Developing the Supply-Driven Translation Model Beyond a Small Nation Context

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The way that literature moves around the world - the way that it's promoted, funded and translated into other languages - has huge potential to influence the books we can read, and with that, the stories and voices that we can engage with as readers. It used to be said that literature in translation made up around 3% of all fiction books published in the English language in the UK and Ireland (Donahaye 2012), but new data indicates that translated fiction in the UK market grew by 5.5 percent between 2001 and 2016 (Publishing Perspectives 2019). Even more significantly, the data shows 20% growth within the "general/literary fiction" subcategory, whilst non-translated English-language fiction in the same category remained flat. These figures point to a growing interest in stories from elsewhere, and as such, it is more important than ever to understand the factors that influence whose stories get to be read.In the discipline of Translation Studies, theories that explain the circulation of literature as a system (see Even Zohar, 1978, 1990) have tended to assume that the power lies with the so-called 'dominant' languages, who 'select' works of literature to suit a particular need, or fill a gap, in their domestic literary market. Yet what about the stories of nations whose literature will likely never be translated as a result of market demand? My PhD research is part of a growing body of work in Translation Studies that challenges this assumption that the literature of small nations is translated only as and when a market demand in a 'major' literary culture emerges; instead, the literature of small nations is being funded and produced in innovative ways that circumnavigate the cultural gatekeepers of more 'dominant' literary nations. It should be noted that the term 'small' nation, as with similar labels such as 'minor' or 'peripheral', is not merely an indication of geographic size of location; whilst there is no single definition of a 'small nation', there is agreement that 'small' points to 'unequal international context in which literatures circulate' (Chitnis et al, 2020).When we acknowledge that the literature of small nations is produced as a result of their drive to supply it, rather than solely as a result of demand from a major language publishing market, the literatures of small nations are no longer footnotes on the periphery of TS research, but are instead sites of innovation and struggle, and the cultural agents of those smaller nations are revealed to have much more agency in their assertion of cultural soft power than was previously assumed. Understanding how and why this happens, and using a combination of research methods to highlight the human agency in this systemic view of translation processes, is key if we are to understand whose voices get to be read, and how translation and publishing professionals should intervene when the voices of certain social groups are absent from our cultural imagination.Increased knowledge and greater transparency about the circulation of literature in translation has the potential to make significant long term social and economic impacts for both readers and publishing industries. When the literary system is brought to life, readers can engage with their consumption of literature in a much more meaningful way, and are empowered to make interventions in their reading (and purchasing) choices, deciding whose voices to seek out, as opposed to being confronted only by those on the top of bestseller lists. Significantly, my work also highlights the powerful potential that translations have to construct images of cultures and societies, and given that this research will enable publishers to circumnavigate structural biases in publishing by observing how small nations drive the supply of their literature, this research wields the potential to increase the number and diversity of voices available through literature in UK society.