Showing posts with label vdü. Show all posts
Showing posts with label vdü. Show all posts
Sunday, 19 June 2011
Wolfenbüttel Playlist
In case you've ever wondered what gets German literary translators jumping up and down and shouting on the dancefloor, you can head to the special blog we're creating for the Wolfenbütteler Gespräch. A playlist of twelve top movers and shakers from DJs Lang & Scheidt.
Thursday, 16 June 2011
Off to Wolfenbüttel
Tomorrow sees the start of the annual three-day social gathering of German literary translators known as the Wolfenbütteler Gespräch. I'll be holding a workshop on blogging for translators. I suspect I'd be better at holding a workshop on pant-wetting during public appearances for translators, but hey. There are only three award-winning translators in my group, I'm sure I'll be fine.
I was asked to present the workshop, possibly because blogging isn't really something many literary translators do in Germany. Or to be precise, there are literary translators who blog, like my friends Isabel Bogdan and Rasha Khayat. But they tend to do so in more of a private than professional capacity. What I'd love to come out of the workshop would be a collaborative project in which German literary translators blog about their work, their books, the countries they're familiar with, and so on.
But to get started I want to show the group what blogs are already out there, think about the whys and wherefores, talk about what works and what doesn't, and give them a tiny taste of blogging by putting together a special one-off blog about the annual get-together itself. Watch this space for more details.
I was asked to present the workshop, possibly because blogging isn't really something many literary translators do in Germany. Or to be precise, there are literary translators who blog, like my friends Isabel Bogdan and Rasha Khayat. But they tend to do so in more of a private than professional capacity. What I'd love to come out of the workshop would be a collaborative project in which German literary translators blog about their work, their books, the countries they're familiar with, and so on.
But to get started I want to show the group what blogs are already out there, think about the whys and wherefores, talk about what works and what doesn't, and give them a tiny taste of blogging by putting together a special one-off blog about the annual get-together itself. Watch this space for more details.
Wednesday, 2 February 2011
Bloggo ergo sum
I shall be holding a workshop on blogging for literary translators, at this year's Wolfenbüttel get-together of the German translators' association, VdÜ.
I've written about the event before - it's a veritable smorgasbord of lectures, workshops, readings, awards and parties where translators and editors mingle and match minds. So I thought instead of blogging about it again myself, I'd make the workshop participants create their own collaborative blog about the whole thing. Watch this space for more information.
It's not until June, and incidentally you don't have to be German to attend.
I've written about the event before - it's a veritable smorgasbord of lectures, workshops, readings, awards and parties where translators and editors mingle and match minds. So I thought instead of blogging about it again myself, I'd make the workshop participants create their own collaborative blog about the whole thing. Watch this space for more information.
It's not until June, and incidentally you don't have to be German to attend.
Wednesday, 4 August 2010
Critics and Translators - A Match Made in Heaven?
Seeing as about half the books published in German are actually translations, critics over here often find themselves reviewing translated titles. It's not always easy for them to judge the translation quality, especially if they don't speak the original language. Translators, on the other hand, often feel neglected by critics, rarely or barely mentioned or picked upon for particular word choices rather than getting feedback on the general feel of their finished product.
Now translators - and I write this in the knowledge that I'm no exception - can tend to be a tad self-pitying. You know, we're largely invisible, we always get the blame if something sounds wrong, nobody comes to our parties, we might as well just curl up and die because no one would even notice... Yeah, we do a lot of eating worms, probably because we were all the odd ones out at school and so chose a solitary profession where we can hide behind books for the rest of our lives. Whatever.
In the past, that bitterness came out all unfiltered in the form of complaining letters to the editor and even a negative prize for critics who fail to mention the translator. But a month or so ago, the German Translators' Fund (DÜF) organised a symposium, bringing translators and critics together in Munich to work on ways around the problem. And being critics and having to earn a crust, a couple of those in attendance wrote about it. Andreas Breitenstein gives an intelligent overview in the NZZ, while Lynn Scheurer wrote about it in the Süddeutsche Zeitung - although they didn't put it online, just to rub salt in the wound.
Yes, they both wrote, it's tough for us critics, but translators don't have it easy either. Both of them liked the idea of using translators' forewords more often to highlight the effort and the ideas that go into a translation, though they realised that publishers probably aren't keen on the extra costs involved. They comment on the idea that it is possible to judge a translation's quality by the finished product alone, which is gaining ground and ought to make life slightly easier for critics. And they acknowledge that the state of play is pretty poor, with reviews often either ignoring the translator altogether or - almost worse in my opinion - finding a single adjective to describe the translation (smooth, fluid, the dreaded congenial) but providing no basis for that judgement, which they say is often the result of embarrassed ignorance - a critic being a generalist rather than a specialist. So the two sides appeared to have come together to some extent.
But then last week Katharina Granzin had a piece in the taz about the symposium. Let's just ignore the fact that it was published more than a month after the event - it's just paranoia, we won't listen to those voices telling us nobody cares enough about us to have run the article earlier. What I do have to say is, it really opened my eyes to what it must have been like in Munich. Because from the beginning, Granzin's tone is defensive. She lists the accusations hurled at the critics by angry translators: naivety, superficiality, poor education, no personality, never even tried translating themselves. She continues:
Incidentally, the critic is much worse off than the translator, organised in the translators' association and with excellent networks, who can at least often count on support from the translators' fund or other sources. The majority of German critics, in contrast, are not sitting in warm editorial offices but go about their precarious calling in cold, lonely garrets. These individuals, most of them with an excellent education and practicing their barely paid profession out of an idealism that is difficult to explain, are perfectly capable of recognising the translator's contribution and, where appropriate, willing to honour it in writing. This cannot and should not, however, be a compulsory exercise.
Leaving aside the fact that the DÜF and other sources support only a tiny percentage of translations and the fact that not one single translator has access to a "warm editorial office", the piece as a whole conjures up a picture of a critic majorly pissed off by the whole occasion. Here's what she recommends:
Perhaps translators ought to adopt the cleaning lady hypothesis: "Everything's fine as long as nobody complains." Should their call for more translation criticism really be about making translations better, they can also create specialised structures within their own networks.
I'm trying hard not to scream. Translators in Germany have created their own structures to improve the quality of translations, with workshops and seminars organised on a regular basis, mentoring programmes, residencies, a guest professorship, and many other fantastic things going on. The DÜF itself is the child of a small group of dedicated translators who spent a great deal of time applying for state funding, and now dedicate a great deal of time to supporting other translators. The professional association VDÜ also offers workshops, there are mailing lists and regular get-togethers where translators help each other with their texts. What they're doing now is approaching critics and offering them help to overcome the hurdle of commenting on translations.
And much as I admire the work of cleaning ladies, they too would probably appreciate a word of praise every now and then. I don't know though, I can't afford one for my cold, lonely garret.
Granzin defends her fellow critics to the hilt. Under the prevailing economic conditions, she points out, nobody's going to read the original, even if they're capable of doing so. And the translation challenges aren't always relevant, she says. Translation quality, she maintains, doesn't actually make or break a book.
I personally have two minimum demands of critics:
Firstly, if you mention the book's language, you have to mention the translator in the review itself. It goes without saying that the translator has to be mentioned with the bibliographical details.
And secondly, if you praise the translation, you have to tell us what you thought was good about it. Equally, you can tactfully ignore an uninspired translation if you like or you can go ahead and rip it to shreds - as long as you have some evidence, just as I'd expect for any other aspect of a review.
I'd be interested to hear what readers think - do you want to read about the translation itself in a book review or does it just leave you cold?
Now translators - and I write this in the knowledge that I'm no exception - can tend to be a tad self-pitying. You know, we're largely invisible, we always get the blame if something sounds wrong, nobody comes to our parties, we might as well just curl up and die because no one would even notice... Yeah, we do a lot of eating worms, probably because we were all the odd ones out at school and so chose a solitary profession where we can hide behind books for the rest of our lives. Whatever.
In the past, that bitterness came out all unfiltered in the form of complaining letters to the editor and even a negative prize for critics who fail to mention the translator. But a month or so ago, the German Translators' Fund (DÜF) organised a symposium, bringing translators and critics together in Munich to work on ways around the problem. And being critics and having to earn a crust, a couple of those in attendance wrote about it. Andreas Breitenstein gives an intelligent overview in the NZZ, while Lynn Scheurer wrote about it in the Süddeutsche Zeitung - although they didn't put it online, just to rub salt in the wound.
Yes, they both wrote, it's tough for us critics, but translators don't have it easy either. Both of them liked the idea of using translators' forewords more often to highlight the effort and the ideas that go into a translation, though they realised that publishers probably aren't keen on the extra costs involved. They comment on the idea that it is possible to judge a translation's quality by the finished product alone, which is gaining ground and ought to make life slightly easier for critics. And they acknowledge that the state of play is pretty poor, with reviews often either ignoring the translator altogether or - almost worse in my opinion - finding a single adjective to describe the translation (smooth, fluid, the dreaded congenial) but providing no basis for that judgement, which they say is often the result of embarrassed ignorance - a critic being a generalist rather than a specialist. So the two sides appeared to have come together to some extent.
But then last week Katharina Granzin had a piece in the taz about the symposium. Let's just ignore the fact that it was published more than a month after the event - it's just paranoia, we won't listen to those voices telling us nobody cares enough about us to have run the article earlier. What I do have to say is, it really opened my eyes to what it must have been like in Munich. Because from the beginning, Granzin's tone is defensive. She lists the accusations hurled at the critics by angry translators: naivety, superficiality, poor education, no personality, never even tried translating themselves. She continues:
Incidentally, the critic is much worse off than the translator, organised in the translators' association and with excellent networks, who can at least often count on support from the translators' fund or other sources. The majority of German critics, in contrast, are not sitting in warm editorial offices but go about their precarious calling in cold, lonely garrets. These individuals, most of them with an excellent education and practicing their barely paid profession out of an idealism that is difficult to explain, are perfectly capable of recognising the translator's contribution and, where appropriate, willing to honour it in writing. This cannot and should not, however, be a compulsory exercise.
Leaving aside the fact that the DÜF and other sources support only a tiny percentage of translations and the fact that not one single translator has access to a "warm editorial office", the piece as a whole conjures up a picture of a critic majorly pissed off by the whole occasion. Here's what she recommends:
Perhaps translators ought to adopt the cleaning lady hypothesis: "Everything's fine as long as nobody complains." Should their call for more translation criticism really be about making translations better, they can also create specialised structures within their own networks.
I'm trying hard not to scream. Translators in Germany have created their own structures to improve the quality of translations, with workshops and seminars organised on a regular basis, mentoring programmes, residencies, a guest professorship, and many other fantastic things going on. The DÜF itself is the child of a small group of dedicated translators who spent a great deal of time applying for state funding, and now dedicate a great deal of time to supporting other translators. The professional association VDÜ also offers workshops, there are mailing lists and regular get-togethers where translators help each other with their texts. What they're doing now is approaching critics and offering them help to overcome the hurdle of commenting on translations.
And much as I admire the work of cleaning ladies, they too would probably appreciate a word of praise every now and then. I don't know though, I can't afford one for my cold, lonely garret.
Granzin defends her fellow critics to the hilt. Under the prevailing economic conditions, she points out, nobody's going to read the original, even if they're capable of doing so. And the translation challenges aren't always relevant, she says. Translation quality, she maintains, doesn't actually make or break a book.
I personally have two minimum demands of critics:
Firstly, if you mention the book's language, you have to mention the translator in the review itself. It goes without saying that the translator has to be mentioned with the bibliographical details.
And secondly, if you praise the translation, you have to tell us what you thought was good about it. Equally, you can tactfully ignore an uninspired translation if you like or you can go ahead and rip it to shreds - as long as you have some evidence, just as I'd expect for any other aspect of a review.
I'd be interested to hear what readers think - do you want to read about the translation itself in a book review or does it just leave you cold?
Monday, 14 June 2010
Wanted: Lively Young Men. On A Translators' Get-Together
It's that time of year again. Every summer the German literary translators meet up in the small medieval town of Wolfenbüttel for workshops and socialising. This year there were about 170 of us, plus a smattering of editors and interested parties.
The fun starts on the Friday with a lecture, this time an impromptu talk on the influence of translation on the European image of the Orient in the 18th and 19th centuries. In fact, the "translators" of 1001 Nights and other texts did more than a little compiling and inventing, which has a knock-on effect to this day - Aladdin and Sinbad, for example, aren't actually mentioned anywhere in the existing Arabic manuscripts. The Arabic translator Hartmut Fähndrich did a great job of filling in for a speaker gone AWOL, entertaining and informing us in his own inimitable way.
Friday night is time for readings. This year I attended the block on fantasy - not a genre I'm terribly informed about. Stephenie Meyer's translator Silke Hachmeister had us giggling with her reading from the fourth volume of teenage vampire love, and I was particularly impressed by Angela Plöger's reading from Troll, Finnish writer Johanna Sinisalo's utterly literary love story with a twist. As always, I was bowled over by the effort translators put into their work, even in cases where the text may not be quite up to Shakespearean standards.
And on to Saturday, which is workshop day. In the afternoon I attended VDÜ-chairman Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel's session on moderating, which was productive and reassuring. I now know that even consummate professionals wet their pants before going on stage. So it's not just me, then.
My personal highlight, however, was the morning session with Arche/Atrium editor Tim Jung. Entitled "How to help your translation to success", the workshop looked at what translators can do to push their books. Now this subject was not uncontroversial. A few of the participants were very sceptical about the level of support they get from publishers - and whether it's the translator's job to help market their books. At first I thought it might be a generation conflict - certainly in the past, translators were widely treated as lowly cogs in the works, expected to deliver the text and shut up. So many of my more experienced colleagues tend to be rather cynical and resignatory, unsurprisingly so.
But then Jung told us what his - admittedly small-scale - publishing house does with its translators: they ask them for feedback. About the title, about how to describe the book to their sales reps, about how to sum the book up on an advertising poster, about all sorts of possible marketing stuff. And one very experienced translator told us how she'd felt about that: at first she was irritated, put out her spines as she said. She'd given up making suggestions and decided it wasn't her job and wasn't her problem. But in fact, this new attitude on the publisher's part is a sign of respect. For Jung, translators are authentic experts on their books and have a great deal more to offer publishers than the basic translation of a text.
This is something I feel very much a party to. OK, I translate into English, which makes me some kind of very exotic creature. I'm also a person who can get rather enthusiastic about things (as you may have noticed). And I don't always ask what's in it for me - partly because I genuinely enjoy sharing my enthusiasm with others, so I do get an immediate emotional reward for pushing my books. Of course it's a delicate balance. Translators are right to be wary about being exploited for free. I can understand the reaction one colleague expressed - that if an advertising exec thought up a slogan they'd get huge amounts of money, but a translator ends up doing it for nothing. Ideally, of course, translators get royalties, so it's in our own interest to sell more books. Unfortunately, it's not always that simple - but let's not go there.
I'm seeing more and more cases of translators being treated as experts on their books, rather than just lowly ferrymen transporting the text from one language bank to the other. Ulrich Blumenbach, for example, has been feted for his David Foster Wallace translations into German, Sarah Adams gave all sorts of interviews about her Faiza Guene book, and Susan Bernofsky does a great deal to share her love of Robert Walser's work. And German publishers are beginning to credit translators more prominently, some (including Arche/Atrium) including their brief bios after the writers' in their catalogues and the books themselves and even using their names as part of their advertising material, in the case of prominent people like Harry Rowohlt, Henning Ahrens and Silke Hachmeister.
I'd say that as we become more confident and organised as a profession - with institutions like the VDÜ or the PEN Translation Committee behind us - so the publishers and the media in general are coming to view us with greater respect. I was recently invited onto a panel and asked to write an article for a literary magazine, I've been asked for radio interviews and interviewed by other bloggers. And love german books has been featured in the Perlentaucher online literature and culture magazine three times (to my great delight - I nearly went to their office to thank them on bended knee, but they'd moved away. It'd probably have been embarrassing anyway.). My daughter thinks I'm famous.
To my mind, we translators can only embrace this development. And by helping to promote our books, be it on our websites, in email footers, on Facebook, at readings, through newsletters, by writing articles or translators' notes, or by whatever comes into our heads, we are ultimately confirming this new-found respect.
So. To round off the report, the Saturday evening was party time. Vera Bischitzky was awarded the Helmut M. Braem Prize for her new translation of Gogol's Dead Souls and gave a brief reading. Then there was food and then myself and my colleague Steph Morris magically transformed into DJs Lang 'n' Scheidt and made all those translators dance like their shoes were on fire until 3 in the morning. Much fun was had.
Having been forced to stay up past my bedtime, I didn't really appreciate the Sunday morning event, a talk between the German writer Wilhelm Genazino and his French and Dutch translators Anne Weber and Gerrit Bussink. But apparently it was very entertaining. Anne Weber also writes her own novels in French and German and then translates them herself, which she said tends to make them much shorter and more precise. And Bussink told us he only ever translates via dictaphone, apparently a great method for keeping the language real.
Finally, there was an appeal - the organisers of the weekend are seeking lively young men to join their ranks for next year. I too would not be adverse to a few more lively young men in Wolfenbüttel. Translation is a female-dominated profession, for reasons I won't go into here. So our get-togethers are veritable harems of highly attractive and intelligent women from 25 to 75. Which is great, don't get me wrong. But sometimes it's nice to have a bit of a garnish to look at.
For another view of the events, check out the VDÜ's Twitter thing.
The fun starts on the Friday with a lecture, this time an impromptu talk on the influence of translation on the European image of the Orient in the 18th and 19th centuries. In fact, the "translators" of 1001 Nights and other texts did more than a little compiling and inventing, which has a knock-on effect to this day - Aladdin and Sinbad, for example, aren't actually mentioned anywhere in the existing Arabic manuscripts. The Arabic translator Hartmut Fähndrich did a great job of filling in for a speaker gone AWOL, entertaining and informing us in his own inimitable way.
Friday night is time for readings. This year I attended the block on fantasy - not a genre I'm terribly informed about. Stephenie Meyer's translator Silke Hachmeister had us giggling with her reading from the fourth volume of teenage vampire love, and I was particularly impressed by Angela Plöger's reading from Troll, Finnish writer Johanna Sinisalo's utterly literary love story with a twist. As always, I was bowled over by the effort translators put into their work, even in cases where the text may not be quite up to Shakespearean standards.
And on to Saturday, which is workshop day. In the afternoon I attended VDÜ-chairman Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel's session on moderating, which was productive and reassuring. I now know that even consummate professionals wet their pants before going on stage. So it's not just me, then.
My personal highlight, however, was the morning session with Arche/Atrium editor Tim Jung. Entitled "How to help your translation to success", the workshop looked at what translators can do to push their books. Now this subject was not uncontroversial. A few of the participants were very sceptical about the level of support they get from publishers - and whether it's the translator's job to help market their books. At first I thought it might be a generation conflict - certainly in the past, translators were widely treated as lowly cogs in the works, expected to deliver the text and shut up. So many of my more experienced colleagues tend to be rather cynical and resignatory, unsurprisingly so.
But then Jung told us what his - admittedly small-scale - publishing house does with its translators: they ask them for feedback. About the title, about how to describe the book to their sales reps, about how to sum the book up on an advertising poster, about all sorts of possible marketing stuff. And one very experienced translator told us how she'd felt about that: at first she was irritated, put out her spines as she said. She'd given up making suggestions and decided it wasn't her job and wasn't her problem. But in fact, this new attitude on the publisher's part is a sign of respect. For Jung, translators are authentic experts on their books and have a great deal more to offer publishers than the basic translation of a text.
This is something I feel very much a party to. OK, I translate into English, which makes me some kind of very exotic creature. I'm also a person who can get rather enthusiastic about things (as you may have noticed). And I don't always ask what's in it for me - partly because I genuinely enjoy sharing my enthusiasm with others, so I do get an immediate emotional reward for pushing my books. Of course it's a delicate balance. Translators are right to be wary about being exploited for free. I can understand the reaction one colleague expressed - that if an advertising exec thought up a slogan they'd get huge amounts of money, but a translator ends up doing it for nothing. Ideally, of course, translators get royalties, so it's in our own interest to sell more books. Unfortunately, it's not always that simple - but let's not go there.
I'm seeing more and more cases of translators being treated as experts on their books, rather than just lowly ferrymen transporting the text from one language bank to the other. Ulrich Blumenbach, for example, has been feted for his David Foster Wallace translations into German, Sarah Adams gave all sorts of interviews about her Faiza Guene book, and Susan Bernofsky does a great deal to share her love of Robert Walser's work. And German publishers are beginning to credit translators more prominently, some (including Arche/Atrium) including their brief bios after the writers' in their catalogues and the books themselves and even using their names as part of their advertising material, in the case of prominent people like Harry Rowohlt, Henning Ahrens and Silke Hachmeister.
I'd say that as we become more confident and organised as a profession - with institutions like the VDÜ or the PEN Translation Committee behind us - so the publishers and the media in general are coming to view us with greater respect. I was recently invited onto a panel and asked to write an article for a literary magazine, I've been asked for radio interviews and interviewed by other bloggers. And love german books has been featured in the Perlentaucher online literature and culture magazine three times (to my great delight - I nearly went to their office to thank them on bended knee, but they'd moved away. It'd probably have been embarrassing anyway.). My daughter thinks I'm famous.
To my mind, we translators can only embrace this development. And by helping to promote our books, be it on our websites, in email footers, on Facebook, at readings, through newsletters, by writing articles or translators' notes, or by whatever comes into our heads, we are ultimately confirming this new-found respect.
So. To round off the report, the Saturday evening was party time. Vera Bischitzky was awarded the Helmut M. Braem Prize for her new translation of Gogol's Dead Souls and gave a brief reading. Then there was food and then myself and my colleague Steph Morris magically transformed into DJs Lang 'n' Scheidt and made all those translators dance like their shoes were on fire until 3 in the morning. Much fun was had.
Having been forced to stay up past my bedtime, I didn't really appreciate the Sunday morning event, a talk between the German writer Wilhelm Genazino and his French and Dutch translators Anne Weber and Gerrit Bussink. But apparently it was very entertaining. Anne Weber also writes her own novels in French and German and then translates them herself, which she said tends to make them much shorter and more precise. And Bussink told us he only ever translates via dictaphone, apparently a great method for keeping the language real.
Finally, there was an appeal - the organisers of the weekend are seeking lively young men to join their ranks for next year. I too would not be adverse to a few more lively young men in Wolfenbüttel. Translation is a female-dominated profession, for reasons I won't go into here. So our get-togethers are veritable harems of highly attractive and intelligent women from 25 to 75. Which is great, don't get me wrong. But sometimes it's nice to have a bit of a garnish to look at.
For another view of the events, check out the VDÜ's Twitter thing.
Sunday, 14 June 2009
Without Us There Would Be No World Literature
The German literary translators' association, the Verband deutschsprachiger Übersetzer (VdÜ), has been campaigning for fairer pay for most of its existence. Literary translators here earn around €1000 a month before taxes, they say, and don't get a sufficient share of royalties for their highly creative work.
In 2001 the government made an attempt at reforming copyright law to give the creative artists a better deal, explicitly mentioning the appalling situation of literary translators. Publishers, newspapers etc. were charged with negotiating "appropriate pay" with translators (and authors, journalists, photographers, etc.). Unfortunately, they weren't all that keen to do so - and didn't have the legal structures to enter into full-blown German-style collective wage negotiations. All attempts so far have failed, with the atmosphere becoming increasingly fraught.
This coming week, the high court is scheduled to rule on five cases brought by translators against Random House. The results are likely to be groundbreaking - will the judges order that higher royalties should be offset against page rates for doing the work in the first place - which would cancel out most of the benefits for translators in the mid-sales range of 5000 to 30,000 copies (yes, Anglo-American translation publishers, read it and weep)? Or will they award the translators decent royalties on top of their basic fee, thus giving them a share of the reward for creating a successful and profitable translation?
Certainly we can only hope that the issue will be resolved in the near future, as the eight-year arguments have driven a wedge between translators and publishers that is far from conducive to good literature. For a much deeper insight, see the VdÜ's excellent background dossier (in German).
In 2001 the government made an attempt at reforming copyright law to give the creative artists a better deal, explicitly mentioning the appalling situation of literary translators. Publishers, newspapers etc. were charged with negotiating "appropriate pay" with translators (and authors, journalists, photographers, etc.). Unfortunately, they weren't all that keen to do so - and didn't have the legal structures to enter into full-blown German-style collective wage negotiations. All attempts so far have failed, with the atmosphere becoming increasingly fraught.
This coming week, the high court is scheduled to rule on five cases brought by translators against Random House. The results are likely to be groundbreaking - will the judges order that higher royalties should be offset against page rates for doing the work in the first place - which would cancel out most of the benefits for translators in the mid-sales range of 5000 to 30,000 copies (yes, Anglo-American translation publishers, read it and weep)? Or will they award the translators decent royalties on top of their basic fee, thus giving them a share of the reward for creating a successful and profitable translation?
Certainly we can only hope that the issue will be resolved in the near future, as the eight-year arguments have driven a wedge between translators and publishers that is far from conducive to good literature. For a much deeper insight, see the VdÜ's excellent background dossier (in German).
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