Breaking into English | Hacker News Reader

Breaking into English

lareviewofbooks.org

24 pointstintinnabula10 comments

This seems a little like an orphan statistic writ large without information about similar processes in other countries. How does it compare to an American author who "isn't a known quantity" in Mexico getting published in Mexico? A Canadian author getting published in Japan?

This is something cultural sociologists study. See for instance https://www.thomasfranssen.net/sociology-of-culture though I'm sure there are more recent examples as well.

I believe that the English (American) situation is quite bad comparatively. I've seen complaints that Stanislav Lem is still translated to English in very spotty fashion, and quality of translations is mediocre.

The Witcher has finished airing the 2nd season but I wonder if there's a proper translation of original book series into English.

On the other hand, English beats any other language by the amount of original content by an order of magnitude.

Michael Kandel’s translations of Stanislaw Lem are excellent.

What do you mean by "amount of original content": English has lots of native speakers and is the official language of many countries, and I admit the amount of stuff we publish in French is smaller (albeit the quality or focus is very different and I cant find some angles of analysis in English that are trivial in French), I can't believe the quantity of Chinese output would be lower for instance: it's not the same quality and doesnt focus on the same subjects, but it's a lot of people talking and writing about lots of stuff, for a lot longer, no?

I can't believe the quantity of Chinese output would be lower for instance: it's not the same quality and doesnt focus on the same subjects, but it's a lot of people talking and writing about lots of stuff, for a lot longer, no?

You forget how impoverished the vast majority of Chinese speakers have been for the history of the printed word. The US by itself still publishes more original works every year than China, though it's a shrinking gap.

I would not recommend reading this article. In the time it would take you to read it you could read a short story from the website it mentions, Words Without Borders, which publishes translated fiction and poetry.

This is a good story.

https://wordswithoutborders.org/read/article/2022-09/sky-of-...

Is that the right story? I think is the url.

https://wordswithoutborders.org/read/article/2020-05/may-202...

Hiding the article and asking "Want LARB in your inbox?" before I even know what LARB is was a quick way to send me away.

I don't think "LARB" is too obscure, since it's a popup on the website "lareviewofbooks.org".

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