For the third year in a row, Romanian Radio and its Gaudeamus Book Fair in Bucharest hosted a Seminar devoted to literature on the radio on Thursday, 22 November 2012.

The theme of this year’s Seminar was foreign literature, divided into two sessions: "Radio and Literary Translations" and "The Role of Public Broadcasters in the National Promotion of Foreign Literature".

Giorgio Zanchini from RAI Italian Radio presented a panorama of the situation in Europe with respect to literary translations, featuring such statistics as the following:

- In Italy, the number of books published each year from 1997 to 2012 declined from 60,000 to 57,000, while the percentage of books translated during the same period dropped by a quarter, from 25% (15,000) to 20% (11,400).
- As for the share of books translated in other countries, the percentages were even lower: 15% in Germany, 12% in Spain, 10% in France, and just 3% in the United States.
- 61% of the books published in Italy are works of fiction, and according to UNESCO, these represent the most commonly translated books.
- Not surprisingly, English remains the language into which the most books are translated (60% of the total), followed by French, German, Spanish and Japanese.

As for the role of public service radio broadcasters in the national promotion of foreign literature, the discussion and presentations at Gaudeamus focused primarily on the sometimes opposing needs to please listeners by making attractive presentations on bestsellers, and to stimulate their interest in literature in “minor” languages, which may well be those of neighbouring countries.

With respect to literature published in minor languages, the Seminar also examined how to communicate what occurred during the Communist era in Central and Eastern Europe and the democratization of cultural resources. For Matei Martin from Romanian Radio, the novel, far more than the historical essay, represents the ideal genre for conveying the painful experiences of the past.

The final word, however, goes to the guest of honour, Professor Andrei Marga, President of the Romanian Cultural Institute, for whom intellectuals in Eastern Europe remain firmly convinced that the nations of Western Europe are the guarantors of freedom and democracy by virtue of their affluence.

All the presentations and working documents from the Seminar can be found in the EBU Documentation Centre, accessible from the EBU Lounge: http://www.ebu.ch/ebu_extranet/index.php