As the number of translated novels by female authors increases, Helen Vassallo asks which women are being translated, and how activists can be more inclusive
 

For several years, a growing number of voices in both academic and industry contexts have drawn attention to the imperative to address diversity within publishing, where recent reports suggest that diversity has plateaued. In the past decade, the lack of gender equality has been repeatedly highlighted with regard to existing and pervasive imbalances in the commission and publication of literature in translation.

Where are the women in translation?

In 2013, translator Alison Anderson wrote an impassioned article asking ‘Where are the Women in Translation?’¹ after her research into publications and prize lists indicated that only around a quarter of books in translation were written by women, and that books by women writers made up an even smaller proportion of literary translation prizewinners and prize shortlists.

The year after Anderson’s observations, book blogger Meytal Radzinski declared August ‘Women in Translation’ month, announcing that she would read only books by women in translation for the month, and encouraging her online followers to do the same. Over the last ten years Women in Translation month has grown in popularity, with a growing network of participants across the world. Many publishers regularly offer discounts on their translated titles by women authors in this month, and the #WiTMonth hashtag accumulates thousands of posts across social media platforms every year.

In 2015, the Women in Translation tumblr was co-founded by translators Margaret Carson and Alta L Price, bringing together articles, studies, reviews and news of book releases that support women in translation. And in 2016, translator Katy Derbyshire inaugurated a new series of articles on LitHub focusing on women writers from around the world as yet untranslated into English.
 

Warwick Prize for Women in Translation

In 2017, the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation was established at the University of Warwick by Professor Chantal Wright, in response to male-dominated literary prize lists. Then, in 2018, I founded the Translating Women project to investigate and challenge the lack of representation of women’s voices in translation. This coincided with the Year of Publishing Women, a movement based on a 2015 provocation by novelist Kamila Shamsie. It challenged publishers to release only books authored by women in 2018 to mark the centenary of the first British women gaining the right to vote.

All of these initiatives have worked to challenge ongoing barriers to gender parity in translation (barriers that have been analysed eloquently by Carson²), and have been part of a welcome shift towards greater gender equality in the publication of translated literature. In 2023, Chad Post reported that the percentage of books by women in translation had risen to around 47% of all translated fiction, which indicates the impact of the dedicated work over the last decade to support and promote the translation of women’s writing.³ However, this positive change could hide another problem that is less quantifiable but nonetheless becoming more widely recognised: more women in translation are being published, but which women are they, and which are getting left behind?

A lack of diversity

A recent collection of essays on translation edited by Kavita Bhanot (left, speaking at Literature Must Fall) and Jeremy Tiang highlights the extent to which racial and geopolitical biases are additional barriers to equality in translation.⁴ This lack of diversity is borne out by analysis of the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. The long- and short- lists reflect – and sometimes increase – the predominance of European submissions. Though the number of submissions increases year on year, the range of languages, cultures and the social groups they represent do not shift significantly.

This indicates the limitations of both the prize and the Women in Translation movement more generally: gender is only one aspect of diversity. Uneven distribution of funding in source cultures is another impediment, with lack of funding contributing directly to lack of diversity. There are also entrenched biases within the industry – and within society more widely – that limit the possibility for a greater diversity of writing to come through.

While carrying out research for my recent book Towards a Feminist Translator Studies,⁵ the translators I interviewed raised a range of issues that hampered them in getting publishers to commission books by women writers in translation. In one case, a publisher believed they had “done” women’s writing from a large Latin American country because they had previously published one – as if the entirety of any country’s women writers could be represented (forever) by one book.

Another issue they identified is the expectation for women writers from non-Western cultures to write in ways that corroborate Western preconceptions or stereotypes. This unquestioning complacency creates marginalisations and exclusions that are compounded by more general trends that have been publicly criticised.
 

The role of publishers - help or hinder?

Nicholas Glastonbury recently expressed frustration with publishers’ clichéd response of “there’s no market for this book”,⁶ as if publishers themselves do not have a role in the creation of a market. Meanwhile Anton Hur deconstructs the notion of the “mythical English reader”, a figure meant to represent the target market, which publishers and editors harness to reject pitches.⁷

However, the ‘actual’ reader appears to be more adventurous, as evidenced by a 2023 Booker Foundation survey.⁸ This found that readers of translated fiction welcomed a “challenging read”, suggesting that there is, indeed, a market for more diverse books – books that do not necessarily fall into our comfortable, mainstream or Eurocentric notions of what a book should be.
 

Fostering greater diversity in translated literature

One significant intervention to foster greater diversity in translated literature is the research-led revival of PEN Presents. This digital platform is managed by the writers’ association English PEN and aims to shift the landscape of literature translated into English by funding and promoting sample translations from diverse writers and contexts.

Rather than offering subventions or prizes to books that have already been commissioned or published, PEN Presents is a translator-led initiative: the applications come from translators wishing to champion a particular book. This format recognises the unique positioning of translators as advocates and readers,⁹ and offers an opportunity to do more than passively reflect inequalities elsewhere, as prize longlists and shortlists often do.
 

Success of the PEN Presents programme

The result is compelling: the invitation for submissions to the second round of PEN Presents (which was open to work from any language or region) received 125 proposals for work originally written in 51 languages from 53 countries. Although not exclusively focused on women writers, this spread was almost as linguistically and culturally diverse as the first six years of entries to the Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. Three have already been acquired by UK publishers, all by women writers and translators.

The success of the PEN Presents programme so far not only corroborates the importance of funding in increasing diversity, but also indicates the significance of literary institutions and organisations actively supporting and promoting diversity, as well as the vital role that translators play as activists and advocates for bibliodiversity. So although the outlook for women in translation is more positive than it was in 2013, the work is not complete. We now need to look beyond a binary approach to gender in order to work towards a more genuine, sustainable and intersectional diversity in translated literature.

Notes

1    Anderson, A (2013) ‘Where Are the Women in Translation’, Words Without Borders; https://cutt.ly/WatWiT
2    Carson, M (2019) ‘Gender Parity in Translation: What are the barriers facing women writers’. In In Other Words: On literary translation, 52, 37-42
3    Post, C (2023) ‘Frankfurt Book Fair 2023: The Steady Rise of Women in Translation’. In Publishers Weekly
4    Bhanot, K and Tiang, J (2022) Violent Phenomena: 21 essays on translation, Tilted Axis Press
5    Vassallo, H (2022) Towards a Feminist Translator Studies: Intersectional activism in translation and publishing, Routledge
6    Glastonbury, N (2022) ‘Translating Against World Literature’. In Los Angeles Review of Books
7    Hur, A (2022) ‘The Mythical English Reader’. In op. cit. Bhanot and Tiang, 77-82
8    ‘Generation TF: Who is really reading translated fiction in the UK’ (2023) Nielsen/the Booker Prize Foundation; https://cutt.ly/ge6CIEsb
9    Schnee, S (2023) ‘Fostering Bibliodiversity: English PEN’s Will Forrester on the goals of the PEN Presents program’, Words Without Borders

 

Dr Helen Vassallo is Associate Professor of French and Translation at the University of Exeter. She is the author of Towards a Feminist Translator Studies: Intersectional activism in translation and publishing, founder of the Translating Women project, and a translator of Francophone women's writing.

This article is reproduced from the Spring 2025 issue of The Linguist. Download the full edition here.