World Literature Today

The growing circulation of world literature in the twenty-first century has depended heavily on the expanding, and increasingly visible, work of literary translation. Translated fiction has grown as a share of the international publishing market, and prizes created specifically to recognize this work, such as the International Booker Prize — which, unlike the main Booker Prize, is awarded jointly to an author and their translator for a single translated book — have helped raise the professional and critical standing of translators, who historically received little credit or compensation relative to the authors whose work they render into new languages. Debates persist over how much of a literary work's meaning, rhythm, and cultural specificity can survive translation, and over the responsibility translators bear in shaping how entire national literatures are received abroad.