Obstacles abound in Indonesia'a book translation business
Obstacles abound in Indonesia'a book translation business
By Hermawan Sulistyo
JAKARTA (JP): Book publishing is always a gloomy business in
the Indonesian industrial landscape. Only about 3,500 titles are
published every year -- most of them school textbooks -- and only
less than ten percent are "enlightening books".
Among these titles, translated works dominate and almost none
of them were first printed over 3,000 copies. Year after year for
over a decade, foreign works have dominated books of scholarly
literature, novels and literary works.
Translated from their original works (mostly in English), they
pose some complicated problems, both in technicalities and in
substance.
Technically, publishers get some advantages from publishing
translated books. They usually do not need to deal with
individual authors. For an original manuscript, an author
receives royalties ranging from ten to fifteen percent of the
sale price for an originally published work. In contrast, a
publisher who wishes to translate an already published work, only
needs to pay between five and ten percent of royalties to the
owner of the copyrights of the original work.
In the old days, many publishers hijacked foreign works. This
year, Indonesia adopted the rules from the Bern Convention, which
regulates intellectual copyrights. Law enforcement of articles in
the convention has yet to be seen, but the adoption at least
prevents further violations in obtaining copyrights for book
translation.
For some years, some of Indonesia's big publishers have taken
part in the Frankfurt book fair, the largest book fair in the
world. With the adoption of the Bern Convention, Indonesian
publishers should be in a better stance to deal with their
foreign counterparts.
Copyrights owners are mostly the original publishers of a
manuscript and sometimes are literary agents (it is a rarity that
the author of an original work keeps the copyrights).
By dealing with a foreign publisher rather than individual
authors, an Indonesian publisher would then have ample
opportunity to secure some more potential marketable books. A
series of contracts thus can be made in a more comprehensive
fashion for bestselling books such as the works of John Grisham
or Michael Crichton.
For scholarly works such as monographs which have a more
limited readership, translation also fares well for Indonesian
publishers. Many scholarly works, published mostly by research
centers located within university systems, are released with a
flat-rate system of payment rather than a royalties system. The
respected Modern Indonesia Project at Cornell University, for
instance, commonly hands over a copyright for a monograph with a
flat-rate system for only US$150 to $250.
Translation projects for scholarly works have some other
advantages. For various reasons, from philanthropic to political,
many non-profit organizations and endowment funds happily
subsidize these projects.
In developed countries, due to tax-related technicalities,
there is a clear separation of function between a commercial
publisher (more specifically called trade publisher) and a vanity
press. The latter depends on endowment funds for its operation.
However, unclear definitions of these two types of publishing
houses in Indonesia provide some advantages for translation
projects to be partially funded by endowments.
In general, seen from the perspective of Indonesian
publishers, a translation project in book publishing can reduce
overhead costs to some considerable percentage of the total
production.
Yet, once a copyright is obtained, the problem starts. Finding
a good translator is not an easy task. There are many good
English readers around. But, to translate a book, let alone a
scholarly work, one should also have mastered the writing skills
in both languages.
A good English reader is not necessarily a good writer in the
Indonesian language. Most, if not all, scholars who have mastered
reading and writing skills have already occupied positions that
would provide benefits unsurpassable by any of these translation
projects.
A first class publisher in Jakarta pays at the most two
dollars for a translated page. Working on six pages means that a
translator would receive no more than $15. In contrast, the
writer of an article of the same length published in a newspaper
would be paid at least five times higher.
One would argue that writing an original article for
publication or just for a seminar and other type of "workshop" is
a more difficult task -- thus making the two products
incomparable.
But we should not forget that those who have the mastery over
both reading and writing in the two languages are always skillful
enough to write original works. They are mostly scholars
themselves, and they have surpassed the "stage" of only being
"craftsmen" in translation projects.
A logical consequence of this situation is that translation
projects are often left to be finished by those who are actually
only second, third, and even fourth-tier translators. A finished
product, then, is often only a second-class translated book.
Muddled sentences, misinterpretation of terms and illogical
paraphrasing as a result of misunderstanding the original work,
are not uncommon.
Many publishers have recognized this problem. Unfortunately,
the remedies are sometimes also illogical. Many publishers "hire"
big names as translators, who in turn often "subcontract" their
"employment" to second-tier translators.
With low quality translations, it is more difficult to sell
books to a discerning readership -- leaving only non-
discriminating consumers buying these books, many of whom are
undergraduate students.
A known technique to avoid a low quality readership, which
also means a shrinking market size, is that publishers ask a
respected scholar to write an "introduction". To some degree,
this strategy seems effective to widen the market. However, many
readers may not be reading the translated book beyond this
"introduction".
It could be argued that many Indonesian undergraduate students
reaching the final stage of their study, will have problems
producing a good quality thesis due to a lack of well-translated
books in the market. This problem may also be aggravated by their
advisors being too preoccupied to check thesis' sources or even a
student's understanding of the subject. Within a generation of
scholarship, we may find a less number of gifted future scholars.
This is a grim picture indeed. It is even worse if we look
into the production figures of the biggest trade publishers,
which show that translated books are still their main and best
marketable productions.
A better picture is for the translation of novels. Technically
speaking, translating a novel needs less language skills than
translating a scholarly work.
In many cases, a publisher also provides better payment for a
novel translation compared to a scholarly work due to its better
business prospects. This explains why we see more and more
translated novels around in bookstores.
Recently, in addition to novels, translated books are mostly
in the fields of management, computer science, how-to-do or
manual books and spiritual life.
On one hand, these translations seem to facilitate the
educational roles assumed by translated books. But on the other
hand, the increasing number of these types of books also
indicates a lower quality of readership. A lower quality of
readership now may, in turn, produce a new generation of
readership mainly familiar only with these "second-class works".
Almost two decades have passed since the first proposals were
voiced that the only solution to help the book publishing world
would be through a determined political will.
One practical solution proposed by the Association of the
Indonesian Publishers is a waiver of various taxes on book
production. However, to the disappointment of many bookworms, the
minister of education and culture has rejected this proposal.
The writer is a researcher with the Indonesian Institute of
Sciences. He received his PhD. degree from the Scholarly
Publishing Program, Arizona State University, United States.