Vagabond Voices

Vagabond Voices   is both Scottish and fervently European in its aims. Its reputation as a groundbreaking publisher will increase   with its new series of polemical works, Rants, in which contrarian authors give vent to their passions. These will be counterbalanced by series of quality novels (Vagabonds and Changelings).

Literary works in original English are Vagabonds, and translated novels are Changelings. Translations, like changelings, only give the appearance of being the original but are in fact subtly different, and the process of replacement is an act of deception. So far we have three Changelings: The Anonymous Novel, The Nocturnal Library and Stillness of the Sea.

There is, however, another reason for this name: the core activity will be the translation of European literary fiction into English, and so there is this transmigration of words from one language to another, the forced march of great multitudes of letters, the exodus of thoughts towards an inspired approximation of the original. This will make a tiny contribution to the woeful lack of translations in the English-speaking world – a kind of provincialism of the powerful. In 2006, 30% of books published in the world were in English, but only a very small proportion were in translation. In 2004, slightly more than 3% of English books were translations (2.62% in the United States). In fact, America produced only 4,982 translations, slightly ahead of the Czech Republic which produced 4,602. The record went to Italy which managed 12,197 and 22% of its total output in translation, and it therefore wins the prize for the most outward-looking country when it comes to reading.

To discover the most advanced ideas in literature, you need to know what is happening elsewhere, and however vast the English-speaking world may be, it is still thinking through the closed mechanisms of a single language.

The resources of a very small publisher like Vagabond Voices can do very little about what is also a question of attitude amongst the majority of readers, but we do feel that a small minority of readers is being let down in these times, which are dominated by the economies of scale. Vagabond Voices started with translations from Italian, because that is where our talents currently lie, but we have now brought out Stillness of the Sea, by the German author Nicol Ljubic and translated by Anna Paterson. In the future other writers and translators will hopefully join in the enterprise.