The above presentation, created by Quick Lingo on publishing sector translations, gives a great deal of insight into the language problems faced by the publishing industry. It also demonstrates how linguistic professionals are overcoming these barriers and attempts to explain why English is such a predominant language in this field. The presentation also explores the relationship between politics and translation in a global setting.

1. Publishing Sector Translation
The First Records of Publishing Translation
To this day there is still very little finite data for the sector of
publishing translation, despite the invention of the ‘Index
Translationum.’
One of the most comprehensive search engines for literary
translation, the Index Translationum, was established in
Geneva in 1931 by the League of Nations and is now under
the control of UNESCO.
The Index Translationum received worldwide popularity since
it began in 1931 and has now become fully ‘digitised.’
Publishing Translation Business Highs
The Most Popular Translation Source Languages
German
English French Russian
Swedish Spanish
Italian Japanese

2. 80%
of the world’s translated material is published in Europe,
with literature translations reportedly even higher.
In the early
1990’s
there was a big increase in titles translated from English.
In 1996 source language and translations from the next most popular 25 languages.
there was a gap of almost 200% between translations using English as a
20,000
The annual number of literature titles translated
from English in Europe just before the year 2000.
10,000
The number of titles translated from the next most
popular 25 source languages in the same period.
Why is English so popular as a source language for translations, and yet
translations with English as the target language are not as popular?
• The global influence of American culture
• The use of American English as the international language of business
• ‘Multi-culturalism’ in Britain already provides inhabitants with a sense of other cultures
without resorting to foreign literature
• You can read literature about other cultures written by countrymen using the English
language. Why distance yourself from an author through translation when you can get
experience their authorship first hand in your own language?
• This may change as foreign language literature and more intense language training is
introduced into the national education system.

3. Literature Translation and Politics
The number of literature titles translated per year globally,
40.000 with this number already reached in Europe a few years ago.
Over the years, political movements have played a
significant role in the statistics of literature
translations:
During the rise of the Fascist regime, Italy was
publishing more translated literature than any other
country in the world. Political propaganda played a
huge part in raising these figures in the 1930s.
The Russian language saw a marked decline in literary
translations following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, to
a low of just 600 literary titles per year. In the last decade,
however, Russian regained some of its popularity, and has
since maintained figures about 600.
After the fall of the Berlin wall, English played a larger role
in the publications of East and West Germany, with figures
beginning to spike in 1990.

4. Literature Title Translations from 1990 – 2005
Literature titles translated from English rose from 13,500 in 1990 to almost 25,000 in 2005
The number of literature titles translated from the next most popular 25
languages went from 10,000 in 1990 to just under 14,000 in 2005.
All other languages continuously appeared around the 1000 mark.
The Da Vinci Code Effect
11,500 1.8% 24%
Fiction books published of the fiction published in The output of translated
in the UK every year. the UK had been translated. published fiction in Spain.
With the arrival of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, Spanish translations of
the title became the best selling Spanish translation of fiction ever recorded.
Usually, the US sells between 15,000 and 20,000
copies of fiction, which has been translated into Spanish
“El Codigo Da Vinci” sold more than 300,000 copies in America alone,
causing publishers to start marketing English and Spanish titles at the same
time.