As the popularity of an author increases, the demand of his book increases too, so it becomes a best-seller so its popularity grows as fire. As the result of this the author is selling in many other countries but there is the problem the native language is not common in this city or country so what do we have to do? Translate it, that’s the answer. This for many people that are used to consume is normal, this is a matter of “fashion” which means that if the author or writer is popular and is a “hit” we must read it and just to be cool or current. Using one example, there are four languages in which the book “Perfume” has been translated, from German, the original language, English, French, and Spanish as well this book has become a movie that is also in many languages, so it doesn’t matter how far from the nation a book is, it’s going to change, no matter what.

In many years there have been topics or themes that are commercial in literature, the reason why they are so common is simple: “marketing”, if the theme of one book had a good repercussion on the market, it is profitable. Everybody wants to succeed or have good fortune, so if you are going to write a book you need to be sure that your book will be successful, that’s the reason why many books have the same topic but when you realize the author is different and not only the author is different the information is different and here is the problem you have different information and when you need something sure you can’t have it. The most common themes in literature are: great journeys, lost of innocence, noble sacrifices, great battles, love, romance, revenge, mysterious, murder, and many others such as capriciousness of fate. Many authors become famous just because they write commercial material what does “commercial” means? That he always writes the same because it sells, nothing else matters, the people, the readers are happy the editorial is happy, so everybody is happy, thus we don’t demand something more or different. We get used to the same guy writing about the same that we already know.

I already talked about the book, the theme but we are missing something or someone important: the writer, he is also one important factor in this commercializing of literature. In this aspect I want to be very specific. One writer that has been brutalized by this situation is Fedor Dostoyevsky, he and his books have passed though a painful process of translation, the list includes: English, Spanish, French, Italian, Greek, German, Japanese, Chinese, and the list continues. But this not only happened with Russian writers, it also happened with American writers, for example Edgar Alan Poe or Ernest Hemingway. All of them are being translated from their original language and either Russian or English.

One of the things that globalization produces is a mixture of language, these phenomena affects everybody but no one really cares about it. Some time ago in U.S.A some bilingual writers have been producing literature in both languages (Spanish and English). Not everybody is used to reading a book in two languages, not everybody likes to read in two languages, the reason why they don’t like to read this way, is not as evident as it seems. One of the reasons is that they can find the text in Spanish with some words in English, for a reader that doesn’t understand English is hard to get the whole idea. The second reason they possibly don’t like it is because they mixed the culture, what does this means? The American literature started to lose its structure and get lost into the Latin literature.

Summarizing the general idea of this essay, we can say that the globalization is not as good as it seems in all the aspects of life. For this specific aspect (literature), globalization has a negative impact, but not because the author becomes popular or the people start reading because is fashion, it’s because the good books, the good authors are still in the library and remain unknown for the world. Many good books that are known lose the essence and the soul that the author puts in it.

Catalina Romero Arias
10°A