Translating writers

       Perhaps the single biggest difference between US/UK writing culture and that of writers in the rest of the world is that almost everywhere else a significant number of noted authors not only write fiction but translate it as well. Sure, there are some US/UK exceptions -- Paul Auster and Lydia Davis are the most prominent names -- but basically it's as Hillel Italie now has it in his AP article (here at the San Francisco Chronicle): 'Cloud Atlas' author is rare novelist-translator -- by which he means Cloud Atlas-author David Mitchell, who has apparently now co-translated some kid's memoir from the Japanese with his wife.
       As Italie notes:

Higashida's book, for which Mitchell also wrote an introduction, is a rarity in the publishing world. Translation is mostly the work of academics and professionals, with Gregory Rabassa, Edith Grossman and William Weaver among the most celebrated.

       Well, it's not at all a rarity in the "publishing world", but, yes, in the in many ways limited US/UK fiction-writing world it is -- in very stark contrast to the rest of the world where translating novelists are a dime a dozen.
       A second major example Italie cites is Jonathan Franzen's forthcoming The Kraus Project: Essays by Karl Kraus. (At this point it also seems worth pointing out that both these translations-by-notable-novelists are translations of works of non-fiction -- disappointing, too.)
       Fascinating, too, that the brilliant Kraus isn't seen as the main selling point of the The Kraus Project:

Even the book's cover is a departure, reversing the usual billing for author and translator. The title may be The Kraus Project, but featured placement and the biggest letters belong to Franzen.

"To me, this is a Franzen book," Galassi said.

       Such, apparently, is the state of translation in the US, that even the likes of Jonathan Galassi -- himself a dabbler in translation (even well-regarded, in some circles, as such) -- doesn't think that Kraus could sell the book on his reputation alone (one that surely dwarfs Franzen's by any measure, save that of contemporary tabloid mentions), but rather that the Franzen-connection is seen as the main seeling point and draw.
       See also the Farrar, Straus and Giroux publicity page for The Kraus Project (where you can check out the offensive cover),or pre-order your copy at Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk.

       I have long maintained that translation is a great exercise for writers of fiction -- and continue to argue that it would do most would-be authors a whole lot more good to translate a good foreign-language text (or, preferably, several) than to get an MFA (from a purely technical/creative/writing point of view; the social and professional benefits of MFAing are, of course, something else -- but also have very little to do with actual writing). Certainly, I wish that more US/UK fiction writers would engage in this most direct and intimate of ways with foreign texts (preferably fiction-texts, not the stuff Mitchell and Franzen spent their time on ...).