From Professor JENNY WILLIAMS, Director, Centre for Translation and Textual Studies, Dublin City University
I was shocked to hear that your Arts Council funding has been cut for 2012. Does the Arts Council not know about your international reputation as well as the standing in which you are held in the UK? Surely all those excellent reviews in The Guardian must count for something!
I have to say that without Arc English-speakers would have little access to world poetry and the literary scene in the English-speaking world would be much impoverished. In my own case, Arc gave me the encouragement and support to introduce a contemporary German poet to the Anglophone world - the experience, knowledge, stylistic finesse and profound cultural understanding of the editor of the Visible Poets series, Jean Boase-Beier, made a unique contribution not just to the volume I translated but also to my own development as a translator of poetry. In my Translation Studies lectures I cite Arc and its translation policy as an excellent example of the enormous impact a small publisher can make at both national and international level.
I do hope that the Arts Council will review its decision: for the sake of the Arc poets and translators, past and present, as well as for the major contribution which Arc has made to opening the door to world literature in the English-speaking world.