Our coverage today of the news from Palatium and Storytel indicates that the industry can’t depend on the reach of English to get around the need for translation. Yet new research on translators reveals a gap in the translation market.
More English content could be sold if it were translated, and yet translators are struggling, with scant support from the industry. The Authors Guild’s new assessment of translators’ career conditions was released December 15 and is based on a survey conducted in association with the American Literary Translators Association, the PEN America Translation Committee, and the American Translators Association’s Literary Division.
This is the first time that a survey of this kind has been mounted. Only 14 of the 205 respondents said they’re able to make 100 percent of their income from translation; 79 percent said they earn less than 50 percent of their income from translation.
For the purposes of its analysis, the Authors Guild decided to refer to those who reported spending more than 50 percent of their time working on translation as full-time translators. Of those, the largest group, 33 percent, said they made $10,000 to $20,000 for translation in 2016. Only 8 percent reported making more than $60,000. This general trend in incomes was reflected across five years (2012 to 2016).
While publishers sometimes say they don’t pay royalties to translators, almost half the respondents said they do receive royalties, and by contract. The Guild’s assessment is that this, at least, is good news and belies the street wisdom that translations don’t pay royalties.
But here’s a disturbing point: there are cases in which publishers refuse to grant copyright for a translation to the translator, despite the fact that the Berne Convention specifies that translators, like authors, own the work they create. “Some publishers mistakenly continue to believe that the copyright needs to be theirs in order for them to make money on the translation,” the Guild’s commentary says on the matter.
Another ugly reality: 23 percent of respondents said they’ve never been given book cover credit for titles they’ve translated, while 19 percent said they sometimes aren’t credited on the cover. Most frequently, publishers have given the excuses that they didn’t want to “clutter” a book’s cover design or that they didn’t want to make it clear a book had been translated because it could turn off readers. We call the first excuse rubbish and the second one self-defeating. (This is what the #NameTheTranslator social media campaign is about, by the way.)
Bottom line: The good news is that the Guild is working on a first-of-its-kind model contract for literary translation in order to give translators a starting point for negotiations. There are no standard rates for translation in place in the American market, and as the Guild writes, “It’s clear that a large number of US translators are being paid rates that make it difficult, if not impossible, to earn a living.” At a moment when the trade and independent sectors of the publishing industry need translation to expand revenue and readership, translators have been left to fend for themselves, with the odds stacked steeply against them.
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
