ABSTRACT
The sale of translation rights still forms a large part of the work of a publisher’s rights department; with reductions and fluctuations in licensing income from areas such as paperback rights, book club rights and serial rights they have taken on greater importance and may be sought as part of the publisher’s overall package of rights, particularly if a large advance is being required by the author or the author’s agent. However, translation rights may not always be granted, particularly if the agency has a specialist department for handling such rights. Literary agents often work through a network of subagents in individual overseas markets; in such cases, their agreements with authors may provide for the deduction of 20 per cent commission, to allow for the additional commission for the local subagent. Translations of English-language books tend to dominate the market,
perhaps hardly surprising when it was confirmed in a Bowker survey in 2004 that 40 per cent of all new titles produced were English-language original titles; at the time of writing there has been no updated survey, but the figure is thought to remain accurate. The accessibility of the English language makes English books easier to assess than those in many other languages and translators tend to be easier to find. In addition to this, Anglophone publishers have the advantage of long experience in placing their rights abroad, and have a stable of well-known authors of literary and popular fiction as well as non-fiction and academic writers. By contrast, a figure of 3 per cent is often cited as the figure for translated titles published in English in the United Kingdom and the United States, although there has been some rise since 2012 with the popularity of translated Scandinavian crime novels. While the aim of placing translation rights is certainly to generate welcome
additional revenue, there is also the motivation of bringing the book to a wider readership. Here there may be some difference in the method of operation between academic and trade publishers. Some academic authors are keen that their books should be licensed for
translation less for financial reasons than to ‘spread the word’, particularly if they are writing in a field where they feel that information is badly needed in the poorer countries of the world. Examples here might include books
on medicine, economic development, new business techniques and aspects of technology. A rights department in an academic publishing house may therefore be prepared to invest time in arranging a licence for a nursing book to Nepal, a logistics book to Mongolia or a book on rural development to Malaysia, often following up contacts provided by the author. Such arrangements may be on the basis of a token fee and may not cover the cost of administering the licence, although the exercise usually generates considerable goodwill from the author and should contribute to the general process of maintaining a long-term relationship with such writers. Academic publishers may also spend considerable time dealing with
licence applications from countries that have limited resources for payment, or from developing and newly industrialized countries which may have introduced forms of compulsory licensing. They may also be dealing with publishers in countries that do not belong to any of the international copyright conventions or which have a poor record of copyright compliance. In such cases, licensing should be regarded as ‘defensive’ rather than as a voluntary activity, as a means of combating piracy, compulsory licences and unauthorized editions. The importance of copyright knowledge when dealing with a wide range
of countries cannot be overemphasized. There is a tendency to assume that the major developed countries of the world operate against a similar background of copyright protection, but there may still be anomalies in both the duration and the standards of protection. For example, at the time of writing, Japan still has a copyright term of 50 years post mortem auctoris, although there are plans to extend this to 70 or even 75 years. The EU duration directive removed discrepancies in the periods of protection in member states, which are now harmonized to 70 years post mortem auctoris (see Chapter 1 for further details). However, many other countries have shorter terms of protection, which may mean that a British work still protected in its country of origin and elsewhere within the European Union may have entered the public domain in other countries. China, a major buyer of rights for the last 20 years, also still has a copyright protection period of 50 years post mortem auctoris. EU legislation can also affect the territorial aspects of licence arrangements; for example, the granting of German translation rights for the territory of Germany alone would be viewed as impeding free trade within the area, whereas the granting of world German-language rights to a publisher in Germany would be acceptable. The provisions of foreign copyright legislation elsewhere can prove prob-
lematic for British works; for example, the copyright law introduced in Japan from 1 January 1971 provided that foreign titles published before that date are considered to be in the public domain as far as translation rights are concerned, if no authorized Japanese translation has appeared within ten years of first publication of the original edition. Egypt, Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Yugoslavia (whose legislation is still in force in Serbia and Montenegro)
also have compulsory translation legislation. Russia, a member of the Berne Convention since 1995, joined with the proviso that foreign works first published in their country of origin before 27 May 1973 (the date of the accession of the then Soviet Union to the Universal Copyright Convention) remain in the public domain and can be freely used in Russia. Promoting translation rights to foreign-language publishers normally
involves a variety of techniques: general mailing of catalogues and perhaps selective rights guides for key new titles, provision of information and material on specific projects, attendance at the relevant international book fairs, and, if rights potential is high, separate sales trips to visit customers in individual countries. Rights are also promoted via company or dedicated rights department websites (see Specific promotion: advance information and promotional material in Chapter 7) and via e-mail alerts linking to the URL of a particular book description on such websites. In most cases, business correspondence is conducted in English, but
some incoming correspondence may be in languages other than English. It is here that linguistic expertise will prove valuable, as well as in face-to-face contact with customers. Some foreign-language publishers employ scouts in Europe, the United
Kingdom and the United States who will comb catalogues, websites and the trade press for suitable titles on their behalf. Some western publishers and literary agents will choose to employ subagents in markets such as Japan, Korea, Taiwan, mainland China and central and eastern Europe if they feel that this is preferable to visiting or promoting directly to such markets (see The use of subagents in Chapter 7). It is inevitable that titles with excellent potential for translation in some
markets are non-starters in others. This is only natural when one is dealing with a wide range of licensees whose cultural, social, political and economic perspectives may differ greatly from country to country, and it is crucial for rights sellers to monitor trends in different markets; examples in recent years have included mind, body and spirit, vampire novels and stories set in a dystopian society. Even when a title is accepted for translation, licensees may be keen to use a different cover to reflect local cultural and design requirements – easily achieved if the licensee is manufacturing their own edition, but problematic for coeditions for reasons of cost (see Coeditions later in this chapter).
