Literature as a link between West and East

Leila Chammaa, translator from Arabic, set up the Agentur Alif last year, specialising in bringing Arab fiction onto the German-speaking market. She describes her motivation and her experiences and talks about the status that Arab literature has on Germany's book market.

I began translating Arab literature into German more than ten years ago. It was inevitable - seen in retrospect - that a very much bigger area of activity would open up. Over the years I unavoidably observed the absence of dialogue between the two publishing worlds.

The German and the Arab regions are present at the big book shows such as the Frankfurt Book Fair, but joint projects are rare. This has institutional reasons, on the one hand because publishing is organised differently in the Arab world from the publishing scene in the German-speaking region. There is no financial incentive for Arab publishers to market works internationally. The rights generally stay with the individual authors.

And the language barriers between writers and editors are enormous, as are fears of contact. It is almost exclusively the translators who go on literary voyages of discovery into the Arab-speaking regions. They recommend Arab books to publishers for translation and publication and they establish contact with the authors.

Such projects have only come about sporadically up to now and have been restricted to a few smaller publishing companies. So it seemed obvious to set up a literary agency - Agentur Alif - giving a professional and institutional framework to the business of bringing together Arab authors and German-language publishers.

Agentur Alif as facilitator

The Agentur Alif extends and packages activities that were previously carried out on an individual level and therefore to a limited extent only, and makes them systematic. Literary works worth translating are presented to publishing companies on an ongoing basis - with author portfolios, reports and sample translation extracts.

In this way, Agentur Alif hopes that in the long term, there will be an appeal to a wider reading public. The agency includes younger authors who are introducing new contents onto the literary scene in their own countries, and creating innovative styles.

The aim of my agency is that there should be an awareness of Arab literature across a wider spectrum - not separated off as "Middle Eastern", but taking its place in world literature without prejudice.

Agentur Alif currently handles authors from Palestine, Jordan, Iraq and Kuwait, writing in different genres - (experimental) narrative, essay-style travel reports, biographical fiction, etc.

Too little available for readers of Arab literature

Arab literature continues to be under-represented in the German-speaking regions. At the end of 2003, altogether 476 fiction titles by Arab authors were available in German. This represents less than 0.5 per cent of fiction titles in print on the German-language book market, according to the Society for the Promotion of Literature from Africa, Asia and Latin America.

The overwhelming majority of these books are not translations from Arabic, but translations of works by Arab authors writing in French or English.

A further proportion of these books is by authors of Arab origin who live in Germany and write in German, of whom there is now quite a considerable number. Only 170 of the available books by Arab authors are translated from Arabic. This figure is not just for first editions, but also includes reprints and paperback editions.

In other words, no more than 10 to 14 titles of "Arabophone" literature are published in German translation each year.

Obstacles holding up the spread of Arab literature

It is by no means a lack of interest in Arab literature that causes this outcome. There are in fact a number of reasons. At book fairs and in meetings, editors from big publishing companies always show a lively interest in the possibility of including contemporary Arab literature in their lists.

The problem is above all linguistic. There is a lack of the necessary knowledge of Arabic to assess the range of literature and make a choice. Publishing houses often feel it is too much of a risk to take on a book based on reports and sample translation extracts. And so in spite of a real interest, "Arabophone" literature is rarely acquired.

It is a different picture for German translations of Francophone Arab literature. It is published more often, and by bigger as well as by more important publishing companies and often with far higher printings. As a result, it has a significantly better presence on the market.

Apart from language obstacles, there is a structural problem in dealings between publishers in Arab and in German-speaking regions: the differences in handling rights and licences.

Unlike in Germany, in Arab countries the translation rights are not usually held by the publishing company, but stay with the authors. As a result, publishers are neither entitled to sell translation rights, nor do they have any business interest in doing so. For this reason, Arab publishers, unlike their European colleagues, do not represent their authors and rarely do anything on their behalf.

The direct consequence of this is that at fairs like the Frankfurt Book Fair, Arab publishers appear only as buyers and not as sellers. Most translations of Arab books into German are not based on contracts between two publishing companies, but on contracts between an Arab author and a German-language publishing company.

Contributing to west-east dialogue

This facilitation of contact will be simpler with the Agentur Alif. At the same time, a larger number of authors will be given the chance to have access to the German-language book market.

As an agent for Arab literature, I am dedicated in my work to intercultural understanding. As indicated, the level now is sobering. All the more given the fact that we live in the age of globalisation and the development of increasingly multicultural societies in which it has become essential to know more of the cultural activities and the literature of other cultures.

In the context of the currently very difficult world political situation and the danger of a divide between the "western" and "eastern" world, dialogue and cultural exchange are more important than ever.

The publishing companies’ interest in Arab literature is there, as the strong response of recent months to the initial activities of the Agentur Alif has shown. The courage to publish works - beyond clichés of Middle Eastern life - could still grow a little more.

Leila Chammaa was born in Beirut in Lebanon in 1965. She read Islamic studies, Arabic studies and politics at the Free University of Berlin and worked for more than ten years as a translator of Arab prose and poetry into German until founding the Agentur Alif last year. As an expert on Arab literature, she acts as an advisor and consultant for publishing companies and institutions.

Originally published on the website of the Frankfurt Book Fair.