Wanted: More Literary Translators

Sir Butch Dalisay blogs about the need for more literary translators. An excerpt:

A READER named Monching Romano—who runs www.divisoria.com and www.dilimanrepublic.com—wrote in to ask for some help in looking for new Philippine fiction in Filipino for libraries in the United States. “We've been selling Philippine books online since 2000,” Monching says. “Aside from our overseas Pinoy customers, we also have US libraries ordering from us for their Asian/Philippine sections. Our latest inquiry is an order for 50 titles of Philippine Fiction in Tagalog published from 2005 and above. We've contacted the usual suppliers—National Bookstore and University presses—but we can't seem to fill-up the list for 50 titles. We also have an inquiry for 30 titles of Children's Fiction also in Tagalog. Would you be able to suggest other publishers/suppliers where we can probably get more titles? Maraming salamat po.”

I have a feeling that this shouldn’t be a problem—seeing all those new titles coming out of the annual Manila book fair, for example, and knowing how many new young authors in Filipino have been getting published recently—but to speed things up for Monching, let me ask readers and publishers who may have titles to contribute to write Monching Romano directly at monching@divisoria.com.

This should be a great break for writers in Filipino, considering that it’s the writers in English who’ve very often gotten all the international exposure, through fellowships, grants, and invitations to writers’ festivals. As one of the latter beneficiaries, I can’t complain, but I point out whenever I can in these international venues that our literature is much more diverse than our offerings in English would seem to suggest, and that we have exciting new writing being done in Filipino and other Philippine languages.