How many translations are being published in the UK?

A new statistical report on the publishing of literary translations in the United Kingdom and Ireland from Literature Across Frontiers launched at the 2015 London Book Fair

Media Release, 13th April 2015

How many translations are published in English and how accurate is the often quoted figure of 3%? Which are the most translated languages and which literatures are we missing out on? A new report from Literature Across Frontiers (LAF), Publishing translated literature in the United Kingdom and Ireland: 1990 – 2012, finally answers many questions surrounding translation statistics.  The report, prepared by Alexandra Büchler and Giulia Trentacosti, is a welcome addition to the translation reports and surveys published on LAF’s website and will be launched in electronic format on Monday 13th April, on the occasion of the London International Book Fair 2015.

The key findings presented by the report are based on analysis of two distinct data sets: raw data extracted from the British National Bibliography for the period 1990 – 2012 and processed data for the period 2000 – 2012. The raw data makes it possible to produce statistics comparable to those published by other book markets, while the manually processed data provides an annual list of literary translations comprising fiction, poetry, drama, children’s books and creative non-fiction, so far for the period 2000 – 2012. The processed data sets have been further analysed with respect to genre and source language. More.

See: Literature Across Frontiers

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