Who is the most Translated Writer in the World ?

      In today’s world, there is a massive amount of cultural exchange that is happening. A part of this consists of translations of books in different languages so that people belonging to completely different demographics can access these books and cultures. A single author can have multiple books that are translated into different languages, or he/she can have one or two books which are translated. Let us examine someone like Agatha Christie, who is said to be the most translated writer in the world.

     However, before we do that, we need to look at exactly how she comes to be the most translated writer in the world. According to UNESCO’s database of translated texts (called Index Translationum), there are various ways of organization of the data. If one were to arrange it according to the authors, one would find that numbers corresponding to the author are unnaturally high. This is because the Index Translationum is organized according to the number of translations of every single book of an author. Therefore, someone who has a large body of work and fewer translations per book will be higher in ranking than someone with a small body of work and more translations per book.

     Agatha Christie was a prolific writer. Apart from her detective novels, she has also published various collections of short stories, numerous romance novels, some non-fiction works, a number of plays as well as poems under her own name as well as under pseudonyms. She also wrote various radio plays as well as co-wrote radio serials. With a body of work that is as huge and as popular as hers, it is no surprise that her works have been translated extensively in numerous languages. With the advantage of having a large body of work being translated into an exceptional number of languages, Agatha Christie takes the top spot at the Index Translationum by having 7,233 translations. The second person on the list is Jules Vernes and there is a huge gap of about 3,000 translations between Christie and Vernes.

   However, if one was to sort by the number of languages an author’s work was published in, then we will have to forego the statistics provided by UNESCO’s Index Translationum and fall back on to Guinness World Records to find out the most translated author. Guinness World Records does not judge by taking all translations of all books of an author but the number of languages the works are published in. L. Ron Hubbard created a record by having his works translated into 65 languages, breaking the previous record of 51 languages made by Sidney Sheldon.

     There are a variety of ways to think about how to approach the category of the most translated writer in the world. But irrespective of the final answer, the conclusion that emerges is one of exchange of cultures to a large extent that translation opens the doors for. Christie’s novels unveil a world of 20^th century lifestyle while L. Ron Hubbard delves into many genres of short fiction as well as writing a considerable number of novels in 20^th century as well.   

By: TransLang Ways, We are a leading translation agency in India and we provide translation services in Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad, India and worldwide. Our language translation services in Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi, Pune, Chennai, Hyderabad , India are best in class and always hassle free.