Bob Cornwell on the latest developments in the CWA Gold Dagger saga

Was that a (jewel-encrusted) Dagger I saw before me?

First, let me congratulate the CWA on negotiating what the press release states is “the world’s biggest award for crime fiction.” Clearly £20,000 is good news for writers, good news for the genre, and will also give the Dagger a much-needed boost in the eyes of the more general reading public.

But at the same time as the award has been enhanced, its prestige has been devalued. That prestige, like that of the American Edgars, like that of the Olympics over the Commonwealth Games, the Cannes Festival Palme d’Or over the best film Oscar, the Nobel Prize for Literature over the Prix Goncourt or the Man Booker, resides in the fact that those institutions pride themselves in ensuring that the world’s best are represented in their respective competitions. For the fact remains that the proposed rule change (or is it now final?) excluding works in translation will put this valuable prize out of the reach of many of the world’s talented crime writers.

Of course the CWA will protest that this is untrue, that the prize is available to all writers. So far, in the latest CWA faux pas, we have two statements of this kind. The first came from vice-chairman Robert Richardson who, in a letter to the Guardian (26 November) says, "The opportunity to win our Gold Dagger will still be open to crime writers from all over the world – as long as our judges are reading the original text, not a translated version." In the Bookseller (2 December) Philip Gooden, Dagger Liaison officer, states,"the Gold Dagger is open to anyone publishing anywhere in the world – they just have to be writing in English." Now I suppose it is just possible that the first statement might be a cleverly coded version of the second (I am trying to be fair) but however you interpret them, it is clear that neither statement comes from a world that you and I might recognise.

Another point, made separately by both Richardson and Gooden, is that the rule change simply brings the CWA into line with other UK literary awards such as the Man Booker prize (which, in its major manifestation at least, excludes US writers) and the Orange prize (which excludes male writers). It is indeed common practice amongst prize-givers the world over (not least amongst the world-wide crime fiction fraternity) to favour the home team. The Booker prize was created (at a time when literary fiction was not the best-selling phenomenon it often now is) to bring to prominence perhaps underrated British writers. A similar but feminist logic underpins the creation of the Orange Prize. Most European crime fiction prizes are also there to promote and protect native writers who might otherwise be swamped by the US/UK axis, yes, in translated versions, that mostly dominate the world scene. I don’t applaud such logic, but it is understandable. No such logic underpins the CWA rule change. Commercially at least, British and American crime fiction takes something like a 90% plus share of the UK market. The proposed rule change therefore can only be seen as a thoughtless piece of cultural chauvinism.

How then is this action justified? Confirming the rumblings in the ranks exemplified by Mark Billingham and Val McDermid (see my previous piece), the CWA, many of whose members benefit from the translation process, has sought to attack the poor old translator, (as a translator acquaintance of mine pointed out, most translators used to be both poor and old, not to mention female!) Our two letter writers again. Philip Gooden, "This decision of the CWA committee reflected a long-running concern over the status of translations." Robert Richardson in his letter puts a time frame on that “concern” of “several years.” Sadly this appears to concide with the period when translated fiction first began to appear on the shortlists in any strength (the two eventual Gold Dagger winners Henning Mankell and José Carlos Somoza in 2001 and 2002, Carlo Lucarelli and Boris Akunin, short-listees in 2003), thus suggesting exclusion as a major motive in the change.

Curiously the principal and, so far, only argument in favour of the rule change, appears to be that books in translation are somehow diminished by the process. But isn’t the ultimate logic of that argument that, had the translation been better, even more translated novels might have been shortlisted ? Nor have I heard of any UK or US crime writers, not a few of whom are prize-winners in countries other than the UK and the USA, turning down their awards on the basis that they are not too happy about their translations.

In fact, let’s recognise instead the hugely valuable contribution of the translator. My researches (see my previous piece) uncovered a dedicated body of men and women devoted to producing the best translation of which they were capable, sometimes in collaboration with the original author, sometimes not.

No doubt some of those translations were more successful than others, but translated they were. Many people contribute something to a book, whether it be an editor or one of the many individuals listed on the dedication or acknowledgment pages of so many modern novels. Some of that input will have contributed to the success of that novel, some not. How come the translator’s contribution is singled out as ‘unclean, unclean’?

As a distinguished British writer remarked to me recently, it’s the book as it stands that counts, as surely our native Euro-prize- winners realise. And how that book stands in relation to others is a question that should rest with the appointed judges and, ultimately,
the reader.

Consider also that translators have made available to us, in crime fiction alone, the work of such giants of the genre as Émile Gaboriau, Gaston Leroux, Georges Simenon, Jorge Luis Borges, the writing team of Maj Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö, Friedrich Dürrenmatt, Seicho Matsumoto, Manuel Vásquez Montalbán and Leonardo Sciascia to name a few. The fact that were they writing today, none of these writers would be eligible for what was one of crime fiction’s two most prestigious awards (or could even conceivably be shunted off into a ghetto marked “Crime Fiction in Translation”) is surely beyond a joke.

Thankfully it appears that we can now discount the idea that the new sponsor, the Duncan Lawrie Private Bank, had any influence on the rule change, (though not, I note, so little influence as to eliminate the word "Gold", a constant since 1955, from the main award’s title). Philip Gooden again,"No pressure was put on us by any sponsors, potential or actual, to exclude translations from the 2006 Gold Dagger." The new press release states that "the decision had been taken before Duncan Lawrie entered into talks with the CWA." If, then, as the press release states, the Duncan Lawrie Bank wishes "to help the CWA to reflect the national and international status that crime fiction and thrillers deserve", then perhaps the CWA’s new partner might draw the CWA committee’s attention away from “common” practice towards the business philosophy known as “best” practice – i.e. to those practices associated with the Olympics, the Palme d’Or, the Nobel Prizes – and restore translated writers to the competition?

The CWA has the means to correct the situation. Let the issue be fully debated in the pages of Red Herrings, its in-house magazine, with the arguments on both sides fairly represented. Let CWA members across the board have the final say. The true prestige of the CWA/ Duncan Lawrie Dagger, not to mention the long-term health of the UK crime fiction market, is at stake.