She offered another statistic for Professor Kennedy to ponder: âHere in the United States, at the cosmopolitan heart of the universe, with a population of 285 million and a publishing industry that churns out well over 100,000 books a year, we publish â well, what do you know â about 330 books in translation a yearâ.2 The most recent listing consulted by Allen indicated that only 13 of the 300-plus titles published in the US were translations into English from Arabic.
HARLEQUIN ROMANCE NOVELS TRANSLATED INTO JAPANESE PROFESSIONAL
QED â except that two months later, Harperâs published a letter from Esther Allen, a professional translator based in New York City. According to a recent UN Development Programme report, the Arab world, made up of twenty-two countries with a combined population of some 280 million people, translates just 330 foreign language books a year. Language: Foreign exchanges: the politics of translation Language: Foreign exchanges: the politics of translationĪ year after 9/11, the Yale historian Paul Kennedy wrote in a letter to Harperâs magazine that Arab cultures were characterised by a âlack of political and cultural receptivity to the outside worldâ.1 In support of this thesis he cited a statistic about translation.