(Continued from previous article)
Chinese Document Translation provides the following information:
The list of languages used in translating foreign books is not reliable because English, French and Spanish are official languages or common languages in many countries. It is difficult to identify which countries have been actively introducing foreign books. Let’s take a look at the Top 10 countries with the highest number of translated foreign books:
1. Germany (239,784)/ 2. Spain (209,644)/ 3. France (163,480)/ 4. Japan (117,712)/
5. Soviet Union (92,764 by1991)/ 6. Netherlands (80,305)/ 7. Poland (65,194)/8. Denmark (63,801)/ 9. Italy (53,254)/ 10. Brazil (51,237)
On this list, the U.S. ranked 14th (39,736). Despite having a brief history, Russia still placed 19th with 23,611 translations, India ranked 31st with 13,206 translations, while China wasn’t included in the Top50.
Finally, let’s take a look at the world’s Top10 most-translated authors in the world:
1. Works produced by Walt Disney Productions (9,181)
2. Agatha Christie, British detective novel writer (6,543)
3. Jules Verne, French sci-fi writer (4,185)
4. William Shakespeare, British writer (3,603)
5. Vladimir Ulyanov, Russian politician (3,516)
6. Enid Blyton, British writer (3,495)
7. Barbara Cartland, British writer (3,403)
8. Danielle Steel, American writer (2,858)
9. Hans Christian Andersen, Danish writer (2,811)
10. Stephen King, American writer (1,696)
Others familiar to the public made it to the Top 50, such as Mark Twain, Isaac Asimov, John Griffith, Alexandre Dumas, Charles Dickens, Oscar Wilde, Ernest Hemingway and Honore Balzac. Revolutionist Karl Marx placed 31st with 1,496. However, there aren’t any Chinese writers listed in the Top 50. After checking the database, it was found that the most translated Chinese manuscripts were Selected Works of Mao Zedong, works of Lu Xun, classic novels and acupuncture techniques.
In general, what kinds of problems are discussed based on the above data? First, English is the most translated source language, surpassing French which placed second. English is found to be a strong language and creative in terms of culture and science. According to this index, Chinese ranks 21st, behind Japanese which places 13th. This indicates that Chinese culture has limited external influence, especially in modern culture and science categories. Not only is the export of Chinese books low, but also the number of imported foreign translated books are worse than those from European countries such as Germany, France, Spain and Russia, and even much worse than Japan and Korea.
If you have other questions, feel free to contact the Chinese Document Translation company.