Welcome to Forum. I'm Alexis Madrigal. Americans overwhelmingly read books written in English,

often by other Americans. But our country's publishing industry has highly specific features,

our educational institutions have specific shapes, and we deeply, deeply underfund the arts here.

This isn't to say that there aren't great American poets and novelists and essayists,

but that perhaps it's worth reading things from other countries to broaden our sense of what it is

to be alive at this politically surreal moment in time, or to just simply be with another culture and

place. To that end, we're talking about the art and economics of translation. How does it work

like on the calculation of volume get from the original Danish onto the shelves at your

local indie bookstore? Joining us this morning, we've got some stars of literary translation here.

Olivia Sears is founder of the Center for Art of Translation, right?

Yes.

Which just announced our plans for a bookstore and cultural event center in San Francisco.

Welcome, Olivia.

Thank you so much, Alexis. It's wonderful to be here.

We've also got Bruna Dantes-Lobato, who is an author and translator of Brazilian literature.

Welcome, Bruno.

Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

And I think live from Bologna, we have Adam Levy, publisher of Transit Books, publishing house that's based in Berkeley dedicated to translated literature.

Welcome, Adam.

Thank you so much for having me, Alexis.

Adam, you're also working in this field.

And, you know, maybe a lot of people when they read a book that's been translated, they might not consider the kind of labor that goes into translating it into English.

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