We're losing women writers in translation at every stage: in biases back home in native languages, in reviews, in the pamphlets sent out to foreign-language publishers, in the books the publishers sample, in the books they ultimately translate, in the books they then promote, in the books then reviewed by foreign/English-language papers, in the books made comfortably available to average readers in libraries and bookstores, and then straight back to the books that even seem plausible for acquisition and marketing (based on sales).
It's a frustrating realization because it almost feels as though it's out of my hands. I've talked about what roles we all play in terms of actively supporting the women in translation project, and how I believe the problem is too complex to reduce to a single responsible party. Yet seeing how many stages exist before a book can even get to readers makes me wonder at the structural changes that would need to occur.
Should we maybe talk about quotas for awards or review pages? Is it time to discuss those publishers that maintain abysmal rates of translating women writers and ask ourselves what leads to such imbalances? Should we ask ourselves who are the people in charge of review pages or award panels that manage to ignore women writers in translation so thoroughly, and what might be the reason? Are there further institutional biases at play that we need to be considering? Is there something we can be doing differently?
I have often presented the facts and huge disparities between men and women writers. Every post - about awards, publishing, reviews, etc. - feels like I'm uncovering another leak in a pipeline from which women writers are far more likely to spill. Sometimes it feels like we're doing a great job of bringing in new water containers (book recommendations! WITMonth! an award for women in translation!), but the pipes keep leaking because we haven't actually gotten to them yet. Much as I'm grateful for all the new water (and I am)... wouldn't it be great if we could just fix the pipeline itself?
Hear, hear! So right - and very frustrating at times. Well done for your hard work. I haven't been able to keep up so much this month, because of house moves and other issues, but I do admire all of the work you do to raise awareness.
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