Economics of Literary Translation: A Simple Theory and Evidence

Victor Ginsburgh, Sheila Weyers and Shlomo Weber

No 6432, CEPR Discussion Papers from Centre for Economic Policy Research

Abstract: Books are an important factor of cultural transmission, but need, in most cases, to be translated. According to some authors, this may lead to a form of cultural domination, in particular of English, on other languages. All these papers ignore that the population speaking English as a first language is, with the exception of Mandarin, the largest in the world. It is therefore not surprising that English produces more fiction (and much more scientific literature, as scientists from all countries write more and more in English) than any other language. We develop a theoretical model of translation, which is estimated on the basis of UNESCO translation data. We show that translations from English are dominated by translations from other languages, including Scandinavian ones and French.

Keywords: Cultural and linguistic distances; Languages; Translations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: L82 Z11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cul
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Economics of Literary Translation. A Simple Theory and Evidence (2008)
Working Paper: Economics of Literary Translation. A Simple Theory and Evidence (2008)
Working Paper: Economics of literary translation: A simple theory and evidence (2007)
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