Comment by jonathanstrange | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jonathanstrange | Hacker News Reader

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jonathanstrange

Seems more like basic economics than 'cultural imperialism' to me.

The German market is very small, the English market very large. This means that if you translate from German to English, you invest a substantial amount of money to get a book onto an already crowded market dominated by English authors. That's a huge risk for the publisher. If you cannot market the book well enough on the foreign market, you will loose money. Literary translations are not cheap.

The other way around, if you translate a book from English to German, you can estimate very well from the performance on the gigantic English book market how it will sell in Germany. Bonus points if the author is already known in Germany anyway. The risk is lower than opening a program slot for a new German author (who would require additional marketing), and the cost of the translation is offset by the reduced risk.

At least that's my explanation. Maybe I'm wrong about it, I'm not a publisher.

>Seems more like basic economics than 'cultural imperialism' to me.

>The German market is very small, the English market very large.

Yes, and the English market is so very very large because... :)

To be fair, fans of science fiction are probably more likely to be fluent in English, so the domestic market has additional competition.

Because the UK, Australia, South Africa, Canada and the United States are ~6x the size of Germany. This was caused by colonialism, though, not cultural imperialism.

I would throw India in there too, as most everyone educated is fluent in English, and I expect more and more Indians to be fluent in English going forward.

Yeah, I think the person who made the cultural imperialism point was trying to say more or less that: that there are a lot of countries that speak English because English is the culturally dominant language. Personally I think there's a less sinister way to phrase that than "cultural imperialism," though. And I'm not sure it's caused by cultural dominance so much as economic dominance and pragmatism. I don't think many people learn English to watch American movies or wear American blue jeans.

Further, I'm not sure to what extent it affects the market size for books. I would guess, not being privy to any actual information on the topic, that the vast majority of English books are consumed by majority-English-speaking nations. There are probably exceptions for outsized blockbusters like Harry Potter.

Perhaps Nigeria, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Belize too.

New Zealand, Ireland, Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago add another 13.5 million.

On the flip side, English is only the first language of 9.6% of South Africans.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_South_Africa#L...

There are way more native speakers in Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, etc.

Question then, would you say that the French had cultural imperialism when most geopolitical issues were conducted in French just a few hundred years ago? Or how about the Latin stranglehold on science and medicine? Why should english, german or polish speakers learn the Latin terms for dick all anything since it's practically a dead language. Who actually speaks Latin without being ironic? Or Italian was forced down every composer threats back in Mozart's day if they wanted to do an opera. Are those too forms of cultural imperialism?

My main point, dont pretend 'cultural imperialism' was invented by the Anglo saxons. Dont give them too much credit. Their egos are inflated as much as it is. All of history had a dominate 'culture'. I think the major difference to this shift to English is the fact the language is so damn easy and efficient compared to others. Maybe not as eloquent. But when it comes to information transfer, English is by far one of the best languages. Maybe that's why its inherently popular? I mean, in Polish, the word for the number 2 can be conjugated 50 some odd ways. Some intelligent anglo in history looked at other languages that conjugate like crazy and said it's fucking stupid. Obviously I'm being slightly hyperbolic. Only slightly.

Plus, the English culture is one where being upfront and abrupt is alright. Makes business real damn easy. It's a very "get to the goddamn point so I can go drink whiskey early" type of culture.

So yea, as a dirty slav, English is champ right now for very good technical reasons.

Sure, Latin was the language of empire, and then French had something of a small empire with the Holy Romans. Arabic was too for a while, depending on where you were. Now English is the language of empire.

French was spoken by the educated classes in much of the Western world for some time, had a largish colonial empire. Holy Roman Empire (neither Roman or Holy or an Empire) had German as a primary language.

Oh, you're right, of course. Brain fart.

> dont pretend 'cultural imperialism' was invented by the Anglo saxons

No one was saying this. As you correctly point out, other cultures and languages have been culturally dominant before, and now English is. It's entirely possible in another century or two it will be Mandarin, or Hindi, or who knows what.

> I think the major difference to this shift to English is the fact the language is so damn easy and efficient compared to others

That's a pretty rare take on English. Most people seem to think it's a PITA due to how many different languages it's cribbed from, resulting in next to zero consistent rules.

I have no idea where the myth started that people think English is a tough language for people. The only struggles non native speakers typically have is pronouncing th, usage of she/her, some oddball spellings, over use of same sounding words and if they come from non article languages, articles. That's a crazy short and easy to overcome list in comparison to, oh I dont know, all the goddamn irregular verbs of romance languages. Male/female articles or conjugation orgy fest most languages have. The tone and writing nature of most Asian languages.

Most people I know that do t speak english natively, picked it up pretty damn quick and easy.

Languages are chosen for many different reasons, which are not all obvious. Also it sounds like you're conflating language and culture, which are related things but not the same thing. If I know French, I can communicate with people in countries on three different continents, and the usefulness of a language trumps all other reasons for choosing a language. I've been in a few weird international groups, with people from dozens of countries present, and everyone communicates in French and English (a mix of both really), even though many of the people are multi-lingual, because everyone present knows at least a few snippets of French and English.

Because America, the country with mostly native English speakers, is 4x more populous than Germany.

And exactly why does America speak English, when a few centuries ago it was filled with native speakers of many other languages that are now very rare today?

Because the British Empire (and the Spanish and French empires) killed a great many of them, and forcibly imported their own cultures, people, and languages.

Which is unquestionably imperialism, and undoubtedly cultural. Hence: cultural imperialism.

If it weren't for cultural imperalism, the only native English speakers would be the population of the UK, which is about on par with Germany.

;-)

More recently, the US had a good number of German speakers too. Then WWI happened and people didn't want to be associated with Germany any more.

Pedantically the residents of England speak would be speaking Brittonic too minus cultural imperialism.

Making up artificial delineations on arbitrary segmentation of time gets a bit wearying.

Various cultures have their time in the sun and then retreat- it’s as old as humanity itself.

Because of some mistakes made in 1939-1942 timeframe?

Because it is professionally run and delivers to people what they want to read. In my view US cultural domination comes from actually caring about their customers and not some idealized abstraction of art.

> Seems more like basic economics than 'cultural imperialism' to me.

These are not at all mutually exclusive; economic policies (in particular exports and imports) figure heavily in academic literature on [cultural] imperialism.

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