The Index Translationum is
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and International secur ...
's database of book
translation
Translation is the communication of the semantics, meaning of a #Source and target languages, source-language text by means of an Dynamic and formal equivalence, equivalent #Source and target languages, target-language text. The English la ...
s. Books have been translated for thousands of years, with no central record of the fact. The
League of Nations
The League of Nations (LN or LoN; , SdN) 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 (1919–1920), Paris Peace ...
established a record of
translation
Translation is the communication of the semantics, meaning of a #Source and target languages, source-language text by means of an Dynamic and formal equivalence, equivalent #Source and target languages, target-language text. The English la ...
s in 1932. In 1946, the
United Nations
The United Nations (UN) is the Earth, global intergovernmental organization established by the signing of the Charter of the United Nations, UN Charter on 26 June 1945 with the stated purpose of maintaining international peace and internationa ...
superseded the League and UNESCO was assigned the Index.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 is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...
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 referred to as simply Disney, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment industry, entertainment conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios (Burbank), Walt Di ...
, 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'' ( ) is a series of 24 comic albums created by Belgians, Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, who wrote under the pen name Hergé. The series was one of the most popular European comics of the 20th century. By 2007, a c ...
'' (
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 comic strip artist. He is best known for creating ''The Adventures of T ...
), 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
Dame Agatha Mary Clarissa Christie, Lady Mallowan, (; 15 September 1890 – 12 January 1976) was an English people, English author known for her 66 detective novels and 14 short story collections, particularly those revolving ...
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 UNESCO Collection of Representative Works (or UNESCO Catalogue of Representative Works) was a UNESCO translation project that was active for about 57 years, from 1948 to about 2005. The project's purpose was to translate masterpieces of world ...
, 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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