With 400 publishers and 200 Spanish authors, the German book fair, the great global rights market, is gaining cruising speed. Getting machines to “think” and speak in correct Spanish is one of the great challenges of the language
“Our tongue is our oil.” The Vice President of the Government, Nadia Calviño, the Minister of Culture, Miquel Iceta, and the director of the Cervantes Institute, Luis García Montero, all agree in this assessment. The three acted yesterday as ambassadors of Spanish and of the co-official languages of the State at the Frankfurt Fair, the publishing summit in which 80% of copyrights are negotiated, the great world book market of which we are the guest country in its 74th edition, which gains cruising speed. Bibliodiversity is the key word for Spanish participation. ‘Overflowing creativity’ is the motto of the Spanish program that the king and queen inaugurated on Tuesday and that has brought the German city to 400 publishers and almost 200 authors.
It was Calviño, Minister of Economy, who, brimming with optimism, presented in the Spanish Pavilion the PERTE of our language, the Strategic Plan for Recovery and Economic Transformation for the development of the cultural industry. It has 1,100 million from the EU and aspires to raise as much from private initiative. Happy to speak in Frankfurt “about the future of Spanish and not GDP or economic stability”, she thanked the powerful and solvent Spanish publishing sector for her work during the pandemic. “If we are a powerhouse in anything, it is in language,” she said.
He raised the need to win the battle of language against machines and in the field of Artificial Intelligence where it is already being waged. «If we didn’t do something, the machines would ‘think’ in Chinese or English, and we work so that they ‘think’ in Spanish and speak it correctly. It is essential that they train in Spanish », he insisted after developing the PERTE points
«Language is our oil», Iceta had advanced, highlighting the linguistic and editorial plurality and the value of Spanish as a bridge with Latin America, the equality and diversity of Spanish society. Also the variety of our vast publishing offer, with novels, essays, poetry, dramaturgy, children’s and young people’s literature, comics, illustrated novels and audiobooks, all in the program in which the Ministry of Culture has invested 12 million euros.
The minister thanked the arrival of some “very relevant funds, with which we are going to transform the world.” He also raised “the language of machines” as a great challenge. «We want them to think and speak in Spanish and we are not going to set limits to achieve this».
“The PERTE of the language helps us to modernize ourselves,” added García Montero, who also spoke of the technological challenge. “We must prevent artificial intelligence from ending up in the hands of multinationals and not contributing to the development of democracy,” he said. “Defending culture is defending the values of freedom, equality and democracy.”
Plural
The Spanish program in Frankfurt focuses on issues such as our linguistic plurality, the power and diversity of its publishing industry, gender equality, sustainability and the fundamental work of translators, to whom this year the fair gives a leading role. A direct consequence of the fair is the translation of books from the guest country not only in Germany but in the rest of the world. Since the beginning of the program, more than 400 books have been translated, with public aid of three million euros. “Language can be a barrier and we want PERTE to be a lever that helps expand it with translations,” said Iceta.
The hypertechnified Spanish pavilion has 2,000 square meters and is called ‘The theory of cherries’ in homage to Carmen Martín Gaite, for whom one book led to another, like cherries. Designed by ‘Enorme + Vitamin’, it is like “a living dictionary” in which “words, languages and stories” will be chained together. An artificial intelligence system makes the appearance of the venue change every day and its walls reflect, “as if they were the pages of a book”, the ideas and debates developed during the meetings it hosts.
Authors, publishers, booksellers and literary agents will pass through it these days. It will host more than 50 conversations -an average of ten daily- and tributes to the legendary agent Carmen Balcells, the editor Jorge Herralde, and three of the most outstanding writers of recent decades and recently deceased, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Almudena Grandes and Javier Marías. . Among the authors, Enrique Vila-Matas, Fernando Aramburu Arturo Peréz-Reverte, Najat el Hachmi, Marta Sanz, Antonio Muñoz Molina, Luis García Montero, Javier Cercas, Isaac Rosa, Juan José Millás, Sergio del Molino, Rosa Montero, Irene Vallejo , Sara Mesa, Cristina Fernández Cubas, Clara Obligado, Vicente Molina Foix, Carme Riera, Bernardo Atxaga, Dolores Redondo, Xesús Fraga, Jokin Mitxelena, Cristina Morales or Manuel Rivas.
In this contest with chilling dimensions and economic figures, and that recover a certain normality after two years of hiatus due to the pandemic. Spanish publishers calculate that in the four days more than five hundred contracts will be closed, much more than was done when in 1991 the Spain that was renewed with the Olympiad and the Expo was the guest of honor
The war in Ukraine is a pervasive theme, with the conspicuous absence of Russian publishers who are prevented by European sanctions from being at the fair. The organizers have dedicated a large space to Ukraine and this Thursday President Volodimir Zelenski has delivered a speech by videoconference. The Peace Prize awarded each year by German booksellers is also given to the Ukrainian writer Serhy Zahadan, whose novel ‘Orphanage’ will soon be published in Spanish by Galaxia Gutenberg.
There is room for debate and for business, although inflation and the scarcity of paper is a burden for a publishing industry that the pandemic did not hurt. Not in vain, the Spanish publishing sector invoiced a total of 2,576 million euros in 2021, 5.6% more than the previous year, according to the Federation of Publishers’ Guilds of Spain (FGGE). Figures that are still far from 2008 with the last year of abundance when 3,185 million euros were billed.
In the same year, the bookstore sector exported to Europe worth 136.35 million euros, 8.54% more than the previous year. But, with everything, the great debate of the publishers, the being not to be, for the next years, is the increase in the prices of the book. An increase that José Creuheras, president of Grupo Planeta, estimated a few days ago at around 5%. The scarcity of paper in the crisis situation and the dominant position of platforms such as Amazon, is causing publishers to consider their news figures and adjust print runs.
«Perte that I love you perte», between Lorca los Amaya and Machado
“Perte I love you Perte,” Minister Miquel Icea said with a smile and celebrating the contribution of European funds, paraphrasing the universal verses of Lorca to celebrate the benefits of the strategic plan. Luis García Montero was not far behind, who almost began to sing, intoning “Perte, I didn’t want to see you, Perte… and today I want to see you, Perte”, in turn evoking Los Amaya and putting the song of the Catalan rumberos in a positive light. to celebrate the rain of millions of Europeans for the cultural industries.
Minister Calviño also became poetic, who turned to Machado and recalled that also with PERTE “the road is made by walking”
García Montero once again made the audience smile when he spoke about the biases of machine language and the response of mobile interactive systems such as Siri or the Russian Yandex to the emotional demands of their users. “If you tell Siri that you’re sad, the answer is ‘I’d like to give you a hug’, while Yandex answers the same question ‘no one told you it was easy’.
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