That was the topic discussed recently in Germany by  the director of the Deutsche Welle Greek Program, Spiros Moskovos.

 

Moskovos' looked back at the 2001 Frankfurt International Book Exhibition, which had Greece as their honored country. Tens of books were translated into the German language for the general public to use, however the effort went largely unnoticed.  Many Greek books had never been translated into German before and were not to be found on most bookshops.  Even more diasppointing was that there were almost no reviews on any of the books, giving little or no publicity to great authors and novels.

 

What did the Greeks learn from this experiment? Moskovos belives that maybe some markets are not able to absorb foreign content as rapidly as others. (For example Balkan markets absorb Greek products and literature much faster than they do in northern Europe.) Also the quality of literature translation from both the publishing houses and individuals has to be improved substantially for the masses to join the band wagon.