Every Translation Database Post Hides a Listicle
Deep Dives
Explore related topics with these Wikipedia articles, rewritten for enjoyable reading:
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Best Translated Book Award
14 min read
Linked in the article (22 min read)
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Rachilde
17 min read
The article highlights the discovery of Rachilde through the Translation Database, describing her as a sensational decadent novelist whose work 'Monsieur Vénus' was prosecuted as pornography. Readers would benefit from learning about this pioneering French author (1860-1953) who challenged gender norms by calling herself 'a man of letters' and wrote provocatively about sexuality and gender identity in the Decadent movement.
TL;DR: Since mentioning it in last month’s newsletter, I’ve added almost 200 titles to the Translation Database, bringing the grand total to 10,072 entries. (Feel free to download that and play with the data however you’d like. And hit me up if you’d like a FileMaker version.) There are still a ton of titles to be added, but every month I’ll be posting some sort of update utilizing the database to explore a corner of the literary translation world.
If you’d like to help fill out this database—the only one of its kind, which isolates all works in translation published in the U.S. for the first time—you can either fill out this form, email me information about your book, or send a review copy to our office. (As time goes on, I’ll be writing and podcasting more and more about new translations, so if it’s possible, a hard copy is much appreciated.) Same thing if you find an error in the data. I’ve been typing these all in by hand for almost 20 years, so there’re bound to be slip ups.
For more information about the history and state of the Translation Database—and some book recommendations—keep on reading.
2023
It’s been over two years since I really updated and wrote about the Translation Database. “The Visual Success of Women in Translation Month” was posted in early-August 2023 to demonstrate that, for the first time since the Translation Database came into existence, there were a virtually identical number of works of fiction written by women being translated into English as works written by men.
Here’s the chart that drove this post:
My “analysis” of this trend—such as it was—focused on the success Women in Translation Month (Meytal Radzinski’s brainchild, founded in 2014) had in correcting this imbalance. To go from a period in 2008 where the average translation was 4 times more likely to have been written by a man than a woman to being almost exactly equal in 2023 is a hell of a shift.
And this sort of analysis is more or less why this database was founded. If you’ve listened to a single one of my podcasts, or read Three Percent circa 2018–2021, you know how much of a data and stats dork I am. I love downloading FanGraphs leader boards, I love looking up how many books have been translated
...This excerpt is provided for preview purposes. Full article content is available on the original publication.