Hello,

Welcome to the first proper Translating Marek newsletter. It's about Polish-English culture, as well as translation and language and Marek Zulawski-related things. I just made a landing page for signing-up to it which you can forward to people if you'd be so inclined. Please let me know what you think of it!

A glaring problem with translated books

Last year, the Man Booker-winning translator Jennifer Croft wrote an opinion piece in The Guardian. Yes, there are a lot of opinion pieces in The Guardian, and many are famously silly, but Croft's was one that addressed a huge elephant in the room throughout the international world of literature:

Why isn't the translator's name always on the book cover?

Croft's piece started a big discussion in the literary world. Many authors pledged to always insist the translator be on the cover whenever their work was translated. Having translated two books, I fully agree. It's a huge amount of creative work that benefits greatly from contact with the author. Even though you're trying to create a faithful rendition, you end up having to rewrite half of it. There's a very good reason why the International Man Booker goes to both the author and the translator.

All that being said, when her translation of The Books of Jacob finally came out a few months after her piece, it's notable that the UK publisher Fitzcarraldo did not put Croft's name on the cover.

Although Fitzcarraldo publish many international authors in English in the UK, they don't add any of the translators due to the Spartan format of the covers they use for every book they publish.

I have seen a few complaints about it (I don't particularly like it either) but I guess it's a cheap way of creating a recognisable brand.

Happily, Croft's name is indeed on the US edition's cover. I'd prefer that book's cover on my shelf by far, but then I'd have to put up with all those colors and centers in the text...

How to quickly improve your visibility as a translator

We're not all globally-recognised award-winning translators though. And if they have it rough, what about the rest of us?

Here's a short story that reveals a handy tip...

I recently tried to sign up for Reedsy.com to promote my translation work. It's a famed industry platform for people who work in publishing, including editors, authors, ghostwriters and more. A specialist LinkedIn, if you will.

I filled in most of my profile and then went to the drop-down menu to select the languages I work in...

I was weirded out to find they only had 5 languages listed. As you can see, it clearly says "Reedsy has a global audience of authors". Something must have gone wrong here, I reasoned.

I emailed them asking where Polish was, and indeed where the hell were the majority of languages. Polish is one thing, but no Arabic nor Mandarin seemed like there must have been a technical error given the enormous number of speakers those two have.

Reedsy replied that there was no error. The five I saw were the only available languages for people wanting to be in their translator marketplace.

It seemed "Reedsy has a strictly Western European audience of authors" if you ask me...

I was quite disappointed. Seeing as I couldn't select my particular language set, I couldn't actually finish setting up the profile and submit it for review. I could not make myself available to all the industry folk looking to hire via the Reedsy platform. I had some ice cream to console myself, then I moved on with my life and forgot about it.

A few weeks later, I noticed something that gave this misadventure a silver lining

It turns out that although I'm not findable on Reedsy itself, the profile page I had begun to build was actually found by Google. It now appears in search results for the world's largest search engine.

For example, if you search for "polish translation reedsy" or "polish to english translation reedsy", I come up in the top results.

It's also done wonders for my personal SEO (search engine optimisation). If you do a search for my name in the US, Reedsy is now top, as you can see above.

It no longer shows Pennsylvania's long-dead Adam T Zulawski as the first result - he's now ninth. Hurray!

I would definitely recommend any translators reading this to make use of Reedsy too. Or authors, editors, proofers, anybody in publishing really.

It seems that even though the service has its limits, its SEO department is extremely competent.

Animal news of the week

Poland's national animal, the Żubr, known as the European Bison, and also known as the wisent if you want to really confuse people, is a point of pride.

Białowieża Forest is the last place in Europe you can find the continent's biggest land mammals. Below is a blurry photo I took of one there:

The forest borders both Poland and Belarus, which also treats the animal with the same deep mystical reverence. That's why there was a friendly talking bison at various points in Belarus' EXPO 2020 pavilion:

But it looks like soon enough the UK will be covered in European bison too. It's just a matter of time.

This news from Kent is proof that, Brexit or not, Poles will always find a way to live in the UK 😁

That's it for this edition of the Translating Marek newsletter. If you enjoyed it, forward it to a friend so they can use the red button below to sign up and get it themselves. Thanks!

Adam

Adam Zulawski

TranslatingMarek.com / Procrastilearning.com / More stuff

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