Comments on: Anglophone domination, even in French

By: Doug

Doug — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 21:10:20 +0000

On the other hand, translated from English takes in a great many countries and traditions. Sure, Pinter won the Nobel in 2005, but how many more laureates do you have to go through before you get to another English-speaker born in England? Coetzee, 2003, South Africa; Naipaul, 2001, Trinidad; Heaney, 1995, Ireland; Morrison, 1993, USA; Walcott, 1992, St. Lucia; Gordimer, 1991, South Africa; Golding, 1983, England. Six laureates and nearly a quater of a century. No other language comes even close, and given the depth and breadth of the contemporary literary tradition in English, it’s no surprise at all that translation from English should dominate so handily.

By: Stewart Rowe

Stewart Rowe — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 20:50:59 +0000

Recently I have been reading Lawrence Lessig’s “Avenir des Idees” which is available on the web only in French. I was surprised by how easy it was to read (I’m 60-plus years from my last French lesson and 30 years from my liast visit to Switzerland). The reason? To me, the text appeared surprisingly American-English in style—English-style grammar, frequent use of words closely related to English words. Perhaps this was a matter of convenience in translating from the original English, or perhaps just the style of these translators. But the general feeling I had was of the difference with my remembrance from years ago. Take a look and see if you get the same feeling.

By: Barry

Barry — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 17:23:54 +0000

“I guess that’s right. But bundling Bulgarian, Hungarian, Polish and Romanian together for statistical purposes is somewhat bizarre!”
Posted by Chris Bertram

Why? They all the same :)

Remember the old British saying, ‘wogs start at Calais’?

By: Matt

Matt — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 13:01:30 +0000

I’d be interested to see how these numbers compared to the number of novels published in the various languages, perhaps with some adjustment for they type of novels that are likely to be translated (don’t ask me how to figure that out, a mixture of style and type of press, maybe.) I’d not be surprised if there was a strong correlation.

By: abb1

abb1 — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 12:51:55 +0000

Why, Eastern Europe is a geographical region. ‘African languages’, for example.

By: Aidan Kehoe

Aidan Kehoe — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 12:37:29 +0000

The comment from Marc Galan saying that English-language publishing has revenues of €21 billion while the figure for publishing in France is €1.8 billion, does give a reasonable ground for lots of translation from English, I think.

By: ~~~~

~~~~ — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 10:13:16 +0000

(Including Hungarian, so it does not mean “Slavic languages”.)

By: Chris Bertram

Chris Bertram — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 10:12:27 +0000

I guess that’s right. But bundling Bulgarian, Hungarian, Polish and Romanian together for statistical purposes is somewhat bizarre!

By: ~~~~

~~~~ — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 10:09:50 +0000

…the languages of the East [meaning? CB]

Googling “les langues de l’est” suggests he means Eastern Europe.