Detective Story - 3

Our analysis of the present situation surrounding the over-large representation of crime fiction among published English translations of new Nordic writing appears to have ruffled some feathers over at Scandinavian Crime Fiction. An anonymous blogger there, who confesses to "not reading any Nordic languages", says that it's "taking me a while to figure out how to respond," and after attempting one or two objections, more or less concedes that the translation of crime writing may not be the ideal field of work for professionally committed translators:

Luckily, I have a day job doing something I love, so I don’t have to read or write anything I don’t want to because my life depends upon it.I imagine full-time translators feel a bit more at the mercy of the marketplace, and it must be dispiriting to find the work on offer trending toward a type of book you don’t like much. But is this really a tragedy? And is genre fiction to blame? I don’t buy it.

The argument sounds a tad cynical, no?

No doubt there will be further responses of this kind in SCF's comments section - but I'd recommend anyone who wants to argue the toss to come over here and continue the debate.

Detective Story
Detective Story - 2