WHY NO TRANSLATIONS?
Parmee wonders why the works of European novelists such as Queiroz, Galdos, Baroja, Storm and Fontane are not available in English translation. There is a very simple reason. As com- pared with books originally written in English, any translation, whether of a classic or a contemporary novel, suffers from a severe disadvantage: there is the translator's fee to be paid, and consequently any profit that' the publisher may hope to make will be correspondingly reduced. As a result, we have the situation described by Mr. Parmee, in which there are serious gaps in the coverage of certain foreign literatures. There is the further result also that translators are often underpaid, which in turn means that such translations as there are might perhaps he of higher quality, while people are led to believe that translation is an inferior activity, instead of the difficult and skilled work that it really is
I. JACKSON
Les Campanules, Voie do Coin, Grand-SaconneA, Geneva, Switzerland
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