Livres Hebdo/Electre have gathered the numbers on translations into French in 2014, and they total 11,859 -- 17.4 per cent of all publications.
Alas, only summary findings are freely accessible online -- but these show that after English (59.5 per cent of all translations), Japanese was the second most translated-from language at 11.8 per cent -- way ahead of number three, German, at 5.4 per cent. Unfortunately, there's no breakdown of the titles/genres etc. -- which might help offer an explanation. (The only one I can think of: they're counting manga-translations -- which they might well be: 11.8 per cent of 11,859 titles would be roughly 1400 (!) titles translated from the Japanese (suggesting more than three translated-from-the-Japanese titles appeared in France each and every day); by comparison the Three Percent database, counting US publication of translations (admittedly only first-time translations, only fiction and poetry, and excluding re-issues) counts all of 19 translations into English from the Japanese (and, indeed, only a total of 587 translations from all languages combined) in 2014. As is so often the case with these tallies: without the details (i.e. exact listing of what titles are counted) the numbers and especially the percentages have to be treated with extreme caution -- and probably shouldn't be spouted about.)
Not much information elsewhere yet, either, though the Enfin Livre ! weblog at Le Monde does note that 33 per cent of the translations were novels, and that as far as 'literary' (presumably all adult fiction, plus poetry, etc.) translations go three-quarters were from the English.
Alas, only summary findings are freely accessible online -- but these show that after English (59.5 per cent of all translations), Japanese was the second most translated-from language at 11.8 per cent -- way ahead of number three, German, at 5.4 per cent. Unfortunately, there's no breakdown of the titles/genres etc. -- which might help offer an explanation. (The only one I can think of: they're counting manga-translations -- which they might well be: 11.8 per cent of 11,859 titles would be roughly 1400 (!) titles translated from the Japanese (suggesting more than three translated-from-the-Japanese titles appeared in France each and every day); by comparison the Three Percent database, counting US publication of translations (admittedly only first-time translations, only fiction and poetry, and excluding re-issues) counts all of 19 translations into English from the Japanese (and, indeed, only a total of 587 translations from all languages combined) in 2014. As is so often the case with these tallies: without the details (i.e. exact listing of what titles are counted) the numbers and especially the percentages have to be treated with extreme caution -- and probably shouldn't be spouted about.)
Not much information elsewhere yet, either, though the Enfin Livre ! weblog at Le Monde does note that 33 per cent of the translations were novels, and that as far as 'literary' (presumably all adult fiction, plus poetry, etc.) translations go three-quarters were from the English.