The first systematic record of book translations is the Index Translationum. In 1979, the system was computerised and a true cumulative database began to take shape. Since there is no systematic data on global book sales, the Index has come to be the best available proxy. If you want to ask the question “Who are the most popular authors in the world?” then the Index is the only way to get an answer.
It is this glorious variety that makes the data so absorbing. Although commercial authors do rather better than literary ones, there are plenty of both. Shakespeare, Dickens, Tolstoy, Balzac and Kafka all feature in the top 50. But then again so do Barbara Cartland, Danielle Steel, Stephen King, Alistair MacLean, Ruth Rendell and J.R.R. Tolkien. Children’s authors are well-represented, though perhaps surprisingly J.K. Rowling doesn’t make it.
One also can’t help feeling that the institutions haven’t quite justified their place on the list. The Roman Catholic Church appears at number 48, yet one doubts if its works have ever had quite the mass-market appeal of Tolkien, who appears one place further down. And was it supply push or demand pull which propelled Lenin (4), John Paul II (17), Marx (30) and Engels (36) to their elevated positions? Even Disney, whose works are plainly popular, has derived much of its success by retailing its versions of other people’s stories.
But though the list has its deficiencies, it does highlight one extraordinary fact: namely, the overwhelming dominance of English language writers, and of British ones in particular. If we take the top 50 places on the list and exclude institutions and those whose works have been heavily pushed by those institutions, there are 44 authors left. Treating the Bible as authorless and the Grimm brothers as one author not two leaves just 40. Of these some 25, or over three fifths, are American or British. If the list were confined to authors whose work was first published in the 20th century, the Anglophone predominance would be stronger still.
Size isn’t everything of course, but English is also remarkable for the manner of its formation. Anglo-Saxon forms the bedrock of the language, providing almost all its most commonly used words, but bedrock isn’t the same thing as mass. There are only around 25,000 Anglo-Saxon words in use today. The rest of the half million or more words come from other languages, notably French and Latin. And that gives English a rare and wonderful suppleness. It can be earthy when it chooses to be, high-flown when it cares to. English is one of the few languages in the world in which one can swear like a German and make love like the French.
Source: "Strong Language" by Harry Bingham, January 6, 2006, The Financial Times, www.FT.com
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