Americans don't live in the United States any more. They live in a global village. Or so they are constantly being told. And it certainly is true that it's become remarkably easy to buy parts for a Japanese car in Idaho or find tiramisu on the menu in Nebraska or e-mail a colleague in Germany from a desk in Ohio.
So with this new sense of connection to other cultures, it must follow that Americans are more open than ever to reading fiction from abroad, right? Wrong.
“Americans are very introverted at this point,” says Richard Seaver, co-publisher with his wife, Jeannette, of Arcade Publishing in New York. Literary translations “just don't have that mystique for us.” On the contrary, says Susan Harris, editor in chief of Northwestern University Press in Evanston, III., the most successful marketing strategy for a book in translation is often “to position it as a good story, with the foreignness leached out of it.”
This big shrug on the part of American readers toward fiction from abroad is a point of increasing frustration for foreign publishers, especially as the majority import US fiction by the truckload. And while the cultural imbalance may trouble them, the economics are vexatious as well. Acceptance in the US has become the ultimate guarantee of financial success for most literary ventures.
With increasing pressure to churn out bestsellers, fewer and fewer of the big publishing houses are interested in taking a chance on foreign fiction—an area where sales of 15,000 for a single volume are considered remarkable.
Some also blame fading interest in literary translations on the decline of the independent bookstore. The network of literary minded owners who were once willing to take a chance on a lesser-known foreign writer just isn't there any more, lament some publishers.
Not that literary translations were ever a large part of the US market. It's hard to get exact numbers for the sales of these volumes, but most experts agree they've never made up more than a few percentage points of the total book market. 来源：www.examda.com
Some view the problem as a cultural gap. Literary translations are often “works of philosophical inquiry and intellectual rigor,” says Sybil Steinberg, a senior editor at Publishers Weekly. “There are not a lot of intellectual readers in America.” And yet, challenging English-language writers like Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon manage to attract a substantial US audience.
1. Which of the following is the topic of the passage?
A. Americans' inability to connect to the outside world.
B. The illiteracy in American population
C. America's cultural imperialism.
D. America's lack of interest for foreign literary works.
2. The word “tiramisu” (Para. 1) most probably means ______.
A. foreign food
B. a computer command
C. an expensive commodity
D. a most wanted job opportunity 来源：www.examda.com
3. To market a foreign fiction successfully, which of the following should be emphasized?
A. Good translation B. Good story C. Exotic flavor D. Cheap price
4. The author implies that ______.
A. it's not true that there are few intellectual readers in America
B. works by Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon only appeal to Americans who are intellectually shallow
C. works by Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon widen the cultural gap between America and foreign countries
D. works by Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon outsell those by American writer
5. Why the author said American don't live in the United States any more?
A. Because they go abroad.
B. Because most of them are immigrants.
C. Because they do business all over the world.
D. Because they can buy goods and service from other countries.
| 题号 |
正确答案 |
|
| 1 |
D |
|
| 2 |
A |
|
| 3 |
B |
|
| 4 |
A |
|
| 5 |
D |
