The Index Translationum is
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international coope ...
's database of book
translation
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transla ...
s. Books have been translated for thousands of years, with no central record of the fact. The
League of Nations
The League of Nations (french: link=no, Société des Nations ) was the first worldwide intergovernmental organisation whose principal mission was to maintain world peace. It was founded on 10 January 1920 by the Paris Peace Conference th ...
established a record of
translation
Translation is the communication of the meaning of a source-language text by means of an equivalent target-language text. The English language draws a terminological distinction (which does not exist in every language) between ''transla ...
s in 1932. In 1946, the
United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is an intergovernmental organization whose stated purposes are to maintain international peace and security, develop friendly relations among nations, achieve international cooperation, and be a centre for harmoni ...
superseded the League and UNESCO was assigned the Index. In 1979, the records were computerised.
Since the Index counts translations of individual books, authors with many books with few translations can rank higher than authors with a few books with more translations. So, for example, while the
Bible
The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity
Christianity is an Abrahamic monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus ...
is
the single most translated book in the world, it does not rank in the top ten of the index. The Index counts the
Walt Disney Company
The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October ...
, employing many writers, as a single writer. Authors with similar names are sometimes included as one entry, for example, the ranking for "Hergé" applies not only to the author of ''
The Adventures of Tintin
''The Adventures of Tintin'' (french: Les Aventures de Tintin ) is a series of 24 ''bande dessinée'' albums created by Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, who wrote under the pen name Hergé. The series was one of the most popular European comi ...
'' (
Hergé
Georges Prosper Remi (; 22 May 1907 – 3 March 1983), known by the pen name Hergé (; ), from the French pronunciation of his reversed initials ''RG'', was a Belgian cartoonist. He is best known for creating ''The Adventures of Tintin'', ...
), but also to B.R. Hergehahn, Elisabeth Herget, and Douglas Hergert. Hence, the top authors, as the Index presents them, are from a database query whose results require interpretation.
According to the Index,
Agatha Christie remains the
most-translated individual author.
Statistics
Source: UNESCO
Top 10 Author
Top 10 Country
Top 10 Target Language
Top 10 Original language
See also
*
UNESCO Collection of Representative Works
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...
, UNESCO's program for funding the translation of works
*
List of literary works by number of translations
This is a list of the most translated literary works (including novels, plays, series, collections of poems or short stories, and essays and other forms of literary non-fiction) sorted by the number of languages into which they have been transla ...
References
External links
Index TranslationumIndex Translationum: Statistics - Search forms
Online databases
Indexes
Translation databases
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