English & French were most of the translation made world

UNESCO’s Index Translationum – the only international bibliography of translations to include such a wide range of disciplines with 1,650,000 references in literature, the social and human sciences, the natural and exact sciences, art, history, etc.- shows that between 1979 and 2004, the seven languages most translated world-wide were all Western: English, French, German, Russian, Italian, Spanish and Swedish. Japanese, however, is one of the languages most translated into, ranking fifth after German, Spanish, French and English and followed by Dutch and Portuguese, respectively sixth and seventh. Different facets of multilingualism will be discussed during the meetings to mark International Mother Language Day at UNESCO on 21 and 22 February.

http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=36813&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html

2008 Translations: Current List and Minor Analysis
17 March 08 | Chad W. Post

In each of the past few posts about our 2008 Translation Database I’ve promised a complete copy of the current list . . . well finally, here’s an Excel version that you can download, manipulate, sort, etc., etc.

This current list is very incomplete. I haven’t received many summer/fall catalogs yet, and even so, there always seems to be a few titles that slip through the cracks and that I find out about via a reader, Publisher’s Weekly, Small Press Distribution, and a few other sources. I am absolutely sure that by the end of the year this will include another couple hundred titles . . .

In that vein, if any of you notice any titles missing, please post them in the comments, or e-mail me at chad.post at rochester dot edu.

And just to review the criteria: this list is only of original translations of adult fiction and poetry published in 2008. No children’s books, comic books, nonfiction, retranslations, or reprints. Not that these other categories aren’t worth paying attention to, it’s more of a time management issue. So only new, never-before translated titles.

I think it will be more interesting to analyze this at the end of the year (or in future years when one can look at trends), but two quick and dirty queries came up with some quasi-surprising results.

First of all, in terms of the most translated languages, here’s the top 10 (actually 11):

French: 26 titles (14.7% of total)
Spanish: 19 (10.7%)
Arabic: 17 (9.6%)
German: 16 (9.0%)
Russian: 12 (6.8%)
Italian: 8 (4.5%)
Hebrew: 7 (4.0%)
Chinese: 6 (3.4%)
Japanese: 6 (3.4%)
Portuguese: 6 (3.4%)
Swedish: 6 (3.4%)

I didn’t expect Arabic to be in front of German, but American University of Cairo Press is primarily responsible for this. One thing that’s clear—the major European languages (French, Spanish, German, Italian) dominate in terms of what’s published in English. These three languages account for 69 of the 177 titles identified, or approx. 39%.

http://www.rochester.edu/College/translation/threepercent/index.php?id=879