Svitlana Pryzynchuk: «You need to have enthusiasm and belief»

Hello! I am Svitlana Pryzynchuk, founder of Safran publishing. All our books, except children’s, include a chapter titled «Our team». It says there that I am a publishing editor and spent six years living in China where I studied Chinese and received my master’s degree in art history. Every one of our books includes detailed information about the people who worked on it.

There are quite a few of us, and we all are orientalists. Seeing a lack of books in Ukraine that represented the Asian region—the one that fascinates us—we decided to do something about it. This was our biggest motivation. It was I who came up with the idea of a publishing house, but I would credit myself mostly for getting it off the ground. We succeeded in bringing many Ukrainian orientalists living all over the world, from Asia to the United States, together under one publishing umbrella. We have experts in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean studies on board, as well as Arabic, Turkish, and Persian speakers. All of them are eager to contribute to the development of oriental studies in Ukraine, translating or writing books for our press. These professionals collaborate with us as freelancers on specific projects. We also have two full-time employees: Tetiana, an accountant, and Katia, an SMM manager. Katia pursues Korean studies at Kyiv Taras Shevchenko National University.

Our translation team is permanent in the sense that we have a pool of core translators, and it keeps expanding. Some translators collaborate with us on one-off projects, others—on a regular basis. There are many factors at play. A core editorial team is also there, but we are always engaging new editors. It is necessary as the number of simultaneous projects keeps growing. Right now, we have over a dozen core editors and proofreaders moving from project to project. It’s comfortable to work with them, as they know all the ins and outs and are not afraid to take on such complicated projects as ours.

The idea of establishing a publishing house emerged in late 2016. It took a while to prepare the ground, build a community, and put together the first projects. Our press was registered in 2018 and hit the market at International Book Arsenal Festival 2019 with the first Ukrainian translations of two pillars of the Chinese classics: «Zhuangzi» and «The Classic of Tea». It’s not that hard to launch a press—it’s much harder to stay afloat, survive without going bankrupt, and create fascinating projects over and over. One of the most pressing issues is that an emerging publishing house needs a constant flow of investments. Unfortunately, there’s no governmental support for emerging presses. It is like an ocean where you risk sinking very quickly. But it does not look that scary if you conquered Asia at one time. Life in Asia teaches you a lot. But you must have plenty of enthusiasm, confidence, and guanxi, or connections.

My beginner’s path was difficult since I had no startup capital whatsoever. I took a loan to publish our first two books. It’s morally hard as you have absolutely no idea whether you’ll make it. Many people fail. But I had a lot of confidence that we would succeed. It just couldn’t have been otherwise because we know our dear Asia like nobody else. It is a unique niche where only professionals can work. You cannot swoop in and take it. For this reason, we relied on an excellent team, the quality of our books, and the fact that this niche was free. Even if we had money, how would we have done all those incredible projects without a highly qualified team?

Asian literature turned out to be quite exotic for Ukraine—it’s true. But there’s one curious thing. Envisioning a publishing house, I thought we’d be filling the existing demand for translations of Asian fiction. But I was wrong. Russia imported some Asian books into Ukraine, too, but those were mass-market paperbacks anyway, and the demand was never created. We are building it only now. As it turned out, we are forming and stirring up interest in Asia through our books.

Now I can say that we cater to a wide range of readers interested in Asia. And these are not only students of Asian languages, entrepreneurs working with Asian partners, or tourists. Initially, we identified them as our target audience, but we were wrong. Some of them read our books, too, of course, but most of our readers have no connections with Asia. They simply like the books we publish.

Certain publication plans are in place, indeed—mostly for Chinese literature, but also for Korean and Japanese. However, we don’t follow them down to the last detail. In practice, it looks like that. We talk to translators to figure out which books they consider worthwhile and would like to translate. Then we shortlist those we’re also interested in as publishers. Next, we explore financing options. In a perfect scenario, it all matches up. If there is no funding, but the project looks awesome, we fund it ourselves. Some projects come to us ‘half-baked,’ with a manuscript or translation already available. We assess them and decide whether this is something we’d like to do. Sometimes, our foreign partners reach out to us with their proposals. But again, they leave it to us to decide if any of the suggested projects interests us.

You are not the first to ask us about it. Translation of «Journey to the West» is an immense undertaking. One of our translators has long been eager to translate it. But the translation will take at least three years. Then, there is an issue of funding. This is a huge project. Its translation only will cost a few dozen thousand dollars—if we are talking about decent payment, of course. Right now, we are not able to pull it off. China does not have any programs supporting the translation and publication of its classical works, and it’s not clear whether they will launch any. We funded the publication of «Zhuangzi» and «The Celestial Songs. Poetic Translations of Yaroslava Shekera» ourselves.

The situation with these novels is the same as with «Journey to the West». All I can say is that we do have a translator who’d like to translate «Water Margin».

And what about Japanese literature? There are only a few Ukrainian translations of classical works or contemporary Japanese fiction. Let alone ranobe, or light novels. And when it comes to Korea, I can hardly remember any translations published.

It is a good observation. Out of all Asian literatures, Japanese is the most widely translated. One of the reasons behind that is the translation grant program run by Japan Foundation that supports classics. The rates for translation from Japanese, as well as Korean or Chinese, are very high, and the publishers struggle to pay for them without any financial support. Ranobe is no exception. Our press has two translations of Japanese classical works on pause: a war epic of the 11th century and modern classics of the early 20th century. We are searching for funding—without much success so far.

Well, you have to start with something, I guess. I selected a dozen of Taiwanese titles, in fact, but we decided to start with «Guardienne» since it has a gorgeous cover. Its rich colors left me dazed! So, I was impressed by the cover first, and only then did I read the synopsis and the excerpt available on the website. This manhua has recently received an award, which also matters a lot, and it is ongoing—the story is to be continued, so both the Chinese and the Ukrainian readers will be looking forward to a new book. On top of that, I have always loved this particular style of visual representation of ancient China. So, this book matched my aesthetic and visual tastes perfectly. Honestly, I value aesthetics above all, and many comics are lost on me because of their art style. I either like it or not. Our press publishes only the comics I like visually.

«Guardienne» addresses an urgent issue, indeed. It talks about gender. Women have been marginalized in China for centuries. Footbinding is an apotheosis of brutality in the attitude toward women. At the beginning of this comics, there is a phrase: «How will we marry you off if your feet are so big?» That girl did not bandage her feet—they were what we consider normal. Not all women bandaged their feet, though. Only aristocrats or the girls whose parents were desperate to find a good match for them.

But gender issues are not the only thing that makes this Taiwanese comics remarkable. It describes so many ancient Chinese traditions and customs that we know nothing of! I am also curious how this mysterious storyline will finish and whether there will be a love story…

Our press plans to embrace Taiwanese manhua and Korean manhwa. We won’t publish any manga for now, though. Our experience shows that it is hard to collaborate with the Japanese for many reasons. We will wait for other presses specializing in the manga to stir them up a bit.

We are only starting to explore this universe. But this is our dear Asia, so we will quickly learn what is what. I can’t really make any recommendations because I feel I do not have the moral right to recommend anything unlicensed or any Russian translations. I can only recommend all Ukrainian translations of the manga available on the market. They have been published by emerging publishing houses, so you will not only read the manga in your native language but also help these presses grow.

How hard is it to translate from Chinese? There are countless dialects in China. Also, since the middle of the 20th century, the country has been using simplified characters, and Simplified Chinese is much easier than Traditional Chinese, which is used, for example, in Taiwan.

Nobody translates from dialects—they are spoken. We translate from Classical Chinese based on Mandarin. It is in Classical Chinese that books are published. Simplified characters are definitely easier, especially if you learned only them. Translating an entire novel or philosophical treatise written with traditional characters is a real feat. Things are easier with the manhua because there isn’t that much text there. You will find Taiwanese dialect in the books from Taiwan, indeed. In this case, we collaborate with native speakers who edit the translation or help the translator with specific passages.

Thank you for your feedback about the quality. It is time- and resource-consuming for any publisher, big or small. But as I said, it has been all about quality from the get-go. Design matters a lot. There are two reasons why we decided to design our books beautifully from the very start. First: to attract the readers’ attention and stand out among other books on the market. It was not clear how many potential readers we had, and we were aware that people who knew nothing about Asia or our publishing house would judge our books primarily by their design. And if a book is attractive, the readers are more likely to pick it up in a bookshop and read a few pages. Second: we were working with Chinese literature. There is a stereotype that China (unlike Japan) produces only cheap, low-quality, and ugly things. This prejudice towards everything Chinese expanded onto Chinese books by default, and we had to overcome it—with all means available, including quality paper, lettering, layout, etc.

As an art historian, I love stylish book covers, especially collages which we often put on our covers. I think that collage is the best way to convey the spirit of contemporary Asia.

When it comes to profits, our books are slightly more expensive than the market average. But we do not set the prices too high. After all, our goal is to grow our audience.

Four new books are coming out in June 2021, on the eve of the International Book Arsenal Festival. It is «88 Ornaments of Kimono», 112 pages of pure beauty with cloth cover, foil stamping, and dust jacket. Two Taiwanese novels: «The Stolen Bicycle» by Wu Ming-yi and «The Stories of the Sahara» by iconic Taiwanese writer Sanmao. And, finally, «A Women’s Emirate? Female Politicians of the Muslim World», a non-fiction book.

Oh, it is a tricky question. Forthcoming projects are always the best. Those three I just mentioned are fantastic. It is a new level for us in terms of the quality of fiction and the importance of authors. «The Stolen Bicycle» was longlisted for the International Booker Prize. «The Stories of the Sahara» were published back in 1976, and more than 15 million copies have been sold ever since. In 2019, an English translation was published by Bloomsbury.

More countries. More comics. More contemporary fiction. There are lots of plans. Asia is huge, and it is our second home. So, we will continue to introduce our Ukrainian readers to it.

Thank you!

By Ivan Mandryk

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