It was a long but ultimately fortuitous path chosen when Micheál Ó Conghaile of Cló Iar-Chonnacht purchased the publishing company Sáirséal Ó Marcaigh in 2009. The company’s catalogue carried a range of interesting Irish-language titles, but the bonus ball of the deal was the acquisition of the publishing rights to by Máirtín Ó Cadhain. Revered for decades as the Ulysses of Irish-language literature, the book had remained untranslated into English for over 60 years.
Literary translation is a delicate, costly and sometimes controversial process, and the influence of the choices made by the translator on the resulting text cannot be overstated. As a native Irish-language speaker and established Irish-language publisher, Micheál was determined to invest time and consideration into ensuring that the final product would not only do justice to the original but also offer something new of itself, and so it was another six years before The Dirty Dust, Alan Titley’s English version of the iconic text, first appeared.
The Yale University Press were quick to purchase the US rights and in 2015 they published not only The Dirty Dust but also a second English translation, Graveyard Clay by Liam Mac Con Iomaire and Tim Robinson. The story of the two translations attracted some media attention and made its way onto the hallowed pages of The New Yorker. On the basis of this valuable international publicity previously closed doors began to open, bringing offers from publishers around the globe.
Selling Irish-language titles abroad can be a real challenge for publishers such as Cló Iar-Chonnacht, as the text typically needs to be first translated into English before being considered for further translation, e.g. into German or French. That’s not the only challenge, however: after twenty years of going to Frankfurt and London Book Fairs, Micheál notes that many publishers aren’t even aware that there is such a thing as Irish-language literature.
Whilst the sale of foreign rights offers welcome monetary rewards, Micheál is keen to reiterate that the motivation has always been and always will be the promotion of the cultural experience and preservation of Irish-language literature. Working with foreign publishers can offer a new lease of life to backlist titles, not only extending the legacy of the book as an objet d’art but also benefiting both the author and the publisher. In the unusual case of Cré na Cille the author has been dead for 46 years, but typically in the event that one title has overseas success there will be further interest in the author’s other publications, thus potentially opening a vein of unexpected income and publicity through international appearances and royalties.
If a job is worth doing, it’s worth doing well, as the tale of Cré na Cille can testify. The book has now been sold and translated in a number of countries, with the Dutch, German, French and Czech versions currently due for publication and the Russian translation soon to follow. The ambitious and inspirational goal is to have Cré na Cille translated into twenty languages within the next five years, and there’s no reason to stop there.
Is fada an bóthar nach mbíonn casadh ann (‘It is a long road that has no turning’).
This article was first published in Books Ireland magazine, September/October 2016
