The present master thesis depicts the history, current situation and the challenges of translators and publishers in the field of publishing translated literature, especially from Japanese. The latter enters the Slovenian publishing scene (and beforehand, its wider media landscape) relatively late with the first literary work being published in 1940. Overall production of Japanese literature in Slovenian language, as well as the share of directly translated works were accelerated by the changes in the Slovenian publishing after 1991, existence of Japanese studies programme since 1995 and several possibilities of funding in the last two decades.
Between 1940 and 2020, 85 different literary works were published – 124 if including all formats and reprints. Especially after 2000 there has been a noticeable increase of the published works. On average a direct translation is published every 10 months, while before 2000 it was every 12 years. Japanese studies programme plays an important role in educating future translators and readers, but currently Iztok Ilc remains more or less the sole active literary translator from Japanese to Slovenian. Translators from Japanese have had good experiences collaborating with editors, who were inclined to listen to their suggestions, especially in case of possible subventions, which usually means either JAK (Slovenian Book Agency) or The Japan Foundation.
|