply than a machine will remain an advantage.
Translators and other relevant professionals may have to upskill to adapt to the up-and-coming technologies. A report by the World Economic Forum states that three out of ten companies all over the globe say they’ll need to retrain their workforces. Regardless, the costs involved are a small price to pay compared to breaking down language barriers.
Conclusion
It’s undeniable that translation technology has come a long way, from relying on predetermined input of rules to using what’s essentially working electronic brains. The technologies involved have opened plenty of new doors toward new opportunities. The next milestone is anyone’s guess, but people, for now, are glad that they can switch between languages within a few clicks.
Grace: So, yeah. So I recently was scrolling through TikTok as one does, and I got to one that posed a question. It's from an account called pumpkinheadgirl, and her real name is Maddie. And yeah, I'm going to I'm going to play a little bit of it for you.
[Maddie: I've held my silence long enough. I desperately need to know what the f*** is wrong with the person who writes the Russian Duolingo questions.]
Grace: Okay, so you are Duolingo. Right. I feel like I have. I have heard this before.
Amory: Sí, pero por Español. Or maybe it's para Español. The difference between por and para will will haunt me forever.
Grace: So I have also been dabbling with Duolingo. I don't think I'm as dedicated as you, so I don't know the difference between para and por either. But my curiosity was piqued because I do use the Duolingo app. And so –
Amory: What are you learning? Are you learning Spanish as well?
Grace: I'm also learning Spanish, total beginner. And I'm like refreshing myself with French. So I kind of like go between the two.
Amory: Oh, wow. Okay, that's, that's advanced.
Grace: Yeah. So I was curious about what the heck is going on with the person who writes the Russian Duolingo question. So I kept watching the video.
[Maddie: When I first started, I got “my blood”, and I thought that's weird that they're teaching me how to say “my blood” before they're teaching me how to say numbers, but maybe it's so I can say my blood type so that, you know, if I'm ever bleeding out in an emergency, I can say what my blood type is to the hospital right? No.]
Grace: So I, like I said, I've been doing this for two languages and I have never gotten the word for “my blood” in French or Spanish. Definitely done a lot of numbers. I don't know. Have you? Maybe. Is it just, is it just my phrases? Have you gotten anything that exciting?
Amory: I am convinced that, like, Duolingo listens to me and knows my life because it will — I'll get fed sentences like, “I'm sorry, we don't have anything vegan in this restaurant.”
(Courtesy of Duolingo)
Grace: Oh!
Amory: Or I just had a sentence yesterday about mi colega Ben, and I was like, “How do they know? How do they know that my colleague is Ben!” And I got ones about traveling while I was traveling. I don't know, man. I'm usually not conspiratorial like that, but I just think Duolingo knows me personally.
Grace: Okay, yeah. Well, okay. We'll see? Something is going on with Duolingo. Like this app is smarter than we think. So the next phrase that she learns or that she shows on this Tik Tok it's a little bit more dramatic. It says, “I want to live.” So, I don't know if Duolingo is listening to Maddie–I don't know what she's doing. (Laughs.) Yeah. I mean, as we've pointed out, we are in a pandemic, so I guess it is a useful phrase. But anyway, so Maddie gets this phrase, “I want to live” in Russian. And she says...
[Maddie: That's a weird thing to teach somebody, just learning. Um, I guess I can beg for my life now in Russian. Okay.]
Grace: And like also, I guess maybe this would hit a little bit differently if the language wasn't Russian and there wasn't a pretty terrible war going on right now with Russia. So, it's like funny, but it also feels a little like, sad and scary.
Amory: Yeah, I have gotten the sentence before, “Everybody has to die,” or “Everybody is going to die,” in Spanish. I know you have.
Grace: Wow, that’s really deep. And does it have like one of those, like, funny cartoon characters, though.
Amory: Of course, the big bear, that's like making kind of a grumpy face. I've taken a ton of screenshots of strange Duolingo sentences. So now immediately after this, I'm going to scroll through those and send you some. Maybe we can post some on our, on our web page.
(Courtesy of Duolingo)
Grace: Totally, yeah. And then we take a turn into the nonsensical kind of the next phrase is, “She has good blood.” So here's Maddie again.
Amory: Oh, God. (Laughs.)
[Maddie: Am I begging for my life from a Russian vampire and is my, is my strategy not to just fight the vampire, but to instead direct them to go kill somebody else. What?]
Grace: Then she shows another one. The next phrase is, “Why is there blood here?” And there's like a little cartoon character going, like, I don't really know how to describe it. Like, when you make guns with your fingers, but it's not violent. It's like.
Amory: Yeah, it's like pew pew pew. Yeah.
Grace: Exactly. Like a happy thing.
Amory: Yeah.
Grace: So it's like, why is there blood here? But it's fun. That's, that's the tone that the cartoon character is conveying. So here's Maddie again.
[Maddie: I don't know, Duolingo, why is there blood here? What does she know that I don't know? Why is there blood here?]
Grace: Duolingo raising all the questions, not giving us a lot of answers. And then there's one more.
[Maddie: And today there is blood on it. Why is there blood on the ticket? Duolingo, what did you do? I still don't know numbers, but I don't.]
Grace: And then the video abruptly cuts off. So, blood on the ticket. I mean, it does seem like they're telling us a little story here. Right? That does maybe seem like, violent and disturbing?
Amory: Do we have any answers? Has she tried reaching out to Duolingo or has Duolingo responded to her TikTok video?
Grace: They did respond to her TikTok video. And the official Duolingo’s account comment is pinned there. And it's, it's kind of coy. It's from their official account. So I'm picturing like their mascot Duo, the green bird, typing this and it says, “I don't get it. These are all useful phrases.”
So like, kind of like nonchalant, like nothing, nothing weird to see here. But I did some really hard hitting investigative journalism and I emailed Duolingo’s media team and they got back to me right away. I sent them the TikTok video.
Amory: Okay.
Grace: And I was like, first I was like, “Is this real?” Because, you know, people are smart. They can make Duolingo — they could probably make it look like Duolingo was saying something that it wasn't, but they said, yes. The TikTok video contains real examples from a Duolingo Russian for English lesson
Amory: Okay.
Grace: Although they did say the way that they are presented in the video is out of context of how they would be encountered in a Duolingo lesson, which makes it seem a bit more dramatically foreboding. So it wasn't like in the same lesson she was getting like, “What's your blood? I want to live. Why is there blood on the ticket?” I mean, like, in the same lesson, it would sound like a story about I don't know. I don't know what the story would be, but it wouldn't be a fun story.
Amory: Hmm.
Grace: They actually also gave me a reason for why the word blood comes so much in the Russian lessons. It's one of a relatively small number of words that end in a consonant, but take feminine agreement. So blood is being used to teach a particular grammatical agreement pattern. So that's actually a very boring way. They're not trying to freak Maddie out.
Amory: Hmmmm. Okay. But I still want to know if they're like, if they know my life to some extent
Grace: (Laughs.)
Amory: Or the extent to which more, more practically speaking, like, does Duolingo try to create any sort of a custom experience based on your cookies? Because I probably do search for vegan restaurants a lot, you know? Or is it just like, no, man, you guys are all learning the same stuff.
Grace: Yeah, and they didn't answer that. I will say that they did send me an article about how they try to use phrases and sentences that are memorable, which I don't know, maybe that maybe if what makes them memorable is that they're mirroring our lives. But a lot of times those are silly sentences. And so this is where the Norwegian sentence comes in. Did you do Duolingo for Norway — for Norwegian or just sticking to Spanish?
Amory: You know, I didn't. And I was feeling really badly about it, but I felt like I kind of need to stay in the Spanish zone. My sister did a little bit, but then she didn't — I didn't witness her using any of that Norwegian (laughs) in real life. So no, I don't. Tell me tell me the phrase.
Grace: This was a phrase that was used in 2020 and it was actually ended up being voted by Duolingo users as The Most 2020 Phrase of the Year. But I feel like you actually could have used it given your experience, given your experience. The phrase was, I am eating bread and crying on the floor.
Amory: Do you know how to say it?
Grace: It was “Jeg spiser brød og gråter på gulvet.”
Amory: Okay, I'm definitely going to ask my cousin to say for now. No offense to your pronunciation, but maybe well, maybe we'll leave it to the Norwegians. I am eating bread and crying on the floor.
[Harald (Amory’s Norwegian cousin): Jeg spiser brød og gråter på gulvet.]
Well, Grace, thank you so much. This was fascinating and thought provoking, and I feel like I have more questions than answers at this point. But in the best of ways.
Grace: Yeah. We're always happy to share my my tidbits from my TikTok scrolling.
Amory: See, never time wasted on TikTok. Well, after the break, Grace, I have a story for you.
[SPONSOR BREAK]
Amory: Okay. Grace, I have a story that originally came to me through our colleague Megan McGinnes, who writes the WBUR newsletter. This goes back eight years now. I think is when the original post was made, and it was made to the TIFU subreddit. Are you familiar with this one, Grace?
Grace: I am not. TIFU. I can't even – what does that stand for?
Amory: It stands for Today I F’d Up.
Grace: Uh. And you know what? You have to give it.
Amory: Well, I do all the time. And this is a well-loved subreddit among the endless thread and the Reddit crowd in general. I'm going to abridge the post for the sake of time, but — and I won't read the subject line because that's going to give it away. So I'm just going to jump in here. Okay. Come along for the ride.
This person posts: “About 17 years ago, my wife and I adopted a baby from an Asian-American family. I made very little inquiries as they seemed embarrassed, I didn't want to pry. I was just excited to have a son and couldn't have cared less about the parents history besides their current and future well-being.
Anyway, around about eight months we start to feel a little bit of guilt about not raising him in his own ethnic culture. And given that we live in an area with a major Chinese population, it would be very easy to introduce him to his roots. So for the next 17 years, we do everything we can to honor his ethnicity. We sent him to Chinese language courses and by five he's fluent in Mandarin and English. He gets, quote, adopted by a Chinese aunt and uncle. They taught him cultural things and celebrate certain holidays and take him for dim sum every couple of weeks. We've been taking him to China every two years since he was eight. We weren't trying to force him to take up his culture, as in, quote, other in our family. But we didn't want to rob him of it or completely whitewash him either. We try and be PC as possible and we thought we were doing the right thing. He's the best thing that's ever happened to me and my wife. There's not a day where I don't just look at him and smile warmly. I love him.”
Okay. Grace, anything jump out to you yet at this point?
Grace: It's interesting. I've actually been talking a lot to friends about transracial adoption because I'm a lot of my friends are thinking about having families and kids. So I'm very interested to see where this is going, because I think that there are a lot of complicated questions about transracial adoption.
Amory: Yeah. So this person writes, “Anyway, we're filling out his college app, slash financial aid applications and doing that whole thing. I go to my home office and go through some files and find his old adoption records. I'm not really paying much attention to them. And then his biological parents' surnames pop out and basically punch me in the face. His parents’ last names were Park and Kim.
Amory: For those of you who do not know, those are Korean last names. My son is not Chinese. Not even a little bit. He's Korean. I've dedicated nearly two decades to helping my son be close to his roots that aren't even his. I feel like a complete a****** to the nth degree. I have yet to disclose this to my son or wife. I honestly don't even know if I will.”
So this is quite a predicament.
Grace: Oh, my gosh. And yeah, I had my hands on my face the entire time, like, ooh! Because I mean, I'm just thinking about that kid. Like, I feel like it is really important to, you know, kind of have a sense of your roots. And even if people weren't purposefully lying… yeah, his past and like a really possibly important part of his identity has been obscured from him or like he's been, ugh! It's just. It's bad.
Amory: Yeah. And it didn't. There are there were certain things that didn't occur to me until reading it a second time, like, oh yeah, he didn't say a Chinese American family in the beginning. He said an Asian-American family. And so where — how did the leap happen? Which he explains, number one, but also number two, like, I have not had to do this. I'm not going to cast stones here. But it seems really well intentioned and also kind of impossible to impart a culture to a child that one is not your own and two is not just one culture. Right? It's like it's China. It's… Like, even if the, if the child becomes fluent in Mandarin, what if his parents spoke Cantonese? Oh, wait, they don't even speak Cantonese, they are Korean, you know? So I feel for this person because it seems like it was, it was going to be a hard task no matter what. But also like to go back to the adoption papers when you're filling out college applications and not in the 17 years in between.
Grace: Well, yeah! It reminds me I actually just finished this memoir called All You Can Ever Know by Nicole Chung. And she's an adoptee, a Korean-American adoptee, actually.
Amory: Okay.
Grace: And she talks a lot about her feelings about her adoptive parents not being very curious about her birth parents and kind of, you know, that did end up causing her some pain down the line. And it sounds like now, though, with adoptions that there's a lot more, that there are a lot more open adoptions so like, maybe a story like this would be less likely to happen in another 18 years.
Amory: Yeah. So there was an update that I think was posted pretty shortly after the original post. The guy wrote: “So last night I broke the news to my son after consulting with my wife. We sort of just told him straight up and explained our mistake. There were some tears and some laughter, and like many of you pointed out in the comments, there was still lots of love. He's confused, but as happy as he can be in this situation. My son isn't on Reddit, but within a few hours after my confession, a friend texted him, basically saying, ‘This sounds exactly like you and something your dad would do.’'' Oy. (Laughs.) “He read the post, which he thought was sort of funny, but we agree on a “no reading the comments” policy for our own well-being. I think out of everything, he was only really pissed that I posted it without telling him first, which in hindsight was awful on my part. Once again, I've proven I'm a complete a******.”
So as you mentioned, like you, what your first reaction was mine as well, Grace like, just thinking about this kid and this keeps resurfacing in the best of and Best of Redditor updates because the OP deleted the post and like we don't know who they are, we don't know who the son is, but it's been eight years, so the son is mid-twenties now. And I'm dying to know how this has affected his life, how this has shaped him, what he just what he makes of it all like, to say that he is as happy as he can be in this situation is like a tantalizingly vague and frustrating statement. And I'm sure it was written just kind of in the heat of all of this, but I'd love to now with eight years of distance, know how does this actually affect someone when you've been raised your whole life thinking one thing, finding out another, and the extent to which you just want to kind of like start over and figure out who you are without this extra unintentional baggage?
Grace: And it's a big lesson in like intent versus impact, only it sounds like a very loving family. But yeah, I really hope that the son has found the answers that he needs and continues to be able to have conversations about this.
Amory: Yeah. Well, Grace, we've learned some new phrases. We've learned about learning languages that maybe you thought were your native language and are not, learning languages that are not your native language, but you want to learn them. And we've learned that sometimes you just need to sit on the floor and eat bread and cry. Right? Something like that?
Grace: Exactly. It's universal. That is a sentiment that crosses all languages.
Amory: That's true.
[Harald: Jeg spiser brød og gråter på gulvet.]
Amory: Grace Tatter, thanks again for joining me this week.
Grace: Thank you.
Amory: This episode was produced by Grace Tatter and myself with help from Megan Cattel. Special shout out to my Norwegian cousin-in-law — is that a thing? That should be a thing. Harald in Heggedal. Tusen takk, Harald! Mix and sound design by Matt Reed. ¡Hasta luego!
How can independent publishers get works of translated literature to readers in an era marked by media saturation and increased dominance by major companies over the book business, all after years of general apathy from consumers toward books in translation? That was the central question at an industry roundtable on "How to Promote Italian Literature in the USA" held by Multipli Forti, the Italian literary fiction festival, at the Italian Cultural Institute in New York on June 6.
The panel, moderated by Roman publisher Minimum Fax's editorial director, Luca Briasco, and Michael Reynolds, the editorial director of Europa Editions, brought together a number of key figures in the translated literature sector: Terrie Akers, Other Press marketing director; Beniamino Ambrosi, foreign rights director and agent at the Cheney Agency; Tynan Kogane, senior editor at New Directions Publishing; Sarah McNally, owner of McNally Jackson Bookstores; and Dan Simon, publisher of Seven Stories Press.
At Seven Stories, Simon said, “We believe in that slow work” of discovering authors and then sticking by them. “Once we fall in love, then we’re kind of stuck.” In terms of how those authors are discovered, New Directions’ Kogane said foreign rights departments at literary agencies, translators coming to them directly, and the recommendations of friends all play a role: “We like to take things from people who we trust,” he said. Akers added that literary scouts also played a big role in recommending potential acquisitions at Other Press.
Ambrosi and McNally, for their part, pointed out that bigger publishers are starting to take more of an interest in publishing works of translation over the past decade. “There are publishers for whom this is a mission, then there’s a more commercial track,” Ambrosi said. “I think [publishing in translation] used to be a smaller pool in the U.S., and the history of it is a little bit random, made up of sporadic successes.” But such surprise bestsellers as Elena Ferrante, Han Kang, and Karl Ove Knausgaard, he said, helped to open up the market: “Every one of these books widens the scope a little bit.” As a result, Ambrosi noted, agents and acquiring editors both have gotten used to seeing these names frequently as comp titles during the acquisition stage.
McNally cited Knopf as one of the Big Five imprints starting to get better at presenting these books for American readers. Still, she said, publishers have a ways to go, at least from a bookseller’s perspective. “If you’re publishing international books, you could really seduce somebody, the way a travel brochure could,” she said.
In terms of discovery, Simon said that the “Amazonification” of the book business has made things more difficult than the sheer number of promotional tools available to publishers today might imply: “You can do everything right, right now, and it might still not work.” He wished, he said, that the commercial houses would go back to publishing commercial books only, calling imprints like Riverhead “unfortunately very good.” He added that he hoped that the bigger houses' attention span for international literature will prove “short, and they’ll move onto something else.”
Kogane's philosophy is a bit different, relying more on longevity than buzzworthiness. "New Directions has always sort of thought about publishing writers' writers, and writers who appeal to other writers," he said. "Publishing so many great mid-century American writers enriched Italian literature through translation. I think we're trying to approach Italian literature in the same way. With a writer like Natalia Ginzburg, I think so many American writers, both young and old, have found some model for what fiction could do in the English language."
How influential a book’s reception in its native market is to publishers’ promotions was a matter of debate. When it comes to countries like France, Italy, and Spain, Simon said, people “love the films, they love the food, they want to visit, they love the landscape, and then it suddenly gets all blurry when it comes to literature.” For books in translation on these books, it’s better to get American blurbers, he said: “I believe in publishing up to people in terms of the quality of the work, and publishing down to them in terms of the marketing. They just want to hear from some movie star or influencer they love…. They want it made American.”
McNally disagreed. “Maybe Dan's thinking nationally and I'm just thinking of New York, but when I find out that something was, say, the biggest book in Norway last year, I find that interesting, exciting, and I think my customers do too.” She added that highlighting a title's country of origin has proven successful in selling books at her stores.
“I have always [organized] the literature section in my stores in terms of countries, and at one point, when the original store was maybe five or six years old, I thought, maybe I'm wrong,” she said. “When I switched the organization to A-Z [by author], [sales] numbers [for international literature] went down by about 30% immediately, so we switched them back. Now, what we've been doing at our stores, more and more, is switching the front tables from [showcasing] fiction and nonfiction to American and international [books], and international book sales have gone up.”
Akers split the difference. Other Press does use press and bestseller placement from native countries on their books, and "sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't." She conceded that, when it came to blurbs, “an American author is more likely to make it on the cover, and foreign press is more likely to go on the back cover.”
Opportunities for promotion of international literature in the U.S. and how they’ve changed over the past two decades was also a point of contention. Kogane and Ayers were mostly upbeat on the situation. Thanks to Ferrante and Knausgaard, Kogane said, publishers are more willing to take chances on translated literature: “success,” he said, “begets success.” Akers pointed to the increasingly “robust community” of publishers of literature in translation in the U.S., calling it “a bit of a ground swell,” although she hedged that by saying that they “need to get past that 3%” market share for translated books.
Simon and McNally were a bit less optimistic about avenues for promotion, despite McNally’s nod to TikTok. That skepticism centered on the diminished influence of bookish publications. “A lot of the things that would move the needle in terms of books, like the New York Times Book Review, are not as important than they used to be,” Simon said.
McNally agreed, and noted that, despite the welcome nature of an increased number of prizes highlighting books in translation—the Booker International Prize and the National Book Award for Translated Literature among them—she wasn’t sure that they were quite making up for what was lost.
“In the last 15 years, we've watched almost every place from which people used to get book news stop providing book news,” McNally said. “So yes, I think they do make a difference, but it also feels like something as simple as, as the tides recede, something else is left on the beach. Back in the day, a cover review in the New York Times [Book Review] would have sold more than the Booker, but a cover review at the Times isn't impactful anymore. So the Booker International is what's still on the beach."
