Sport non-fiction in translation

[Levin]

Several times recently, when I've been browsing the cycling section of a bookshop I've been struck by how the authors of non autobiographical books are pretty much exclusively writing in their first language. I've noticed similar in the football section as well but the cycling is more noticeable as the subject matter tends towards being more international.

So it's got me wondering if the English language book market is unique in it's depth of coverage of sport or if it's just being very insular. I find it hard to imagine that there aren't classic books or collections of articles from cycling's past that are ready to be translated and to find a new audience but it's possible I guess. I've not paid as much attention to other sports writing in recent years but just from browsing it looks to be the same. Though cricket and US sport at least have good reasons.

Beyond my general musings can anyone recommend classic non-English language sports non-fiction that's been translated into English?

I'm not sure how to put this next bit. or at least I don't think I'm getting what I'm thinking across as I'd like it.

Last year I was in John Lewis and I saw a set of six prints.



They're obviously modern but done in a retro style and it's just niggled away at me since then. I mean they're well done but there is something about how they refer back to a time in cycling history that isn't really part of the vast majority of british peoples awareness of cycling (I'm fully aware I may just be being prescriptive and generally a bit of a dick about this). I'm torn, I think it's good that people are interested in cycling history, I'm interested in cycling history but I have a feeling that it's a little appropriative. That fans are taking other cultures traditions, that british journalists are writing histories of cycling. I think it's that it feels like we're taking but there isn't anyone going out and giving.

Having written this out I feel like a jerk. And a hypocritical one at that. But I'm not sure why. If you could give me a reason why I'm wrong (if you can make sense of my thoughts) that would be great.

[ursus arctos]

This is a subject of significant interest to me, and one to which I would hope posters like G-Man and Kev7 can make major contributions.

My initial take is that there is very little of this before 2000 or so, when we began to see the rise of non-native writers like Marcotti, Auclair and Honigstein who write fluidly and fluently in English (as do G and K). The result of that is that there is a literal treasure trove of earlier material that doesn’t exist in English. That trove can be particularly rich for those sports that arguably has their “Golden Age” before 2000 and in non-Anglo countries, of which Cycling is an excellent example.

Two names that come immediately to my mind are Gianni Brera and Bruno Raschi, who are on the left and right here



Brera is generally considered the best Italian sports journalist of the 20th century, while Raschi holds that title for those who wrote primarily about cycling (Brera wrote about everything, but about football more than any other sport).

As they both wrote for dailies at a time when the market for sports books was not as robust, their best books are anthologies, none of which have been translated to the best of my knowledge.

There have to be Flemish analogues to Raschi, but I dont read Dutch.

[Gangster Octopus]

I dont read Dutch.

Surely one of you does...