Three Percent Translation Database

[Stewart]

What is the URL for the Three Percent list of current translations? Or have you counted them up yourself?

You can view it here. It's not a webpage, being instead an Excel spreadsheet.

[Eric]

Thanks, Stewart, for the URL you gave in #22. The list gives some interesting statistics. Have you any idea when it was published and who runs it? Spreadsheets, like pdf documents, tend to jump around a bit on my computer, but I can more or less cope with the format.

[Stewart]

Thanks, Stewart, for the URL you gave in #22. The list gives some interesting statistics. Have you any idea when it was published and who runs it? Spreadsheets, like pdf documents, tend to jump around a bit on my computer, but I can more or less cope with the format.

It's a list maintained by the guys at Three Percent. The spreadsheet's name is Translation Database (18th June 2008) so I would guess it was created on 18th June, 2008. Chad Post mentions it from time to time on the Three Percent blog, and will no doubt post an updated version soon.

[Eric]

Thanks, Stewart. I can ask Chad, because I had contact with him when he worked at Dalkey, and still e-mail him now and again.

I think Three Percent plus Open Door is a great initiative. And as Dalkey and Northwestern exist as well, there are real possibilities for getting serious literature translated in the United States.

Open Door will be publishing a Lithuanian novel soon:

Open Letter: Catalog

Very little Lithuanian literature indeed is available in English translation. The Germans do better:

ATHENA Verlag - Verlag f?r Literatur und Wissenschaft - Literatur aus Litauen

[Howard]

The Three Percent database lists translations published in the USA during 2008. It's been updated two or three times so far.

[BlogSpy]

It’s been a couple months since I last posted an update to the 2008 Translation Database, and since we have added a number of titles (thanks as always to Michael Orthofer, PW, and all the publishers who send us copies of their catalogs) it seemed like a good time to post an updated Excel file.
The Excel file linked to above is a bit different from the ones I posted in the past. It still contains all the information about every original translation of adult fiction and poetry coming out this year (excluding all reprints and retranslations) and breaks this info down by publisher, language, and country.
This time I added a few spreadsheets though, sorting the data by month and genre (fiction vs. poetry), and breaking down the publishers into top publishers of fiction and top publishers of poetry.
Looking at the breakdown by month, it’s interesting to note that almost every month falls into the 25-30 title range, the major exceptions being April (38, due in part to National Poetry Month and the rush to bring out all books of poetry then), and July and August (15 and 14 respectively, hopefully because summer publishing schedules are slow and not because I missed a bunch of books). Using that 25-30 range as a basis, I’m guessing that I’m missing approximately 20 December titles and that I wouldn’t be surprised if the final count of translations published in 2008 is closer to 325 that the 400 I predicted early on.
At the moment, almost 20% of all the translations published are works of poetry (most of which are published by Green Integer, Copper Canyon, FSG, Ugly Duckling Presse, and Zephyr).
Looking at this breakdown between fiction and poetry, and the overall low number of translations being published, it seems almost possible that one could read all original translations as they come out . . . I personally couldn’t do this, but I can envision someone reading basically a book a day for a year and reading all the new translations.
As always if you see anything missing from the master list, please let me know and I’ll add it right away.


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