Latest news with #PollyBarton
Daily Mirror
18-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mirror
Translated fiction boom as younger generations scope out 'adventurous' reads
Polly Barton, the celebrated translator of the bestselling book Butter, puts the rise of translated fiction in perspective and explains why its so important to expand our horizons There's a reason you've been seeing 'Butter' by Asako Yuzuki in the windows of Waterstones all over the country and carried around on tubes and buses. The cult Japanese novel has taken the UK by storm after being translated into English by Polly Barton, becoming a Sunday Times bestseller and winner of the Waterstones Book of the Year 2024 and shortlisted for the 2025 British Book Awards Debut Novel of the Year. The popularity of Butter is just one example of the rising popularity of translated fiction in the country, but who is driving this booming market? According to a study by the esteemed Booker Prize Foundation, millennials and Gen Zers - Generation TF ('Translated Fiction') are the ones driving demand. In 2023, the charity behind the prestigious Booker Prize awards revealed that in the year prior, 48% of translated fiction buyers in the UK were under the age of 34. The genre also doesn't seem to be favoured by any particular gender, with a near-even split between male and female buyers. Polly Barton, Butter's celebrated translator, has one theory about why translated fiction appeals so strongly to younger audiences. She speculates that the digital landscape that defined their upbringing may mean they are 'more accustomed to interacting with content from all over the world, without necessarily being conscious of where it comes from'. According to Barton, younger readers also aren't as likely to have a pressing sense of anglophone literary works and can thus 'go where their nose takes them' and 'pursue whatever strikes them as the most appealing'. Though she believes that the rising popularity in translated works is evidence that people of all demographics are reading more adventurously'. Publishers, particularly independent publishers by Barton's estimation, are more willing to take chances on translated works that don't fit comfortably into the mould of other books. She particularly applauds independent publishers 'taking risks to publish the kind of books that haven't been released before.' "Much of the work we've read in recent years that feels genuinely new in terms of content, style, form, and expectations around narrative, is in translation," say Barton. "It is often these books that produce our biggest mind-expanding, jaw-dropping, total-joy-inducing moments in reading." The rising push for translated fiction also has political implications, Barton explains. 'At this moment in history when it feels like insularity and cultural homogeneity is being presented around the world as a solution to deep-rooted economic issues, standing behind translating literature signifies resisting xenophobia and prejudice, and embracing the richness, joy, and understanding that encounters with difference can bring," she tells The Mirror. Naturally, this raises questions about what works get translated. What type of books should be prioritised for translation? Who are they written by? And into what languages should they be translated? 'Translation is the dissemination of ideas and worldviews, and so it always comes with the attached questions of, which ideas and which worldviews,' says Barton. 'In that sense, the publishers and translators are involved in a hugely political form of decision-making.' That said, translated Japanese fiction has experienced a particularly notable uptick in recent years. According to the Booker Prizes' study, while 1.9 million translated titles were sold in the UK in 2022, 14 out of the 30 biggest-selling titles were translated from Japanese. In addition to Butter, Barton has also translated the newest buzzed-about Japanese novel, Hunchback. The provocative novel was longlisted for this year's International Booker Prize and won the Akutagawa prize, Japan's most prestigious literary award. In fact, 2025 saw several Akutagawa Prize-winning novels translated into English, including May You Have Delicious Meals by Junko Takase (translated by Morgan Giles) and Tokyo Sympathy Tower by Rie Qudan (translated by Jesse Kirkwood). Despite the fact that translated fiction is on the rise, it has not necessarily led to a greater appreciation for the work of translators "or much consideration of the act of translation itself," says Barton. That's why she founded the Translated By, Bristol festival along with the independent bookshops Gloucester Road Books and Storysmith. The festival which launched this month 'celebrates the art and practice of literary translation, foregrounding the translators themselves'. The festival is taking place in Bristol and will from May 12 to May 25 2025.
13-05-2025
- Entertainment
Japan's Yuzuki Wins British Book Award
News from Japan Society Culture May 13, 2025 22:23 (JST) Tokyo, May 13 (Jiji Press)---The English version of "Butter," a novel by Japanese author Asako Yuzuki, won the debut fiction category of the 2025 British Book Awards, Japanese publisher Shinchosha Publishing Co. said Tuesday. Yuzuki is the first Japanese author to win the award, according to the publisher. The work is a long novel inspired by a series of suspicious deaths that actually occurred in the greater Tokyo area. The English version was published in February last year in a translation by Polly Barton. Since then, the work has become a bestseller, selling more than 400,000 copies in Britain and more than 100,000 copies in the United States. "I feel greatly honored. I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Polly Barton, who translated my novel beautifully, and to the publisher, bookstore staff and readers," Yuzuki said. [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.] Jiji Press
The Guardian
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Willkommen, bienvenue! New festival celebrates translated fiction from Cameroon to Slovakia as sales boom
A new festival of translated literature is being launched in Bristol next week amid a sales boom in translated fiction in the UK. Translated By, Bristol is the brainchild of Polly Barton, author and translator of the award-winning Butter by Asako Yuzuki, and Tom Robinson, owner of Gloucester Road Books, which is organising the festival alongside Barton and another independent Bristol bookshop, Storysmith. 'Translated fiction becoming more popular in recent years has not necessarily led to a greater appreciation for the work of translators, or much consideration of the act of translation itself,' says Robinson. 'We wanted to think about whether there was something we could do that would address both of these concerns.' The festival, which runs 12-25 May, will feature a conversation between five translators shortlisted for the International Booker prize and a 'translation duel' – in which translators debate their translations of a text in front of an audience – among other events. UK readers continue to have strong appetites for translated fiction, with Butter selling almost 250,000 copies in the UK last year. Social media buzz around particular titles has helped shift copies: Ros Schwartz's translation of Jacqueline Harpman's I Who Have Never Known Men, a favourite on 'BookTok', sold 45,000 copies last year, an elevenfold rise on 2022 sales. Festival organisers were aware of increased interest in translated literature from readers, meaning they felt the festival 'would have a breadth of appeal it might not have done, say, five years ago', says Barton. A central reason for the recent success of translated literature is the work of independent publishers such as Fitzcarraldo, Peirene and Comma, say the organisers. Those presses 'tend to be more willing to take risks', adds Robinson. One of the key aims of the festival is to showcase a 'breadth of languages and geographies, beyond the major languages and locations of Europe, which tend to occupy so much focus', says Robinson. The programme features an event on translating the work of the Cameroonian poet Jean-Claude Awono and another with Hassan Blasim, who writes in Arabic, along with his translator Jonathan Wright. The festival will also host a conversation between two prominent translators of Latin American literature, Frank Wynne and Annie McDermott. 'We also have events featuring European languages that aren't the five or so that get the most attention,' says Barton, with conversations about books translated from Slovakian (This Room Is Impossible to Eat by Nicol Hochholczerová, translated by Julia and Peter Sherwood) and Danish (Iron Lung by Kirstine Reffstrup, translated by Hunter Simpson). Barton sees this approach of 'actively looking beyond our immediate borders' as helping to 'resist the political currents promoting xenophobia, prejudice and cultural homogeneity'. The festival will also see Max Porter talking to two of his translators, Saskia van der Lingen (Dutch) and Charles Recoursé (French). It will close with the translation duel, featuring Adriana Hunter and Wynne. 'The language of the slam this year is French, and we're distributing the text to people in advance, so there's the opportunity for people with a little French knowledge to have a go themselves if they like,' says Robinson. Duels are an 'excellent way of opening up the process for people and allowing them to get a sense of how creative translation really is', adds Barton. Translated By, Bristol is on 12-25 May
The Guardian
07-03-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa review
In my local bookshop, many of the titles on the display table are by female Japanese writers, and can be divided into two categories: the transgressive and the cat-inflected cosy. Hunchback fits gloriously into the former. A debut novel, it won the Akutagawa prize, Japan's most prestigious literary award, and has been longlisted for the International Booker; it is translated by Polly Barton, who also translated last year's potboiler feminist hit, Butter by Asako Yuzuki. It begins with a titillating story about a visit to a sex club, written by our narrator, Shaka, from her room in the care home set up by her parents. She has never been to a sex club. The care home is named, with some irony, Ingleside, after the house Anne of Green Gables lives in with her husband and children. Shaka has myotubular myopathy: her spine is S-shaped and therefore, she says, her life is too, unable to follow the conventions of Japanese society which 'works on the understanding that disabled people don't exist'. When not taking online university courses or writing sex journalism, she tweets things she believes no one will see – 'I'd like to know what it's like to have an abortion', 'In another life, I'd like to work as a high-class prostitute' and 'I want to do the job in swingers' clubs where you get to scatter condoms from the ceiling.' Most of her needs are taken care of; she donates the money she makes from sex writing, so that families can have 'furikake to sprinkle on … rice so then it'd feel like a meal'. And the work is not entirely selfless. As Shaka notes, 'I went to the toilet and changed my pantyliner, where writing the sex scene had left its trace in strings of see-through liquid.' Everyone deserves a little sprinkling of furikake, of joy and flavour, is the novel's easy-to-get-on-board-with philosophy; but when Shaka tries to apply this philosophy to her own needs, things go darkly awry. A male careworker, Tanaka, hints that he's been reading her tweets and erotic stories. A 'beta male', he tells her of his own (financial) disadvantages. She offers him money to have sex with her. Both have power and are powerless, and, in different ways, hold each other in contempt. Is Shaka's goal orgasm, an abortion or true annihilation? The sex act she chooses hints at the final option. In Barton's deft translation, a man who visits a brothel resembles 'a lanky minion' and phlegm is 'like green olive oil'. Faced with a real live penis, Shaka 'had the urge to cut a long strip of flavoured nori to size and stick it on top, to serve as the censoring black bars that I was used to' from erotic manga. Sex for Shaka is mediated through pornography instead of emotion, as it is for many people now. This may be unpalatable for some readers, but the prevalence of porn is discussed with a mischievous and nihilistic humour. There are rants against the fetishisation of bookshops and physical books, which are cumbersome and difficult to handle for someone with Shaka's disability. There are asides on Wagner and his complexes about height, on David Lynch and the disability activist Tomoko Yonezu, who sprayed paint at the Mona Lisa when it was on loan in Tokyo to protest against the fact that people with disabilities had restricted access. The novel asks us which is more important: access to culture or to sexual expression? And, like all good fiction, it doesn't provide a straight answer. Ichikawa uses the vantage point of her disability for a particular insight into human nature, but we mustn't condescend to call this novella autobiographical. Its structure – beginning and ending with a story, the latter possibly written by the narrator, possibly not – would tease us if we do. Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa, translated by Polly Barton, is published by Penguin (£10.99). To support the Guardian and Observer, order your copy at Delivery charges may apply.
Japan Times
21-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Japan Times
'A Hundred Years and a Day': Short stories unfold through the lives of structures and spaces
Tomoka Shibasaki's short stories don't run on human time; they run on architectural time. In her curious collection The 34 stories, each somewhere between three to seven pages long, take place mostly in Japan, and occasionally in other unnamed countries. Characters, too, are usually unnamed ('my grandmother,' 'student one,' 'the wife'), which gives the stories an allegorical feel, as if each highly specific narrative could also be easily generalized. A Hundred Years and a Day, by Tomoka Shibasaki. Translated by Polly Barton. 184 pages, STONE BRIDGE PRESS, fiction.
