The Linguist is a languages magazine for professional linguists, translators, interpreters, language professionals, language teachers, trainers, students and academics with articles on translation, interpreting, business, government, technology
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24 The Linguist Vol/58 No/2 2019 ciol.org.uk/tl FEATURES fiction from Europe? Translation grants for Swiss fiction? An event to promote Romanian literature? Meet Mark from Waterstones! Rosie, how do you create a buzz round an Italian author who never appears in public (Elena Ferrante)? Would you like to interview a shy, newly translated Norwegian writer (Karl Ove Knausgård)? Heady days, but as everyone engaged in literature in translation knows, financially brutal. We are the poor children of the creative industries. Ten years ago, festivals rarely paid moderators; translators weren't named, their rates erratic. I had gone from a well-paid salary as a senior BBC journalist to earning only £2,000 in my first year at the helm of ELNet. Today what little money exists is better regulated, thanks to the campaigning work of Daniel Hahn, Antonia Lloyd Jones, Charlotte Ryland, Cortina Butler, Jeremy O'Sullivan and other inspirational colleagues I've met through this work. In 2014, I applied for my first ACE grant to support ELNet. ACE, and later Creative Europe, have kept us going and enabled me to bring on board like- minded colleagues: the poet and translator Anna Blasiak, editor and author West Camel, and journalist and business administrator Max Easterman (aka my husband!). A measure of success So, what does success look like in the blighted field of international literature in the UK, where only 4% of what we read is in translation? What has ELNet learned or achieved? Substantially, very little. No spike in book sales, no corporate/patron/knight in shining armour, no fame or fortune. Reality hit me hard but made me focus on what we can achieve. By investing our passion, ideas, positive energy and engagement we could help motivate others, create original projects, and build trust and legacy in order to boost European literature's visibility and popularity. In 2013, I staged my first major event, fired up by the impact of the Greek economic crash on its artists and writers. Supported by UK Hellenophiles, authors Victoria Hislop and Bettany Hughes, and motivators James Runcie and Jude Kelly at the Southbank Centre, I was offered the Purcell Room for free – if I could fill it. Within a few months, we had organised Greece is the Word – an all-day celebration of Greek music, arts, fashion, poetry and prose, featuring 22 performers with a full auditorium and everyone singing and dancing to 'Greece is the Word' to end the day. High Impact: Literature from the Low Countries (notice my obsession with wordplay!) followed in 2014. It was outrageously ambitious: I invited the best- known authors from the Low Countries, Geert Mak and Herman Koch among them, (joined later by David Mitchell and Tracy Chevalier) to tour six English cities in six days – by train in January. It snowed, it poured, the M&S sandwiches ran out, but that adventure is remembered to this day because it was 'high impact', bold and fun. And we forged lasting professional relationships with the literary cities Birmingham and Norwich. Mixing European literature with other art forms is another obsession: fashion with fiction; food with language; live drawing with poetry. Why not link an Italian translation event with food? Invite Giorgio Locatelli to participate? Make it funny and witty, invite students to create projects. It works! Over ten years, on those lines, I created Euro Stars (featuring "the rock stars of European What does success look like in the blighted field of international literature in the UK?