Western publishing houses and translated texts

[tevere]

Any advice on this would be greatly appreciated! (Although it occurs to me that it's always a bad idea to ask the internet for advice on a holiday weekend...)

A Timorese author I know is interested in finding an Australian publisher for the English translation of his novella, the original of which is in Tetum. The translation into English has already been done by someone other than myself; he's asked me to edit the translated manuscript with an eye for preparing it for publication in Australia. He's actually already found a publisher who's willing to look at it, but I understand no promises have been made.

I read the manuscript for the first time last night, and it's left me feeling rather bewildered as to how best to proceed. The story itself is engaging and moving -- it's a semi-autobiographical account of Timorese children who were forcibly separated from their families shortly after the Indonesian occupation of Timor-Leste in 1975 and sent to orphanages in Indonesia. Many of the younger children forgot their Timorese identities and were only able to rediscover them with difficulty during adulthood; some were eventually reunited with their families after independence in 1999.

Timor-Leste has a rich oral tradition, but to the best of anyone's knowledge this novella is actually the first published longform work of fiction actually written in Tetum, the lingua franca. (Other Timorese works published internationally, like Naldo Rei's Resistance, were written in English or Portuguese.) As such, it reads like a mix between an oral narrative and a documentary: omniscient third-person description of events as they unfold, but incorporating an integrated parallel narrative where the protagonist speaks directly about his experiences during those events (as if being interviewed several years after the fact). The omniscient third-person and the protagonist's recollections are completely intertwined in a way that I don't think I've ever really seen in an English-language novel-- the closest I can think of is Chimamanda Adichie's The Headstrong Historian, where the past and present seem gently blurred.

I personally find the structure really interesting because it says so much about the evolution of Timorese storytelling into different media, but I suppose my concern is: will it work as a young adult novel for a Western audience that's perhaps more used to perfectly linear first- or third-person POV? Maybe even more to the point: will a mainstream publisher even accept it, let alone publishing it to see if it can work for a Western audience?

On the other hand, I absolutely don't want to be the person saying, "Your story must match these conventions of the English-language storytelling tradition, otherwise it will never get a chance." I hate the fact that publishing houses (deliberately or unconsciously) police non-Western and non-white narratives, choosing which gets to be 'representative' of a particular culture or race or ethnicity.

There's probably a way of preserving the novel's unique structure while making it slightly more comprehensible to a Western audience, and I've gone back and asked the author for his thoughts on the issue. In the interim, though: does anyone have opinions about the issue of translating the culturally-specific structure of a work, as well as simply the language? Is it betraying the original text by pandering to a lowest common denominator (the closed Western experience of the world), or is it widening its reach for cross-cultural enjoyment?

Comments

Hmm, sorry , I am no help

[jazzypom]

I just want to weigh in and share my sympathies, because I do remember trying to explain to someone why I never liked Neil Gaiman's Anasi Boys (she's white British, I'm from an Afro Caribbean background and grew up in the West Indies) and culturally, she just didn't get it. It doesn't help that Neil Gaiman said that he had help with the manuscript from a Bajan (and still, Gaiman never really got it).

All this to say, I'd translate as best as I could if I were you, and probably just get persuasive when it's time to shop the story around. If then, and only then there are no takers, go conventional.

Re: Hmm, sorry , I am no help

[tevere]

I haven't read Anansi Boys, but I can well imagine how Gaiman's understanding might have fallen short of his agenda. Myth and folktales are so rich and complex, not just in meaning but in-- feel, I guess? Structures and tropes that have formed over centuries (millennia) and in all sorts of different media: oral histories, poetry, songs, informal written histories, compilations by people outside the culture...

Thanks for the advice-- I think it's sound.

[waterfall8484]

I'm probably not the best person to comment on this, since I'm Norwegian and thus used to Western storytelling structures, but I think this narrative structure sounds absolutely fascinating and might read the book just for that.

I can't say if it would be confusing or not though. But if it is at all possible you should probably try and keep it, because in my opinion structure and story tends to be intertwined; changing one affects the other (to a certain degree).

(Yay! My icon has never been this appropriate!)

[tevere]

On contemplation, I think what's confusing is not really the shape or form of the structure -- it's unconventional, but not inherently confusing in and of itself -- but the fact that it's somewhat inconsistent. Which isn't surprising: the author is a talented storyteller, sure, but as a writer he's facing incredible difficulties: a cultural background where there's no tradition of reading, a language that's still really quite new, few or no other fictional works in Tetum that he can draw from (although there are Indonesian novels in circulation, which are influential for some Timorese writers I've met). So yes: I think it's not my role to change the structure, because that's part of the story. But perhaps I can help him tighten it, make it more consistent, which I think will actually help showcase that structure. Which, like you said, could even be a selling point.

Thanks!

[waterfall8484]

Glad I could help!

[bell]

I'm a bit of a keep-as-close-to-the-original as possible, and from the way you describe it, it sounds like the text, even if from a different cultural tradition of creating narrative, is follow-a-ble by a western reader. Given those things, I'd support maintaining the original structure (no need to pander!) and advertise it as a genuine Timorese text. I'd be interested in reading a translation that kept to the original translation, personally. :D

[tevere]

from the way you describe it, it sounds like the text, even if from a different cultural tradition of creating narrative, is follow-a-ble by a western reader.

Yes, definitely. I think some of the confusion isn't actually inherent to the structure; it's simply the result of some authorial inconsistency (as he's a fairly inexperienced author), which can be smoothed out in the editing process. So it's not changing the structure, it's more like-- polishing and tightening the shape of it, to let the structure really shine through. Hopefully the publishers will find it as interesting as I do!

[ardhra]

I was going to suggest that you pitch it to Pluto Press as-is, but they don't publish fiction. However, given the groundbreaking nature of the work, they might take it on? I'm not sure of what other Australian publishers might publish it and not mangle the process. Maybe Allen & Unwin?

There's a likelihood it might be marketed as exotic, but that might not be as damaging as it could be if the writer has considerable control over the final proof...

Given that all manner of 'postmodern fiction' has been published for years from western authors, that doesn't fit a standard novel format, I'm not sure that the structure will be such a problem?

[tevere]

Thanks for the suggestion of Pluto Press! (Even if they're mainly non-fiction.) As it turns out, the author has spoken to a couple of publishers-- a local Melbourne independent press, and another that could potentially be interested in it as a YA work-- so we'll see how we go shopping it around.

I agree with you that all sorts of weird stuff has come out under postmodernism. I suppose I was wondering if it might hamper its appeal specifically as YA, which as a genre is more conventional in storytelling style (?), but having discussed with the author and with commenters here and elsewhere-- the story is what it is, and the structure is part of that. We'll polish it up while leaving that structure intact and see what the market thinks.

Thanks for the advice!