European Literature Days 2

The second day the European Literature Days festival here in the Schloss at Spitz an der Donau has been dominated by discussion of  EU funding for translation, much of it a little perplexing from a UK perspective. In the UK I often feel more European than British; here, where the subsidy culture of the EU is almost universally taken for granted,  I found myself in an Atlanticist minority. Despite the EU’s current annual budget of 1m euro for translation, there were calls for a “Marshall Plan for translation”. It took a British delegate to point out that “if we need EU subsidies to make literature work, then we’re lost.”

More enlightening were the remarks by the Croatian translator Alida Bremer, who warned of the dangers of selecting only the kitsch and folkloric for foreign publishers, rather than what readers in the country itself actually valued. “In national literature,” she added, “we mirror ourselves; though foreign literature we see through a window.”

In the afternoon, the German novelist Matthias Politycki whose Jenseitsnovelle (Next World Novella) will be published in translation by Peirene Press in February 2011  discussed the book form of the future and the authenticity of the digital format. He struck a chord with many writers with his opening remark that “it’s a curious thing that when I finish writing an article for a newspaper, I only believe in its publication when I can see and hold the printed copy in my hand.”

In the ensuing discussion, the science writer Jürgen Neffe pointed out that it was more important that people read than the format. Neffe is about to launch a new digital format, the Libroid, which can be updated and extended according to the reader’s needs, and published simultaneously in any number of languages. Digital publication, he insists, is “no more life-threatening to the book than TV was to the radio”.

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