Friday, May 06, 2005
Eyes on the (additional) prize
According to this piece in the Guardian, the Man Booker panjandrums have sweetened the pot for their much-vaunted International Prize, by throwing in an additional £15,000 for the winner's translator. Whoopee! When it comes to profits, the translator is traditionally the low man (or woman) on the totem pole, paid on a work-for-hire basis and almost never granted even a microscopic fraction of royalties. How nice, then, to see the Man Booker press release refer to this hapless figure as "the unsung hero of international literature." I like the sound of that.
