The President of Conaculta presented on Monday March 11 the main goals of the Support Program for Translation.
Resources are increased from one to 10 million pesos for the dissemination of works by Mexican and foreign authors.
Rafael Tovar y de Teresa, the President of Conaculta, called the Support Program for Translation (PROTAD) as a project that will provide an unprecedented way for a greater projection of Mexican literature in the world.
Tovar y de Teresa said that this program achieves to increase from one million pesos spent to support translations until last year, to 10 million.
"This program started in 1999 and has led to the translation of 105 Mexican authors in 104 publishers from 31 countries and in 25 languages. If these achievements were possible with a million dollars, this new support will strengthen 10 times the presence of our literature in the world. "
Rafael Tovar was accompanied by Irma Caire, CEO of Fonca; Nubia Macías, Director General of the FIL Guadalajara; Victórico Albores, President of Caniem; Ricardo Cayuela, Gead of the Directorate General of Publications at Conaculta and José Luis Martínez, Director General of International Affairs at Conaculta.
The President of Conacultura explained that in this program, whose online registration ends on June 6, the book publishing on humanities will have support up to $ 15,000, art books from 15 to $ 25,000 and literature, humanities and the arts from 30,000 to 50,000 dollars.
"Thus, many materials that our academics produce and probably could not have an easy projection abroad, will have with these supports, automatically, a much greater possibility."
He stated that the rule in this initiative is that the resources will be awarded through the publishers, to ensure the publication of editions, keeping the copyright of images and translation.
"These resources are for the benefit of our literature, our publishing, translation and particularly the presence of Mexico abroad. There are high quality cultural products allowing more direct dissemination of Mexican culture in the world. "
Irma Caire recalled that this program initially supported exclusively foreign publishers for the translation of works by Mexican authors into other languages, and so one of the advantages of this new edition is that Mexican publishers may participate.
He said that to date the authors who have been most translated are Sergio Pitol, David Toscana, Alberto Ruy Sánchez, Tito Monterroso and Juan Villoro. Albania, Belgium, Brazil, Austria, Bulgaria, are among the 31 countries that have joined this effort.
"The most translated genres are novel, story, poetry, short stories and essays, we believe that with the translation and publication of foreign authors into Spanish, reciprocity is created for the benefit of readers, and should provide support in each full-year major editing and publishing books. "
Nubia Macías highlighted that for the first time Mexico will have a program with this kind of resources, a cultural policy, which so directly supports translation and collaborates with the International Book Fair of Guadalajara.
"This initiative of Conaculta changes a whole paradigm and allows gradually build an industry. Mexicans can read authors from other countries. Undoubtedly the FIL Guadalajara is the most suitable scenario, because that is where the publishing agents go to buy the rights to numerous works. "
Victorico Albores, President of the National Chamber of the publishing industry, recognized the importance of this effort that represents a great parallel support for reading in Mexico.
"We welcome the translations of Mexican and foreign authors and that we have many more resources to disseminate our authors abroad like never before at the same time as strengthening the cultural offer at national level.”