Translated book sales are up, but Britain is still cut off from foreign literature

“But when you examine what is translated into English, only 1.5% of all books published in the UK are translations. Compare that to Germany (a bigger book market than the UK), France or Italy, where translated fiction is 12.28%, 15.9% and 19.7% of the respective markets… “ Literature Across Frontiers

No of speakers world wide, in millions
English              1500
German              101
French                 67
Italian                  61
Top 30 languages of the world

Number of books sold, in millions, per year in / per capita
US                        305 / 1
UK                       184 / 2.875
Germany             82 / 1
France                 42 / 0.667
Italy                      62 / 1
Books published per country per year

Number of speakers worldwide
English              1500
German               101
French                  67
Italian                   61

Percentage number of books per year being translated into
US                           3
UK                           3
Germany              11
France                  15
Italy                      25
Percentages of Translations in English

If we take the fact that 2.875 books are read per person in the UK, the the percentage translated rises to 43%. If one looks at the number of publishes who sell translated work, and the number of translated titles they introduce a month, this begins to make sense. To take one example

Happy International Translation Day!

Then, to end with, we have this from the same newspaper,

Translated fiction sells better in the UK than English fiction, research finds

The Pushkin Press

Malcolm D B Munro
Friday 30 September, 2016

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