Three Percent was named after the oft-cited statistic (first established by Bowker) that only 3% of books published in the U.S. are translations. We suspected that 3% number was a little high, but we had no way of confirming our suspicions--there were no real records of the number of translations published from year to year.
So, we decided to keep track ourselves. By collecting as many catalogs as we can and asking publishers directly, we've managed to come up with a fairly accurate record of the books published in translation since January 1st, 2008. For the sake of our sanity, we’ve limited our data gathering to original translations of fiction and poetry published or distributed here in the United States. By "original," we're referring to titles that have never before appeared in English (at least not in the States). So new translations of classic titles aren't included in our database, and neither are reprints of previously published books. Our focus is on identifying how many new books and new voices, are being made available to English-speaking readers.
If you'd like to see the list for yourself, you can download one of the spreadsheets below. In addition to a straight list of translated titles, these spreadsheets break this information down into publisher, language, country of origin, and publisher.
If you're a translator, author, librarian, publishers, or reader, and know of a title that's missing from the list, please e-mail Chad W. Post (chad.post at rochester dot edu) with the necessary information.
To download the 2008 Translation Database, click here.
To download the 2009 Translation Database, click here.
- Ugly Duckling Presse Subscriptions
- Aira on Translation
- Making the Translator Visible: Megan McDowell
- 2009 Finlandia Prize Nominees
- Florence Gould Foundation and French-American Foundation Translation Prizes
- "You Have Nothing to Lose but Your Spoons" [ALTA Conference]
- TOC Frankfurt
- Latest Review: "Ni chicha, ni limonada" by David Unger
- "Glory Is a Drag" [ALTA Conference]
- The 2010 Edition of the Best Translated Book Award
Reviewed by Rhea Lyons
The innovative works of legends like Borges and Cortázar not only defined a literary movement, they created an exotic and well-known image of Latin America and its people. A key element of works in the tradition of the magical realism. . .
Reviewed by Will Eells
Contemporary Japanese literature is all too easy to stereotype. As far as the American reading public goes, the only books that come out of Japan seem to be under one of three genres. The first is the “bizarre things happening. . .
Reviewed by Jessica LeTourneur
I was born in the final decade of communism’s flailing grasp on the Eastern Bloc, and so what I know of the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of communism has long been relegated to what I learned. . .
Reviewed by Dan Vitale
The short novel is a form in which writers typically exercise great control over their material, accepting the abbreviated length as a kind of challenge, working within that limitation to craft a tight, jewel-like story in which all the elements. . .
Reviewed by Monica Carter
In the most recent translation of Swiss writer Robert Walser’s work, The Tanners, we are reminded once again why Kafka and Musil were fans—his wit. And like everything in Walser’s writing, it is nuanced and subtle. Instead giving us. . .
Reviewed by Grant Barber
Rosa Chacel (1898-1994) sculptor, novelist, poet, essayist, feminist was born and died in Spain, with Brazil as a second home. She was a contemporary with the Generation of ’27, which included Garcia Lorca and Ramon Jaminez, and she was familiar. . .
Reviewed by Timothy Nassau
As frequently occurs, a few days ago I was browsing through a bookstore when something caught my eye. The book was Negative Horizon by Paul Virilio, which “sets out [his] theory of dromoscopy: a means of apprehending speed and its. . .
