It's often said that you can tell a lot about a person by looking at what's on their bookshelves. What do my bookshelves say about me? Well, when I asked myself this question a few years ago, I made an alarming discovery. I'd always thought of myself as a fairly cultured, cosmopolitan sort of person. But my bookshelves told a rather different story. Pretty much all the titles on them were by British or North American authors, and there was almost nothing in translation. Discovering this massive, cultural blind spot in my reading came as quite a shock.
Često kažu da možete reći mnogo o osobi po onome što drže na policama za knjige. Što moje police za knjige kažu o meni? Kad sam se pitala to pitanje prije par godina, otkrila sam nešto alarmantno. Uvijek sam se smatrala prilično kulturnom, kozmopolitskom vrstom osobe. No, moja polica za knjige mi je rekla drukčiju priču. Gotovo svi naslovi na njima su bili britanskih ili sjevernoameričkih autora, i nije bilo skoro ništa prijevoda. Otkriće ove ogromne kulturne mrtve točke u mom čitanju je bio priličan šok.
And when I thought about it, it seemed like a real shame. I knew there had to be lots of amazing stories out there by writers working in languages other than English. And it seemed really sad to think that my reading habits meant I would probably never encounter them. So, I decided to prescribe myself an intensive course of global reading. 2012 was set to be a very international year for the UK; it was the year of the London Olympics. And so I decided to use it as my time frame to try to read a novel, short story collection or memoir from every country in the world. And so I did. And it was very exciting and I learned some remarkable things and made some wonderful connections that I want to share with you today.
Kad sam razmislila o tome, činilo se kao velika šteta. Znala sam da mora postojati mnoštvo nevjerojatnih priča tamo vani koje su napisali pisci na drugim jezicima. Činilo se vrlo tužnim kad pomislim da moje čitalačke navike znače da ih vjerojatno nikad neću sresti. Tako da sam si odlučila prepisati intezivni kurs globalnog čitanja. 2012 je trebala biti vrlo internacionalna godina za UK; to je bila godina Olimpijskih igara u Londonu. Pa sam odlučila iskoristiti duh vremena da pročitam novelu, zbirku kratkih priča ili memoare iz svake države svijeta. To sam i napravila. Bilo je vrlo uzbudljivo i naučila sam neke izvanredne stvari i pronašla neke predivne veze koje želim s vama danas podijeliti.
But it started with some practical problems. After I'd worked out which of the many different lists of countries in the world to use for my project, I ended up going with the list of UN-recognized nations, to which I added Taiwan, which gave me a total of 196 countries. And after I'd worked out how to fit reading and blogging about, roughly, four books a week around working five days a week,
Počelo je s nekim praktičnim problemima. Nakon što sam pronašla različite liste država na svijetu koje ću koristiti u ovom projektu, završila sam sa listom država priznatih od strane UN-a, kojoj sam dodala Taiwan, što mi je dalo ukupno 196 država naposljetku. Nakon što sam smislila kako ću pisati blog i čitati oko četiri knjige na tjedan tijekom pet radnih dana u tjednu,
I then had to face up to the fact that I might even not be able to get books in English from every country. Only around 4.5 percent of the literary works published each year in the UK are translations, and the figures are similar for much of the English-speaking world. Although, the proportion of translated books published in many other countries is a lot higher. 4.5 percent is tiny enough to start with, but what that figure doesn't tell you is that many of those books will come from countries with strong publishing networks and lots of industry professionals primed to go out and sell those titles to English-language publishers. So, for example, although well over 100 books are translated from French and published in the UK each year, most of them will come from countries like France or Switzerland. French-speaking Africa, on the other hand, will rarely ever get a look-in.
onda sam se morala suočiti s činjenicom da možda neću moći ni nabaviti knjige na engleskom iz svake države. Samo oko 4.5 posto književnih djela objavljenih svake godine u UK-u su prijevodi, a brojke su slične za većinu svijeta u kojem se priča engleski. Iako, omjer prevedenih knjiga objavljenih u mnoštvu drugih država je puno veći. 4.5 posto je dovoljan za početak, no ono što vam ova brojka ne govori je da mnoštvo ovih knjiga dolazi iz država s jakim izdavačkim mrežama i mnoštvo stručnjaka u industriji je spremno otići i prodati ove naslove engleskim izdavačima. Iako je, na primjer, preko 100 knjiga prevedeno s francuskog i objavljeno u UK-u svake godine, većina ih dolazi iz država kao što su Francuska ili Švicarska. S druge strane, dio Afrike u kojem se priča francuski će rijetko itko pogledati.
The upshot is that there are actually quite a lot of nations that may have little or even no commercially available literature in English. Their books remain invisible to readers of the world's most published language. But when it came to reading the world, the biggest challenge of all for me was that fact that I didn't know where to start. Having spent my life reading almost exclusively British and North American books, I had no idea how to go about sourcing and finding stories and choosing them from much of the rest of the world. I couldn't tell you how to source a story from Swaziland. I wouldn't know a good novel from Namibia. There was no hiding it -- I was a clueless literary xenophobe. So how on earth was I going to read the world?
Ishod je da postoji prilično mnogo naroda koji imaju malo ili čak nemaju ništa dostupne književnosti na tržištu na engleskom. Njihove knjige su ostale nevidljive čitateljima najizdavanijeg jezika na svijetu. No, kad je došlo do čitanja svijeta, najveći izazov za mene je bila činjenica da ne znam odakle početi. Čitajući cijelog života skoro isključivo britanske i sjevernoameričke knjige, nisam imala pojma kako pronaći priče i izabrati upravo njih između ostatka svijeta. Nisam znala kako pronaći priču iz Swazilanda. Ne bih znala dobar roman iz Namibije. Nisam to mogla sakriti -- bila sam neinformirani književni ksenofob. Kako sam onda mogla pročitati svijet?
I was going to have to ask for help. So in October 2011, I registered my blog, ayearofreadingtheworld.com, and I posted a short appeal online. I explained who I was, how narrow my reading had been, and I asked anyone who cared to to leave a message suggesting what I might read from other parts of the planet. Now, I had no idea whether anyone would be interested, but within a few hours of me posting that appeal online, people started to get in touch. At first, it was friends and colleagues. Then it was friends of friends. And pretty soon, it was strangers.
Morala sam potražiti pomoć. U listopadu 2011. godine sam registrirala svoj blog, ayearofreadingtheworld.com i objavila kratki poziv u pomoć online. Objasnila sam tko sam, koliko je usko moje područje čitanja bilo, i pitala bilo koga, tko želi da mi ostavi poruku preporuke što bih mogla čitati iz drugih dijelova planeta. Nisam imala pojma hoće li itko biti zainteresiran, no unutar par sati od moje objave, ljudi su se krenuli javljati. Prvo su to bili prijatelji i kolege. Onda prijatelji prijatelja. A uskoro i stranci.
Four days after I put that appeal online, I got a message from a woman called Rafidah in Kuala Lumpur. She said she loved the sound of my project, could she go to her local English-language bookshop and choose my Malaysian book and post it to me? I accepted enthusiastically, and a few weeks later, a package arrived containing not one, but two books -- Rafidah's choice from Malaysia, and a book from Singapore that she had also picked out for me. Now, at the time, I was amazed that a stranger more than 6,000 miles away would go to such lengths to help someone she would probably never meet.
Četiri dana nakon moje objave, dobila sam poruku od žene imena Rafidah iz Kuala Lumpura. Rekla je da joj se sviđa moj projekt, i može li otići u lokalnu knjižaru na engleskom i izabrati Malezijsku knjigu i poslati mi? Prihvatila sam entuzijastično, i nekoliko tjedana poslije, mi je stigao paket s, ne jednom, već dvije knjige -- Rafidahin izbor iz Malezije, i knjiga iz Singapura koju je, također, izabrala za mene. U to vrijeme, bila sam oduševljena da bi se stranac više od 9600 km udaljen toliko potrudi da pomogne nekome koga vjerojatno nikad neće sresti.
But Rafidah's kindness proved to be the pattern for that year. Time and again, people went out of their way to help me. Some took on research on my behalf, and others made detours on holidays and business trips to go to bookshops for me. It turns out, if you want to read the world, if you want to encounter it with an open mind, the world will help you. When it came to countries with little or no commercially available literature in English, people went further still.
No Rafidahina dobrota se pokazala kao uzorak te godine. Svaki put iznova, ljudi su se jako potrudili da bi mi pomogli. Neki su istražili temu u moje ime, a neki su napravili skretanje sa odmora i poslovnih putovanja da bi obišli knjižare za mene. Ispada, da ako želite pročitati svijet, ako ga želite susresti otvorenog uma, svijet će vam pomoći. Kad se radilo o državama s malo ili nimalo komercijalno dostupne književnosti na engleskom, ljudi su otišli još dalje.
Books often came from surprising sources. My Panamanian read, for example, came through a conversation I had with the Panama Canal on Twitter. Yes, the Panama Canal has a Twitter account. And when I tweeted at it about my project, it suggested that I might like to try and get hold of the work of the Panamanian author Juan David Morgan. I found Morgan's website and I sent him a message, asking if any of his Spanish-language novels had been translated into English. And he said that nothing had been published, but he did have an unpublished translation of his novel "The Golden Horse." He emailed this to me, allowing me to become one of the first people ever to read that book in English.
Knjige su često stizale s nevjerojatnih izvora. Moja knjiga iz Paname, na primjer, došla je preko razgovora sa Panamskim kanalom na Twitteru. Da, Panamski kanal ima Twitter račun. I kad sam im tvitala o svom projektu, predložili su mi da nabavim rad panamskog autora Juana Davida Morgana. Pronašla sam Morganovu web stranicu i poslala mu poruku, s pitanjem jel ijedan od njegovih romana na španjolskom preveden na engleski. Odgovorio mi je da ništa nije izdano, no da ima neobjavljen prijevod romana "Zlatni konj," Poslao mi ga je emailom omogućujući da postanem jedna od prvih ljudi koji će pročitati ovu knjigu na engleskom.
Morgan was by no means the only wordsmith to share his work with me in this way. From Sweden to Palau, writers and translators sent me self-published books and unpublished manuscripts of books that hadn't been picked up by Anglophone publishers or that were no longer available, giving me privileged glimpses of some remarkable imaginary worlds. I read, for example, about the Southern African king Ngungunhane, who led the resistance against the Portuguese in the 19th century; and about marriage rituals in a remote village on the shores of the Caspian sea in Turkmenistan. I met Kuwait's answer to Bridget Jones.
Morgan nije bio jedini umjetnik koji je podjelio svoj rad sa mnom na ovaj način. Od Švedske do Palaua, pisci i prevoditelji su mi slali samostalno objavljene knjige i neobjavljene rukopise knjiga koje nisu izabrali anglofilni izdavači ili koje više nisu dostupne, pružajući mi privilegirane uvide u neke od izvanrednih imaginarnih svjetova. Čitala sam, na primjer, o južnoafričkom kralju Ngungunhane, koji je poveo pokret otpora protiv Portugalaca u 19. stoljeću; o svadbenim ritualima u zabačenom selu na obalama Kaspijskog jezera u Turkmenistanu. Naišla sam na kuvajtski odgovor na Bridget Jones.
(Laughter)
(Smijeh)
And I read about an orgy in a tree in Angola.
Čitala sam o orgijama u drvetu u Angoli.
But perhaps the most amazing example of the lengths that people were prepared to go to to help me read the world, came towards the end of my quest, when I tried to get hold of a book from the tiny, Portuguese-speaking African island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe. Now, having spent several months trying everything I could think of to find a book that had been translated into English from the nation, it seemed as though the only option left to me was to see if I could get something translated for me from scratch. Now, I was really dubious whether anyone was going to want to help with this, and give up their time for something like that. But, within a week of me putting a call out on Twitter and Facebook for Portuguese speakers, I had more people than I could involve in the project, including Margaret Jull Costa, a leader in her field, who has translated the work of Nobel Prize winner José Saramago. With my nine volunteers in place, I managed to find a book by a São Toméan author that I could buy enough copies of online. Here's one of them. And I sent a copy out to each of my volunteers. They all took on a couple of short stories from this collection, stuck to their word, sent their translations back to me, and within six weeks, I had the entire book to read.
No, možda je najnevjerojatniji primjer koliko daleko su ljudi spremni otići da bi mi pomogli pročitati svijet, stigao na kraju mog pothvata, kada sam pokušala pronaći knjigu iz male portugalske afričke otočne države Sveti Toma i Prinsipe. Provela sam nekoliko mjeseci pokušavajući sve što sam se mogla sjetiti da pronađem knjigu prevedenu na engleski iz države, činilo se da je jedina opcija koja mi je ostala da probam vidjeti hoće li netko prevesti nešto za mene od početka. Bila sam vrlo sumnjičava hoće li mi netko pomoći s ovim, i posvetiti svoje vrijeme nečemu ovakvom. No, unutar jednog tjedna otkad sam uputila poziv na Twitteru i Facebooku za ljude koji pričaju portugalski, imala sam više ljudi nego što sam mogla uključiti u ovaj projekt, uključujući Margaret Jull Costa, predvodnicu u ovom području, koja je prevela rad nobelovca Joséa Saramaga. Sa svojih devet volontera na mjestu, uspjela sam pronaći knjigu autora iz Svetog Tome čijih sam kopija mogla kupiti dovoljno online. Evo jedna od njih. Poslala sam kopiju svakom dobrovoljcu. Svatko od njih je uzeo nekoliko kratkih priča iz ove kolekcije, održali su svoju riječ i poslali mi svoje prijevode, i unutar šest tjedana sam imala cijelu knjigu za pročitati.
In that case, as I found so often during my year of reading the world, my not knowing and being open about my limitations had become a big opportunity. When it came to São Tomé and Príncipe, it was a chance not only to learn something new and discover a new collection of stories, but also to bring together a group of people and facilitate a joint creative endeavor. My weakness had become the project's strength.
U tom slučaju, kao što sam otkrila često tijekom moje godine čitanja svijeta, moje neznanje i otvorenost o mojim ograničenjima je postala velika prilika. Što se tiče Svetog Tome i Prinsipea, to je bila prilika ne samo da naučim nešto novo i otkrijem novu zbirku priča, nego da povežem grupu ljudi i olakšam zajednički kreativni pothvat. Moja slabost je postala snaga projekta.
The books I read that year opened my eyes to many things. As those who enjoy reading will know, books have an extraordinary power to take you out of yourself and into someone else's mindset, so that, for a while at least, you look at the world through different eyes. That can be an uncomfortable experience, particularly if you're reading a book from a culture that may have quite different values to your own. But it can also be really enlightening. Wrestling with unfamiliar ideas can help clarify your own thinking. And it can also show up blind spots in the way you might have been looking at the world.
Knjige koje sam pročitala te godine su otvorile moje oči za mnoštvo stvari. Svi oni koji uživaju u čitanju znaju, da knjige imaju nevjerojatnu moć da vas odmaknu od samog sebe i stave u tuđe cipele, tako da, makar privremeno, gledate svijet drugim očima. Ovo može biti neugodno iskustvo, posebno ako čitate knjigu iz kulture koja je prilično drukčija od vaše vlastite. No, može biti i vrlo prosvjetljujuće. Hrvanje s nepoznatim idejama može pomoći razbistriti vlastito razmišljanje. I može, također, pokazati mrtve točke u načinu na koji ste dosad gledati svijet.
When I looked back at much of the English-language literature I'd grown up with, for example, I began to see how narrow a lot of it was, compared to the richness that the world has to offer. And as the pages turned, something else started to happen, too. Little by little, that long list of countries that I'd started the year with, changed from a rather dry, academic register of place names into living, breathing entities.
Kad pogledam većinu književnosti na engleskom jeziku uz koju sam odrasla, na primjer, uviđam koliko je uska većina bila, u usporedbi s bogatstvom koje svijet priža. I kako su se stranice okretale, nešto drugo se, također, počelo događati. Malo po malo, ta dugačka lista država s kojom sam započela godinu se promjenila iz prilično suhoparnog, akademskog registra imena mjesta u živuće, dišuće entitete.
Now, I don't want to suggest that it's at all possible to get a rounded picture of a country simply by reading one book. But cumulatively, the stories I read that year made me more alive than ever before to the richness, diversity and complexity of our remarkable planet. It was as though the world's stories and the people who'd gone to such lengths to help me read them had made it real to me. These days, when I look at my bookshelves or consider the works on my e-reader, they tell a rather different story. It's the story of the power books have to connect us across political, geographical, cultural, social, religious divides. It's the tale of the potential human beings have to work together.
Ne govorim da je moguće dobiti cjeloukupnu sliku države čitajući samo jedne knjige. No kumulativno, priče koje sam pročitala te godine su me oživjele više nego ikad za bogatstvo, različitost i složenost našeg izvanrednog planeta. Bilo je kao da su ih svjetske priče i ljudi koji su se toliko potrudili da mi pomognu pročitati ih učinili stvarnijima. Ovih dana, kad pogledam na svoju policu za knjige ili promotrim djela na mom e-čitaču, govore prilično drukčiju priču. To je priča o snazi koju knjige imaju da nas povežu usprkos političkim, geografskim, kulturnim, socijalnim, religijskim podjelama. To je priča o potencijalu koji ljudska bića imaju kad rade zajedno.
And, it's testament to the extraordinary times we live in, where, thanks to the Internet, it's easier than ever before for a stranger to share a story, a worldview, a book with someone she may never meet, on the other side of the planet. I hope it's a story I'm reading for many years to come. And I hope many more people will join me. If we all read more widely, there'd be more incentive for publishers to translate more books, and we would all be richer for that.
I to je svjedočanstvo nevjerojatnog doba u kojem živimo, gdje je, zahvaljujući internetu, lakše nego ikad prije da stranac podjeli priču, svjetonazor, knjigu s nekim koga možda nikad neće sresti, na drugom kraju planeta. Nadam se da je to priča koju ću čitati još mnoštvo godina. Nadam se da će mi se više ljudi pridružiti. Kad bi svi čitali šire, bio bi to poticaj da izdavači prevedu više knjiga, i svi bi bili bogatiji zbog toga.
Thank you.
Hvala vam.
(Applause)
(Pljesak)