The runaway success of Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium” trilogy suggests that when it comes to contemporary literature in translation, Americans are at least willing to read Scandinavian detective fiction.

But for work from other regions, in other genres, winning the interest of big publishing houses and readers in the United States remains a steep uphill struggle. Among foreign cultural institutes and publishers, the traditional American aversion to literature in translation is known as “the 3 percent problem.”

But now, hoping to increase their minuscule share of the American book market - about 3 percent - foreign governments , especially those on the margins of Europe, are taking matters into their own hands.

Increasingly, that campaign is no longer limited to widely spoken languages like French and German. From Romania to Catalonia to Iceland, cultural institutes and agencies are subsidizing publication of books in English, underwriting the training of translators, encouraging their writers to tour in the United States, and submitting to American marketing techniques .

“We have established this as a strategic objective, a long-term commitment to break through the American market,” said Corina Suteu, who leads the New York branch of the European Union National Institutes for Culture and directs the Romanian Cultural Institute. “For nations in Europe, be they small or large, literature will always be one of the keys of their cultural existence, and we recognize that this is the only way we are going to be able to make that literature present in the United States.”

Dalkey Archive Press, a small publishing house in Champaign, Illinois, this year began a literature series underwritten by official groups in Slovenia. The first book, “Necropolis,” by Boris Pahor, a powerful World War II concentration-camp memoir, has been followed by Andrej Blatnik’s “You Do Understand,” an absurdist collection of sketches about intimacy.

Dalkey has planned similar series in Hebrew and Catalan, and with Switzerland and Mexico . In each case a financing agency in the host country is subsidizing publication .

“I can see the day coming soon when the only books we are going to be able to do are books that are parts of series,” said John O’Brien, Dalkey’s publisher. “You’re not just doing it as a book publisher, you are doing it in conjunction with consulates, embassies and book institutes of other countries. That creates a considerable level of interest . ”

Foreign cultural agencies have come to look upon the Web as an ally in promoting their products, through sites of their own, and by using American sites that champion literature in translation.

One such site, Three Percent, was founded by Open Letter, the literary publishing house of the University of Rochester in New York. It has become a lively forum to discuss and review the craft of translation. Another site, Words Without Borders, publishes translated works online and also provides an outlet where translators can offer samples of their work to interesting commercial publishers.

“Part of what we do is to give younger translators a place to debut their work that is not so high pressure, a place where they can try out being a translator and develop a little confidence before they tackle a big project,” said Alane Salierno Mason, the site’s founder.

Words Without Borders has also commissioned projects, the most recent being “Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes From the Modern Middle East,” an anthology of short stories, essays, poems and memoirs translated from Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Urdu. W. W. Norton published it to strongly positive reviews in November.

Even the online bookselling behemoth Amazon.com has entered the field, with a new imprint for literature in translation called Amazon- Crossing . The first offering was “The King of Kahel,” a French novel by Tierno Monenembo, who was born in Guinea . Five more titles have been announced.

The imprint chief, Jeff Belle, said Amazon saw “an opportunity in an area of the publishing world that is underserved.”

“We are lucky as a global company to have a lot of analytics at our disposal, across our global Web sites,” Mr. Belle said. “That has been very helpful in confirming our original theory that a lot of quality authors and voices have just not had an opportunity to reach U.S. audiences.”

Government cultural institutes like the Institut Ramon Llull, which is dedicated to propagating the language and culture of Catalonia, in northeastern Spain, and the Korean Literature Translation Institute have helped underwrite conferences and books on translation, and others are sponsoring trips to take American translators to their countries to better acquaint them with their culture and people.

“It is evident to these people that there is very little support here for this kind of work, and that support is going to have to come from outside” the publishing industry, said Esther Allen, a literature professor at Baruch College in New York and former director of the PEN Translation Fund. “There is still a very entrenched attitude on the part of mainstream commercial houses that the U.S. consumer of books does not want to read translations.”


By LARRY ROHTER