Tim Groenland & Michaela Králová: Data, Discoverability & Translation
This article draws on our shared research to explore limitations upon available data on translated books in the UK and Ireland, focusing on the absence of a comprehensive database of titles. We focus here on a technical issue that is linked in direct ways to the visibility of writing in translation and translators: namely, the creation and circulation of bibliographical metadata, and the underlying infrastructures through which metadata is shared. We suggest that the discoverability of books in translation—in terms of identifying them as being translated—is directly linked to the extent to which translation and the work of translators are valued by publishers. Drawing on our interviews with literary translators, we go on to develop this link, showing how an absence of information and transparency in the industry defines translators’ working conditions.
This article emerges from the ‘Publishing Infrastructures of Contemporary Anglophone Literature’ project which is conducting a comparative study of publishing infrastructures across three different Anglophone territories – Ireland, the US, and Britain – to identify how those infrastructures shape contemporary literature. Using a range of methodologies including literary scholarship, interviews with authors and publishing workers, and cultural analytics, the project analyses the infrastructures mediating literary culture today. Drawing on the recent turn towards the study of literary institutions, it seeks to identify and analyse the key forces mediating and shaping contemporary literary publishing. By focusing on case studies and mapping the networks through which books are created and sold, the project expands our understanding of publishing conditions in Anglophone literature as well as contributing to improving equity of access to publication. The project is supported by the Taighde Éireann/Research Ireland Pathway scheme.
Read ‘Data, Discoverability, and Translation in the UK and Irish Book Markets’, Mémoires du livre/Studies in Book Culture, Volume 16, Number 2, Winter 2025, p. 1-26, here.
Tim Groenland is a Research Ireland Pathway Fellow in the School of English, Drama and Film at University College Dublin, Ireland, where he is PI on the project ‘The Publishing Infrastructures of Contemporary Anglophone Literature’. His book The Art of Editing: Raymond Carver and David Foster Wallace was published in 2019 by Bloomsbury Academic. He recently co-edited a special issue of Post45 with Evan Brier on ‘Editing American Literature’ (2024), and his work is published or forthcoming in venues including Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction, Contemporary Women’s Writing, and The Irish University Review.
Michaela Králová is a Research Ireland-funded PhD candidate at the School of English, Drama and Film in University College Dublin, working with Dr Tim Groenland’s project ‘The Publishing Infrastructures of Contemporary Anglophone Literature’. She previously completed her M.Phil. at the Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation, Trinity College Dublin. Her PhD thesis focuses on contemporary Irish literature in translation. Her critical reviews and translations have been published in the Trinity Journal of Literary Translation, Full Stop Magazine, and the Czech literary journal iLiteratura.