German literature in English /Deutsche Literatur auf Englisch

The English section of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports today that a new online magazine, Litrix.de – German Literature Online – is going to present excerpts, specimen translations (whatever that is) and book reviews – in both German and English.

About 2,000 works of fiction written in English are translated into German every year, but only about 40 German titles into English (hmm, I wonder why that is?!)

A jury will select 30 works a year and 20 pages of each of these will be translated and presented. This sounds like an excellent idea, depending on what the jury choose, of course.

Uwe Timm, Am Beispiel meines Bruders /My Brother’s Example is up there already.

Many thanks to Gail Armstrong of openbrackets for the link.

3 thoughts on “German literature in English /Deutsche Literatur auf Englisch

  1. Literary translation is not much of a career choice for English-language pros: U.S. publishers issue 300 translations a year out of more than 10,000 titles in all. Are they underestimating the potential market?

  2. About 2,000 works of fiction written in English are translated into German every year, but only about 40 German titles into English (hmm, I wonder why that is?!)

    um…because more people speak English, English is the lingua franca of the Internet and of Scientific journals And then again, I belive Germany burnt quite a few of its books.

  3. Yes, well that hardly explains anything about novels. Part of the reason is the large number of crime novels that people want to read in German. Of all the German novels I want to read, a lot of them are highbrow – there isn’t such a proportion of rewarding bestsellers (IMO).

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