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Economics of Literary Translation: A Simple Theory and Evidence

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Author Info
Ginsburgh, Victor
Weber, Shlomo
Weyers, Sheila

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Abstract

Books are an important factor of cultural transmission, but need, in most cases, to be translated. According to some authors, this may lead to a form of cultural domination, in particular of English, on other languages. All these papers ignore that the population speaking English as a first language is, with the exception of Mandarin, the largest in the world. It is therefore not surprising that English produces more fiction (and much more scientific literature, as scientists from all countries write more and more in English) than any other language. We develop a theoretical model of translation, which is estimated on the basis of UNESCO translation data. We show that translations from English are dominated by translations from other languages, including Scandinavian ones and French.

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Paper provided by C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers in its series CEPR Discussion Papers with number 6432.

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Date of creation: Aug 2007
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Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:6432

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Related research
Keywords: cultural and linguistic distances; languages; translations;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
L82 - Industrial Organization - - Industry Studies: Services - - - Entertainment; Media
Z11 - Other Special Topics - - Cultural Economics - - - Economics of the Arts and Literature

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This page was last updated on 2009-12-31.

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