Reading Women Authors in Translation by Bronwen Griffiths
Last month was Women in Translation Month . Meytal Radzinksi started WIT in 2014 with the aim of highlighting the brilliant women writers, translators and publishers who bring us literature from around the world. Radzinksi was concerned that women authors made up less than 30% of the books translated into English and WIT has been a means of promoting such women to the wider reading public. UK book readers are less likely than their European counterparts to read books in translation although that is beginning to change – 2018 saw a 5.5 increase in the market. However, a substantial part of this growth was down to best-selling Scandinavian crime thrillers - authors such as Steig Larsson and Jo Nesbo. (Research by Nielsen for the Man Booker Prize, March 2019) – and o verall we in the UK read far less in translation than other comparative countries. This can be partly explained by the fact that we can also read books written in English from countries like India, Nigeria, South Afric...