Strong language
Back in the dark days of 1931, when the League of Nations was looking ever less effectual and the US was plunging deep into economic depression, the librarians of the world were bent on revolution.
ADVERTISEMENT
Since the advent of the printing press, books have been translated at the initiative of individual publishers and booksellers, with no central record of such translations. To the orderly minds of the world's national librarians, the system seemed little better than anarchic.
It bothered the archivists that the free market could simply call new translations into being without any authoritative record of such things. And so the League of Nations was pressured into setting up the first systematic record of translations, the Index Translationum. In 1946, Unesco took over the chore. In 1979, the system was computerised and a true cumulative database began to take shape.
And though the original project might have been of interest mostly to librarians, the results of their labours are of much wider appeal. 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.
And the answers are fascinating. In what other list would Lenin rub shoulders with Agatha Christie? Where else would Enid Blyton be ranked two places ahead of William Shakespeare? In what other list of best-selling authors would the top spot be taken by an outfit, Walt Disney Inc, which isn't in the normal sense an author at all?
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.
Her omission points to one of the weaknesses in relying on translations as a proxy for sales. Authors who write prolifically are at a substantial advantage over authors who have written only a few books that sold massively. Even once J.K. Rowling has completed the seventh Harry Potter book, each one would need to be translated some 150 times for their author to appear in the top 50. Barbara Cartland, author of more than 700 books, gets into the top 10 with an average of fewer than five translations per book.
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.
These are remarkable facts. It is certainly true that the Index has been created in an era of American hegemony. But it's too easy to dismiss the results as simply a reflection of global economic power. In fact, the figures show a cheerful disregard for such ephemera. The French author Charles Perrault (42), creator of the fairy tale and author of Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, among many others, owes his place on the list to his work, not the long- vanished power of 17th century France, the period in which he wrote.
Likewise, Barbara Cartland (6) may have been a terrible writer, but she is certainly a popular one. Indeed the most obvious demonstration that the list has no simple link with economics comes from the remarkable popularity of British authors. Britain alone has contributed 13 authors or just about a third of our pared-down list of the world's 40 "most translated" individual writers. The British share is almost equivalent to the combined efforts of the rest of Europe, and is significantly greater than the share of the US, a country with five times the population.
But if the cause isn't economic dominance, then perhaps it's a linguistic one. There's certainly plenty of evidence for such a thought. Almost 50 per cent of all translations are from English into other languages, while only 6 per cent are from those other languages into English. This asymmetry is now embedded in the very structure of the industry. Japan is a voracious consumer of foreign work, but its publishers almost always translate from the English, even the English translation of a Spanish, French or German original. Overseas publishers regularly complain that Anglo-Saxon publishing houses are disdainful of any non-English work. Given that the US translates about as many works from foreign languages as do the tiny publishing markets of Finland and the Czech Republic, the complaint would appear to have merit.
Unesco, endorsing this view, comments on its website: "This is perhaps one way of controlling the market and maintaining the cultural dominance of English and the market is controlled through what is on offer, through the availability of products sold by the industry of culture - whether it is music, or films or books." (Perhaps Unesco's mangled syntax represents its own covert fight- back against that cultural dominance. Certainly there would be a lot less "industry of culture" if it was left to writers like this.)
But Unesco, characteristically, overstates the case. Who precisely does Unesco think "controls the market"? A secret cartel of wicked Anglo-Saxon publishers? A cabal made up of Bush, Blair and Murdoch? Surely not. The publishing industry is as keen on profit as any other business. When foreign books come along that seem to offer that profit, British and American publishing houses will jump at the chance, no matter how tiny the publishing market of origin.
Indeed, little-known settings may actually boost marketability. Peter Hoeg, the Danish author of Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow, is one case in point. Not only was his book beautifully and cleverly written, but the Danish-Greenlander subject matter introduced Anglo-Saxon readers to a world that few of them had previously encountered. That novelty was unquestionably a strength, not a weakness, in marketing terms, and the book sold like hot caribou- cakes because of it.
Such books do not emerge at random. On the contrary, there's a large and well developed market for the purchase and sale of international rights. The Frankfurt Book Fair is, in essence, just that: the publishing industry's own version of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange.
And after all, the asymmetry in translations into and out of English is just what one would expect if English language authors were simply more popular than others. Why should this be either hard to believe, or politically incorrect to state? Nobody has a problem accepting that the German musical tradition is better than the British one, or that the Italians have done more for opera. Why not also acknowledge that the Anglo-Saxon literary tradition is more successful because it's better?
If that's true, then part of the explanation may lie in the language itself. The English language is a remarkable beast. There's its sheer capacity for one thing. French can muster around 100,000 words, German perhaps double that. The English language, on the other hand, counts at least 500,000 words, and probably half as many again. (Both leading American and English dictionaries come to a word count of around half a million words, but they don't always count the same ones. Guesstimates of the overlap suggest a total closer to three quarters of a million.)
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.
And yet neither size nor structure quite explains the success of English literature. English has certainly been unusually free in adopting foreign words and creating new ones from thin air. But this is less likely to be a cause of literary fecundity than the result of a national delight in language. Equally, though English literature certainly owes a lot to its twin Germanic and Romance sources, the fact is that the England of Alfred the Great - two centuries before the Norman conquest - produced a literature which even then was unmatched in Europe. Perhaps the real explanation is also the simplest: that nations differ in their artistic tastes and choices, and that those differences tend to persist through time.
Meantime, Unesco continues to update its Index. J.K. Rowling will surely make it to the top 50 sometime soon. Dan Brown will surely follow. Rudyard Kipling (46) is probably too unfashionable to hold his place on the list for long. And somewhere out there a novelist is scribbling down a novel that will propel him or her to international stardom. The novel may be for kids or adults. It may be romance or adventure. It may be good or bad, sad or funny.
But the chances are it will be written in English.
Harry Bingham is the author of several novels, most recently "Glory Boys", and has been translated into around a dozen languages.
THE INDEX TRANSLATIONUM TOP 50 MOST TRANSLATED AUTHORS
1 Walt Disney Inc US
2 Agatha Christie UK
3 Jules Verne France
4 Vladimir Lenin Russia
5 Enid Blyton UK
6 Barbara Cartland UK
7 William Shakespeare UK
8 Danielle Steel US
9 Hans Christian Andersen Denmark
10 Stephen King US
11 Jakob Grimm Germany
12 Wilhelm Grimm Germany
13 Bible (New Testament)
14 Isaac Asimov US
15 Mark Twain US
16 Alexandre Dumas France
17 John Paul II Poland
18 Georges Simenon Belgium
19 Jack London US
20 Arthur Conan Doyle UK
21 Rene Goscinny France
22 Bible
23 Fyodor Dostoyevsky Russia
24 Robert Louis Stevenson UK
25 Leo Tolstoy Russia
26 Charles Dickens UK
27 Astrid Lindgren Sweden
28 Robert L. Stine US
29 Victoria Holt UK
30 Karl Marx Germany
31 Alistair MacLean UK
32 Oscar Wilde Ireland
33 Sidney Sheldon US
34 Rudolf Steiner Austria
35 Ernest Hemingway US
36 Friedrich Engels Germany
37 Hermann Hesse Germany
38 Honore de Balzac France
39 James Hadley Chase UK
40 Bible (Old Testament)
41 Nora Roberts US
42 Charles Perrault France
43 Ruth Rendell UK
44 Edgar Allan Poe US
45 Robert Ludlum US
46 Rudyard Kipling UK
47 Plato Greece
48 Roman Catholic Church
49 J.R.R. Tolkien UK
50 Franz Kafka Czechoslovakia
英语──强势语言
在
1931年的艰难岁月，当时的国际联盟(League of Nations)看来正日益失去效力，美国正深陷经济萧条之中，全世界的图书管理员决心进行一场革命。
自印刷机问世以来，个别出版商和图书销售商发动翻译了各类图书，不过这些译作没有被集中记录下来。在世界上一丝不苟的图书管理员看来，整个体制似乎与无政府状态差不多。
自由市场可以简单地催生新的翻译作品，没有任何权威记录，这种情况困扰着文献管理人员。因此，国际联盟迫于压力，建立了第一个系统的翻译记录体系，即《翻译索引》(Index Translationum)。1946年，联合国教科文组织(Unesco)接管了这件琐事。1979年，这个系统被电脑化，一个真正的累积数据库开始成形。
尽管原来这个项目主要是出于图书管理员的兴趣，但他们的劳动成果现在具有更大的吸引力。由于全球图书销售没有系统数据，这个索引就成了可利用的最佳替代品。如果你要问“谁是世界上最受欢迎的作家？”那么这份索引是获得答案的唯一途径。
世界文豪排行榜
答案很吸引人。除了这个索引，还有什么榜单会让列宁(Lenin)与阿加莎?克里斯蒂(Agatha Christie)比肩而立呢？还有什么地方会使伊尼德?布莱顿(Enid Blyton)的排名，会比威廉?莎士比亚(William Shakespeare)还要高两位呢？在哪个最畅销作家榜单里，沃尔特迪斯尼(Walt Disney)公司会拔得头筹呢？在普通意义上，迪斯尼这种企业根本不算作家。
正是这种显赫的多样性让这些数据如此诱人。尽管商业作家比文学作家做得更好，但两类作家都不乏其人。莎士比亚、狄更斯(Dickens)、托尔斯泰(Tolstoy)、巴尔扎克(Balzac)和卡夫卡(Kafka)都在前50名之中。但芭芭拉?卡特兰(Barbara Cartland)、丹尼尔?斯蒂尔(Danielle Steel)、斯蒂芬?金(Stephen King)、阿利斯泰尔?麦克林(Alistair Maclean)、鲁思?蓝黛儿(Ruth Rendell)、J?R?R?托尔金(J.R.R. Tolkien)也有不俗表现。儿童文学作家表现同样不错，但令人吃惊的是J?K?罗琳(J.K. Rowling)不在其列。
她的缺席说明了以翻译作为销售指标的一个缺陷。多产作家比只写了少数大销量作品的作家有显著的优势。即使有朝一日J?K?罗琳完成了《哈利?波特》(Harry Potter)第七部，每一部也都要被翻译约150次，罗琳才能进入前50名。芭芭拉?卡特兰的作品超过700部，每本书平均翻译不超过5次就能进入前10名。
人们不禁感到，这个机制不能完全证明排名是合理的。罗马天主教会排名48位，然而人们不相信，它的作品是否有过托尔金作品那样的大众市场吸引力。托尔金的排名比罗马天主教会低一位。还有，是供应推动还是需求拉动将列宁(第4位)、约翰?保罗二世(John Paul II)(17位)、马克思(Marx)(30位)和恩格斯(Engels)(36位)排名推至这么高的位置？即便是作品大受欢迎的迪斯尼，其成功也大多得益于零售别人故事的翻版。
英语作家占压倒性优势
尽管这张榜单有它的不足之处，但它的确突出了一个不同寻常的事实，那就是英语作家的压倒性优势，英国作家尤其突出。如果看看榜单前50名，去掉机构和作品受到这些机构大力推动的作家，则还剩44位作家。把《圣经》看作没有作者，格林(Grimm)兄弟被视为一个作者而不是两个，则只剩40个作家。其中约25位，即超过五分之三是英美作家。如果这张榜单的范围，缩小到作品于20世纪首次发表的作家，英语作家的优势更加明显。
这些都是值得一提的事实。不错，这个索引在美国称霸的年代里产生。但认为这种结果不过反映了全球的经济力量，那就太简单了。事实上，这些数据坦然排除了此类短期因素。法国作家夏尔?贝洛(Charles Perrault)(42位)是童话故事创作者，《灰姑娘》(Cinderella)和《睡美人》(Sleeping Beauty)等作品即出自他手，是作品让他在榜单中赢得了一席之地，而非因为早已消逝的17世纪(他写作的年代)的法国实力。
同样，芭芭拉?卡特兰(6位)可能是个糟糕的作家，但她确实受欢迎。的确，这张榜单与经济没有直接联系，最明显的例证就是英国作家的大受欢迎。单单英国就贡献了13位作家，也就是在经过我们削减的、全球40位作品“被翻译得最多”的榜单中占了三分之一。英国所占的比重，几乎相当于欧洲其它国家的总和，也大大高于美国的比重，而美国的人口是英国的5倍。
英文出版商瞧不起非英语作品?
而如果经济优势不是原因，那可能就是语言原因。关于这种想法当然有大量的证据。接近50%的翻译都是从英语到其它语言，而仅有6%是从其它语言翻译到英语。目前，这种不对称已深入到该行业的结构之中。日本大量消费外国作品，但日本出版商几乎总是翻译英语作品，甚至原文为西班牙语、法语或德语的英译本。海外出版商经常抱怨英文出版商瞧不起任何非英语作品。鉴于美国所翻译的外语作品数量，与芬兰和捷克共和国等微小出版市场一致，这种抱怨似乎是有道理的。
联合国教科文组织赞同这一观点，它在其网站评论道：“这也许是控制市场、维持英语文化优势的一个方法，对市场的控制是通过在市场上销售的产品，通过文化产业所销售的产品供应，无论是音乐、电影还是书籍。”(联合国教科文组织一团糟的句法，或许代表了它对英语文化优势的暗中反击。如果把“文化产业”交给这样的作家，那么文化产业肯定会缩小许多。)
但是,联合国教科文组织通常夸大情形。教科文组织究竟认为是谁“控制了市场”？一个邪恶的英文出版商秘密垄断集团？由布什(Bush)、布莱尔(Blair)和默多克(Murdoch)组成的阴谋小集团？当然不是。出版业和其它行业一样渴求利润。如果出现了看来可以取得利润的外国书籍，英美出版社都不会放过机会，无论原文的出版市场如何微不足道。
实际上，鲜为人知的背景实际上或许可以提升销路。《情系冰雪》(Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow)一书的丹麦作家彼得?赫格(Peter Hoeg)就是例证。他的书不仅文笔优美，而且丹麦裔格林兰人的题材，带领英文读者进入了他们中很少人到过的世界。用营销术语来说，这种新颖的题材无疑是一项优势而非弱势，正因为这一点这本小说卖火了。
此类作品不是随意出现的。相反，国际版权的买卖有着巨大而发展完善的市场。法兰克福书展(Frankfurt Book Fair)本质上就是这样一个市场，它是出版业的芝加哥商品交易所。
英语文学更优秀?
毕竟，如果英语作者就是比其它作者更受欢迎，那么译成英语与译自英语作品数量的不对称就在意料之中了。这一点为什么会让人难以相信，要么表述时在政治上不正确？德国音乐传统优于英国音乐传统，意大利人在歌剧上胜人一筹，这些观点人人都会同意。那为什么不承认，由于英语文学传统更优秀，所以它更为成功呢？
如果那是事实，那么部分原因也许在于语言本身。英语是个不同寻常的怪兽。首先是因为它的绝对容量。法语约有10万词汇，德国的词汇数量可能是法语的两倍。而英语至少有50万词汇，或许还要加上一半。(美英主要词典收词都在50万左右，但它们所收的词汇并不总是一样。估计两者叠加后，英语总词汇量接近75万。)
当然词汇量并不代表全部，但英语在其构成方式上也不同寻常。盎格鲁撒克逊人形成了这种语言的根基，提供了几乎所有常用的英语词汇，但根基与词汇量是两码事。今天所使用的盎格鲁撒克逊词汇仅有约2.5万。这50万或更多词汇中的剩余部分都来自其它语言，尤其是法语和拉丁语。这赋予了英语罕见而奇妙的灵活性。英语可以朴实无华，也可以华而不实。英语是世界上为数不多的，既可以像德国人一样骂人，也可以像法国人一样示爱的语言之一。
全民以英语为乐
不过，词汇量和结构都不能充分解释英语文学的成功。在接受外来语及凭空造出新词方面，英语的确格外自由。但这不太可能成为文学多产的理由，它更可能是全民以英语为乐的结果。同样，尽管英国文学肯定多亏了日尔曼和拉丁语系这两个兄弟来源，但事实上，阿尔弗雷德大帝统治下的英格兰(诺曼人征服前两个世纪)，当时就创造了在欧洲无人能及的文学作品。或许最真实的原因也是最简单的：不同国家有着不同的艺术品味及选择，而这些差异往往不会随着时间的流逝而改变。
与此同时，联合国教科文组织在继续更新着索引。J?K?罗琳不久后肯定会跻身于前50名之列。丹?布朗(Dan Brown)也肯定会尾随而至。鲁德亚德?吉卜林(Rudyard Kipling)(46位)可能太过时了，所以在榜单上时日无多了。而此时正在某处撰写小说的某位小说家，会因这部小说成为国际明星。这部小说也许是为儿童所写，也可能是为成人所写。可能是传奇，也可能是冒险小说。小说也许会不错，也许会很糟，也许伤感，也许滑稽。
但这部小说很可能是用英文写的。
哈里?宾汉是几部小说的作者，最近的一本是《荣耀男孩》(Glory Boys)，已被翻译成约12种语言。
译者/诸彦青
翻译索引前50位被翻译最多的作者
1．沃尔特迪斯尼公司，美国
2．阿加莎?克里斯蒂，英国
3．儒勒?凡尔纳，法国
4．弗拉基米尔?列宁，俄国
5．伊尼德?布莱顿，英国
6．芭芭拉?卡特兰，英国
7．威廉?莎士比亚，英国
8．丹尼尔?斯蒂尔，美国
9．汉斯?克里斯蒂安?安徒生，丹麦
10．斯蒂芬?金，英国
11．雅各布?格林，德国
12．威廉?格林，德国
13．《圣经》（新约）
14．艾萨克?阿西莫夫，美国
15．马克?吐温，美国
16．大仲马，法国
17．约翰保罗二世，波兰
18．乔治?西默农，比利时
19．杰克?伦敦，美国
20．亚瑟?柯南?道尔，英国
21．勒内?戈西尼，法国
22．《圣经》
23．费奥多?陀思妥耶夫斯基，俄罗斯
24．罗伯特?路易斯?史蒂文森，英国
25．列夫?托尔斯泰，俄国
26．查尔斯?狄更斯，英国
27．阿斯特丽德?林格伦，瑞典
28．罗伯特?L?史坦恩，美国
29．维多利亚?霍尔特，英国
30．卡尔?马克思，德国
31．阿利斯泰尔?麦克林，英国
32．奥斯卡?王尔德，爱尔兰
33．西德尼?谢尔顿，美国
34．鲁道夫?斯坦纳，奥地利
35．欧内斯特?海明威，美国
36．弗雷德里希?恩格斯，德国
37．赫尔曼?黑塞，德国
38．奥诺雷?德?巴尔扎克，法国
39．詹姆斯?哈德利?蔡斯，英国
40．《圣经》（旧约）
41．诺拉?罗伯茨，美国
42．夏尔?贝洛，法国
43．鲁思?蓝黛儿，英国
44．埃德加?艾伦?坡，美国
45．罗伯特?勒德拉姆，美国
46．鲁德亚德?吉卜林，英国
47．柏拉图，希腊
48．罗马天主教会
49．J?R?R?托尔金，英国
50．弗朗兹?卡夫卡，捷克斯洛伐克
