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1prosfilaes
{rant}I got a new edition of Don Quixote on Kickstarter (same old Ormsby translation), and the Introduction says "There have been no fewer than twenty English translations. To my knowledge, with the exception of the Bible, no other book has been translated as frequently into Shakespeare's tongue." I took me to a few minutes to disprove that, and a under a minute on Google to find other examples. But I suppose as long as he doesn't look, "to my knowledge" makes that correct.{/rant}
I'm curious what out there does beat that 20 English translation line. I figured that "published" was implied, and "book" called for a longer work, so, say Beowulf, which exceeds 20 by some margin, doesn't count.
My first reference was to Gilbert F. Cunningham's The divine comedy in English: A critical bibliography 1901-1965 (which I apparently have not bothered entering yet), which gave me 44 translations of the entire Divine Comedy up to 1965 (the "to 1900" part is a previous book.) Wikipedia adds 11 more since then. Running down LT's Zeitgeist for non-English books out of copyright long enough to have translators and hitting Google, the Iliad comes up with 80 and the Odyssey comes up with 66. The Russian authors are more recent and seem to have a too limited translator pool to get above around 10. There's no good bibliography online of Madame Bovary, but several news articles toss around the 20 translations number.
The next works in the Zeitgeist are The Canterbury Tales (which is in some ways closer to Shakespeare's tongue than ours, and frequently tackled by English speakers sans translation--I can't find an online list of translations) and The Aeneid. I'd bet the Aeneid clears it by a good margin, but given the popularity of Latin at various points in English history; it looks like the Metamorphoses may have benefited from that more, though I can't find a good list of translations for either.
Any other candidates, or at least works that would place?
I'm curious what out there does beat that 20 English translation line. I figured that "published" was implied, and "book" called for a longer work, so, say Beowulf, which exceeds 20 by some margin, doesn't count.
My first reference was to Gilbert F. Cunningham's The divine comedy in English: A critical bibliography 1901-1965 (which I apparently have not bothered entering yet), which gave me 44 translations of the entire Divine Comedy up to 1965 (the "to 1900" part is a previous book.) Wikipedia adds 11 more since then. Running down LT's Zeitgeist for non-English books out of copyright long enough to have translators and hitting Google, the Iliad comes up with 80 and the Odyssey comes up with 66. The Russian authors are more recent and seem to have a too limited translator pool to get above around 10. There's no good bibliography online of Madame Bovary, but several news articles toss around the 20 translations number.
The next works in the Zeitgeist are The Canterbury Tales (which is in some ways closer to Shakespeare's tongue than ours, and frequently tackled by English speakers sans translation--I can't find an online list of translations) and The Aeneid. I'd bet the Aeneid clears it by a good margin, but given the popularity of Latin at various points in English history; it looks like the Metamorphoses may have benefited from that more, though I can't find a good list of translations for either.
Any other candidates, or at least works that would place?
2thorold
I suspect that there will turn out to be some astoundingly dull non-literary text that is the real champion - maybe a government publication or medical handbook or something in a country like Canada where English is one of the official languages but not the only one?
The most likely literary candidates apart from the Greek and Latin classics are probably texts that have (or had) a big popular readership and were written before the days of international copyright and in languages with a reasonably large pool of potential translators into English. Perrault and Grimm probably score very high on those counts, but the problem would be deciding what counts as a translation of the complete work and what is a selection or an adaptation. Young Werther is another strong candidate, although Wikipedia only lists five translations.
Orlando furioso has ten English translations listed on Wikipedia, The Decameron has twelve, I promessi sposi has ten, so they are unlikely to match Homer and Dante.
The most likely literary candidates apart from the Greek and Latin classics are probably texts that have (or had) a big popular readership and were written before the days of international copyright and in languages with a reasonably large pool of potential translators into English. Perrault and Grimm probably score very high on those counts, but the problem would be deciding what counts as a translation of the complete work and what is a selection or an adaptation. Young Werther is another strong candidate, although Wikipedia only lists five translations.
Orlando furioso has ten English translations listed on Wikipedia, The Decameron has twelve, I promessi sposi has ten, so they are unlikely to match Homer and Dante.
3lorax
Homer was my first thought as well.
Here's a slightly different wrinkle, though.
What if he'd omitted the reference to the Bible, and said "no other novel?" That excludes the Greek classics and Dante. Any candidates for that particular title?
Here's a slightly different wrinkle, though.
What if he'd omitted the reference to the Bible, and said "no other novel?" That excludes the Greek classics and Dante. Any candidates for that particular title?
4prosfilaes
>3 lorax: Having run through the top books on LibraryThing (we are statistically hugely English biased), Madame Bovary seems the best candidate. The news articles kept saying 20 translations, and I bet there's a couple only a good bibliographer could find. The most Verne (The Verne Bibliography) tops out with is 15, for Around the World in Eighty Days. Les Misérables gets eight listed on Wikipedia. The Count of Monte Cristo has less then ten (according to Wikipedia, and depending on how you count the revisions and abridgments) and the Russian novels likewise. Candide has 13 according to one source; I don't know that Encyclopedia of Literary Translation Into English: A-L is exhaustive enough, and I'm not going to shell out $500 to see more than Google Books is showing me. It's entirely conceivable a deep search might turn up seven or more unnotable translations. The Idiot has 11.
It's possible that limited to novels, Don Quixote wins. It seems quite possible Madame Bovary would win, too.
It's possible that limited to novels, Don Quixote wins. It seems quite possible Madame Bovary would win, too.
