For me, Literature is the
most important thing in the world. My life revolves entirely around books –
whether it’s reading them or discussing them with my friends, or just staring
at them.
The written word is
everywhere – it’s social media, it’s in the newspaper, it’s in marketing. It’s
an incredibly important aspect of our lives, yet reading isn’t nearly as
popular as it used to be.
The value of literature is
going downhill. People will go and see the film adaptation rather than reading
the book, but we readers all know how much better the book is. Then there’s the
issue of all those articles that have been appearing lately demeaning YA and
its readership. I’m not going to start on that issue because it’s something
that makes me unbelievably angry. My point is reading suddenly isn’t ‘cool’
anymore.
It’s become my life mission
to change this – I buy people books for their birthdays, I lend books to
certain people and I talk so much about literature that I feel that eventually
the people I talk to will read something just to make me shut up.
I was lucky enough to grow up
in a family of readers so I’ve tried a little bit of everything. One of my
favourite things is translated literature. It sounds very lame, but I love
being able to experience texts and authors that I wouldn’t be able to without
translations.
Unfortunately, I don’t speak
every language in the world but I hate that it means I’ll miss out on some
really good books. When I think of books that I couldn’t have read without the
translation, two really stick out – Beowulf (as translated by Seamus Heaney
from Old English) and The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank (translated from
Dutch). These two are some of my favourites, and it’s weird to imagine not
being able to read them. Anne Frank, in particular, changed my life and how I
see the world – it’s weird to think how different things might be if I’d never
read it.
There are loads more
translated works that I haven’t gotten to yet, but are incredibly important
pieces of literature. Anna Karenina, for example, as well as the rest of
Tolstoy’s work, the Odyssey, Les Miserables and more contemporary literature
like The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and its sequels. Think of how well-known
those books are now and how they may have shaped our world and other books, now
imagine a world where only French speakers could have read the works of Victor
Hugo. There’d be no Les Mis stage production and let me ask you this, where
would be then? (Probably not curled up in balls sobbing about barricades)
That’s my roundabout way of
saying that I think translations are important. There’s so much information to
be shared in this world, information that could change the way someone thinks
or change how a whole society thinks, to only ever share it with the speakers
of one language.
Translations aren’t always
easy to come by, and so there are a lot of websites and blogs that we miss out
on because of language barriers. Translation
companies like Smartling are working toward spreading messages like these
to a larger audience so that we can all experience a more exciting and diverse
world.
I want to thank everyone who
commented on my post The Millicent Effect in which I talked about branching out
to things like this. I was so worried about posting this but you were all so
supportive of the idea. I hope it didn’t disappoint.
