At Three Percent Chad Post reports on the Updated Translation Databases ! he's posted -- the 2013 (and 2012) listings of all new (original) fiction and poetry translations to appear in the US.
While the data still has to be handled with care (don't shout: "Three per cent !" -- that number remains as dubious as ever), it does give a great overview of what gets translated. The rough numbers are fascinating: I'm surprised by the number of translations from the Russian (admittedly: a lot are poetry, and I haven't see all of the fiction ones), and how few there are from Chinese (14th in the language rankings, right along with Danish, Dutch, and also under-performing Portuguese). I'm shocked at the lack of translations from South and South-East Asia: two Hindi titles, one Urdu, and a few Indonesian titles (which you are unlikely to find at your local bookstore, by the way), but nothing in Bengali, Thai, Burmese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, etc. ? Only 41 languages in all ('various' is not a language; Flemish surely is, for these intents and purposes, Dutch), which is really sad -- and the top three languages accounting for over 40 per cent of all translations, which is even sadder..
365 of the 2013 titles are fiction, and these are more or less the ones we'll be considering for the Best Translated Book Award (minus the anthologies) -- so also a reminder to anyone who spots missing titles that you think might be eligible: tell Chad !
Of the 365 fiction titles 70 are already under review at the complete review -- not bad, given that I've only even seen about half of these. I hope to get through at least as many by the time of the first big BTBA cull (in making the longlist), in early 2014.
While the data still has to be handled with care (don't shout: "Three per cent !" -- that number remains as dubious as ever), it does give a great overview of what gets translated. The rough numbers are fascinating: I'm surprised by the number of translations from the Russian (admittedly: a lot are poetry, and I haven't see all of the fiction ones), and how few there are from Chinese (14th in the language rankings, right along with Danish, Dutch, and also under-performing Portuguese). I'm shocked at the lack of translations from South and South-East Asia: two Hindi titles, one Urdu, and a few Indonesian titles (which you are unlikely to find at your local bookstore, by the way), but nothing in Bengali, Thai, Burmese, Tagalog, Vietnamese, etc. ? Only 41 languages in all ('various' is not a language; Flemish surely is, for these intents and purposes, Dutch), which is really sad -- and the top three languages accounting for over 40 per cent of all translations, which is even sadder..
365 of the 2013 titles are fiction, and these are more or less the ones we'll be considering for the Best Translated Book Award (minus the anthologies) -- so also a reminder to anyone who spots missing titles that you think might be eligible: tell Chad !
Of the 365 fiction titles 70 are already under review at the complete review -- not bad, given that I've only even seen about half of these. I hope to get through at least as many by the time of the first big BTBA cull (in making the longlist), in early 2014.