The Commerce of Translation

The Contemporary Landscape of Arabic Translation: A Postcolonial Perspective

“…Baker (2001) believes that its "potential is as yet unrealized" (p. xiii) even in Europe and the United States. According to Keeley (1980), the state of translation and translators in the United States is fairly grim, "though not quite as grim as they [translators] once were" (p. 14) because translation has been for a long time regarded as a subsection of Comparative Literature. Even today Translation Studies are housed within departments of Cultural Studies or Comparative Literature.…”

Translation, Authorship, Copyright

“…Insofar as the law subordinates the translator's rights to the author's, it shrinks the translator's share in the profits of the translation. A recent survey ISSN 1355-6509 © St Jerome Publishing, Manchester Downloaded by [University of Exeter] at 04:09 15 July 2015 Translation, Authorship, Copyright 2 conducted by the PEN American Center indicates that most translations in the United States are done on a work-for-hire basis, whereby the translator receives a flat fee with no percentage of the royalties or subsidiary rights sales from, for example, a periodical publication, a licence for a paperback edition, or an option by a film production company; in the relatively few instances where contracts give translators a portion of this income, the percentages range from 5 to 1 per cent of the royalties for a hardback edition and from 50 to 10 per cent of subsidiary rights sales (Keeley 1990). Translators in the United Kingdom face similar contractual terms (Glenny 1983), although the unequal distribution of profits is also indicated by the allotment of loan payments under the Public Lending Right, with the author receiving 70 and the translator 30 per cent.…”