A PUBLISHING house editor highlighted the importance of producing and marketing more books written in Filipino and translating more English books into Filipino to address the oversaturation of English-language titles.
Kyra Ballesteros, who has over ten years of experience in publishing, shared her insights on the situation of the industry in a seminar titled “The Practice of Publishing in Archipelagic Contexts: Notes from the Philippines” on Friday, March 7, at Room 207 of the St. Raymund de Peñafort building.
According to Ballesteros, there should be a strategic push to support translations of Filipino books into foreign languages in order to support the development of the local book industry.
“The market is so saturated with international titles in English because there is no friction in between and because we don’t need translation. We can just read English and it will come in as is,” she said.
Ballesteros said the situation affects the bookstores where local books compete in. Because of this, local books have to compete with not just one another, but also with international titles for attention, expense and market visibility.
Ballesteros cited the case of Thailand, which according to her, boasts a very strong translation culture. She said English-language readers in the Southeast Asian country are not as prevalent as those of the Philippines.
“Because of the necessity to translate books into Thai, they are able to produce very good Thai version of their books, and that means, essentially, more profit for them, and that’s the kind of friction that I was talking about,” she said.
Ballesteros suggested that translations into Philippine languages can improve the balance between local and international books available locally.
“Our institutional push is to strengthen the publishers’ capacity to broker deals in translation so that our books and stories reach our diaspora and other markets,” she said.
Ballesteros, who earned her master’s degree in publishing from the University College London, previously led the Policy, Research and Evaluation Division of the National Book Development Board.
The seminar is part of the Authors on Demand series organized by the UST Creative Writing Department. F
