C h a p t e r 1 7

Johan Heilbron
TOWARDS A SOCIOLOGY OF
TRANSLATION: BOOK TRANSLATIONS
AS A CULTURAL WORLD SYSTEM
EDITORS INTRODUCTION
The more central the cultural production of a country is, the more it serves as an example to other
countries, and the less it is itself concerned with the cultural production from other countries.
Instead of assuming that translations normally occupy a marginal position (Even-Zohar
1990:50), it is far more accurate to say that their role varies signicantly, and that the variation
depends on the degree of centrality in the international translation system.
L
I KE CASANOVA, HEI LBRON FOCUSES on modes of circulation that allow
intellectual works to develop a presence on the world stage, and the role of translation in
this process. Also like Casanova, he argues that cultural exchanges have a dynamic of their
own, and that transnational cultural exchange is a largely autonomous eld, with its own
economic, political and symbolic conguration.
The basic units of the world-system of translation are language groups rather than
nation-states, and the aim here is therefore to analyze the structure of translation ows
between these language groups. Existing sources of data for conducting this analysis, for
example book statistics available in each country and databases such as the Index transla-
tionum, are all awed; the answer may be to cautiously combine international and national
translation statistics as well as the ndings of case studies where these are available. The
starting assumption is that a language is more central in the world-system of translation when
it has a large share in the total number of translated books worldwide, bearing in mind that the
system itself is dynamic and that this position therefore changes over time. Centrality is key in
structuring translation ows, with more translations owing from the core to the periphery
than the other way around. Moreover, communication between language groups situated at
the periphery will also tend to pass through the centre. Thus, the more central a language is
in the translation system, the more it has the capacity to function as an intermediary or vehicu-
lar language. Another consequence of this structure concerns variety: the more central a
language is, the more types of books are translated from it. Finally, fewer translations are
undertaken into languages situated at or near the centre of the international translation
system, which explains why translations constitute a very small percentage of the total book
production in English.
Follow-up questions for discussion

Heilbron draws a broad, somewhat at picture of translation ows that relies purely
on the overall centrality of a language in the international translation system, without
regard to specic historical or political contexts. How might his model account, or be
rened/extended to account, for the observation by Hale (2008:218), namely that it is
possible to identify zones of inuence within the broad pattern of translation ows?
How would the model explain the fact that in Northern European countries such as
Denmark and the Netherlands German is the second most translated language after
English, while in southern Europe French is everywhere the second most translated
language (ibid.), and bearing in mind that similar patterns could at one time be
identied in relation to Russian in some parts of the world?

Speaking of literary forms, Moretti (2003:75) claims that movement from one peri-
phery to another (without passing through the centre) is almost unheard of. He does
not refer here to peripheral cultures existing within the same region (for example vari-
ous language groups in India) but to those that belong to different regions, such as
Norway and Portugal. To what extent does this claim overlap with Heilbrons analysis
of translation ows? And to what extent does this analysis reect the realities of
translation?

Consider some of the implications of the international world system of book transla-
tions, as described by Heilbron, for phenomena such as retranslation, self translation,
pseudotranslation, as well as forms and practices of interpreting, including relay inter-
preting in international settings, and audiovisual translation (the use of a pivot language,
the circulation of Japanese anime, or animated lms, etc.). To what extent might
Heilbrons model be adapted to account for patterns and sub-patterns of ow in these
and similar contexts?
Recommended further reading
Hale, Terry (2008) Publishing Strategies, in Mona Baker and Gabriela Saldanha (eds)
Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, 2nd edn, London & New York: Routledge,
21722.
Heilbron, Johan and Gisle Sapiro (2007) Outline for a Sociology of Translation: Current
Issues and Future Prospects, in Michaela Wolf and Alexandra Fukari (eds) Cons-
tructing a Sociology of Translation, Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins,
93107.
Hermans, Theo (1999) Translation in Systems, Manchester: St. Jerome.
Sapiro, Gisle (2008) Translation and the Field of Publishing, Translation Studies 1(2):
15466.
book translations as a cultural world system 305
L
ANGUAGE S HAVE THE I R OWN RUL E S AND regulations, they are
marked by peculiarities of different kinds and vary greatly in their number of
speakers. But whether linguistic communities are large or small, whether their lan-
guages have peculiar or more common features, they are all connected to each other
by multilingual speakers, thus constituting an emerging world language system (de
Swaan 1993). Polyglots assure the communication between the speakers of various
languages, either by communicating directly in a foreign language or by translating
from one language into the other. Whenever people are deprived of direct access to a
language, translations offer the possibility of indirect access.
Although a growing number of people learn a foreign language and English
has become the lingua franca of international exchange, much of the communication
between language groups still depends on translation and translators. Processes of
translation, here meant in the literal sense of the word, represent an intriguing object
of study for the social sciences, although there is strikingly little social scientic
literature available. In sociolinguistics translations are commonly ignored (Coulmas
1997), in economics there is little more than an occasional paper (Mlitz 1998), and
other relevant elds, like the new book history, do not have much more to offer.
1
Translations have traditionally, at least since Cicero, been commented upon by
translators themselves. In the late eighteenth century, German scholars broadened
the scope of reection, and they have been joined, more recently, by linguists. The
practitioners themselves, while reecting on their craft, have argued mainly about the
stages of the translation process and about the respective merits of literal versus free
translation.
2
German philosophers and literary scholars at the end of the eighteenth
century started to discuss questions of translatability more broadly as a matter of
cultural difference, often related to national identity. Schleiermachers essay ber die
verschiedenen Methoden des bersetzens (published in 1913) became the seminal
text for the hermeneutic view of translation (Berman 1984). Linguistic theories of
translation, which have developed especially since the Second World War, have also
been concerned with translatability but their approach has been related to the issue of
the linguistic equivalence of languages.
One of the leading scholars in the recently established eld of translation studies,
Gideon Toury, has argued that the traditional discourses on translation were all
oriented towards the source-text or the source-language (Toury 1980).
3
By concen-
trating on the relationship with an original, the underlying concern was an invariably
normative one: what is the proper translation of a given text? If translators tend to
betray the original, traduttore, traditore as the Italian saying has it, which deviations from
the original may be considered legitimate and which are not? Translation theory was
thus more concerned with potential than with actual translations. This problematic,
which served as the basis for translators training, was not a sound starting point for
an empirically based understanding of the actual process of translation.
Against the predominantly normative approach, scholars like Itamar Even-
Zohar and Toury have called for a descriptive perspective, based on the analysis of
actual translations. Following the lead of the Russian formalists, these polysystem
theorists have argued that translations need to be understood in relation to the system
in which they function, in relation to a particular set of translation norms, for
example, or, where literary texts are concerned, in relation to the literary system
of the target-culture (Even-Zohar 1990, Toury 1995). Translations, in the words of
Toury, are facts of target-cultures; on occasion facts of a special status, sometimes
even constituting identiable (sub)systems of their own, but of the target-culture in
any event (1995:29). For the sociological approach of translations which I will
306 johan heilbron
explore here, the conceptual shift from source-text to target-context offers a fruitful
but insufcient point of departure.
Transnational cultural exchange
Considered from a sociological perspective, translations are a function of the social
relations between language groups and their transformations over time. They are
therefore by no means self-evident, a fact which the terminology itself recalls. In
classical Greek, for example, there is no proper word for translation, only hermeneuein,
but that also means to interpret, to explain. The Latin translatio is closer to the current
meaning, but is a more general term as well, referring to the various forms of transfer,
including the transfer of power, as in translatio imperii. The more specic and modern
sense of the word translation emerged only in the Renaissance, when Italian human-
ists started to distinguish between translatio and traductio. The latter term, and the
corresponding verbs in Italian and French, traducere and traduire, referred specically to
the translation of texts from one language into another, and especially into the
vernacular.
Translations into the vernacular had existed well before the Renaissance, but the
printing press gave the vernaculars, and translations in the vernacular, an entirely new
social signicance. With the formation of national states, standard languages were
codied and much of the translation activity in early modern Europe was bound to
the evolving relations of cooperation and conict between nation states.
The actual practice of translation obviously exists in a great variety of forms and
contexts: interpreting in political and diplomatic settings; subtitling and dubbing in
the media; high-culture literary translation; as well as a range of more standardized,
technical and professional translations in law, technology and commerce. If mean-
ing is determined by use, as the pragmatist adage says, translation practice must be
analyzed specically within the eld or the subeld in which it actually functions.
In this article I am concerned with one major form of translation: the translation
of books. Book translations represent an identiable and broad category: they are
published and distributed in a similar manner; they are registered, counted and
classied as a particular category of cultural goods; and they are destined for a wide
variety of audiences. Sociologically such translations can be studied from various
angles. By analyzing translations, questions can be raised about the way in which
cultural goods circulate outside their context of production (Bourdieu 1990),
one can try to unravel the relationship between different countries and cultures
(Schoneveld 1983), study the role of intermediary centres (Dirkx 1995), decipher
the complexities of cross-cultural (mis)understanding (Oz-Salzberger 1995), con-
sider translators as a professional group (Heinich 1984), or analyze the evolution of
the system of transnational communication itself, for example by studying the social
organization of the market for translation rights, the role of literary agents or the
functioning of international book fairs (Sor 1998).
This article focuses on what is perhaps the most general issue in the sociology of
translation: the translation of books considered as an international system. The objec-
tive is to present a structural analysis of the international ows of translated books,
and to demonstrate why such an analysis is indispensable for understanding the
actual translation process. Two more specic questions are central in this respect.
How can one account for the uneven ows of book translations between various
language groups? And how can one explain the varying role of translations within
book translations as a cultural world system 307
different language groups? In proposing an answer to both questions, the various
activities involved are considered to be interdependent and are therefore best under-
stood as constituting an international or even a world-system. The analysis of this
world-system, and the position which various language groups occupy within it, is a
precondition for understanding the role of translations in specic local or national
contexts. The signicance of translations within language groups, for example, is
shown to depend primarily on the position of the language within the international
system.
This emerging world-system of translation, however, does not quite correspond
to the predominant view in world-systems theory. Transnational cultural exchange
is not simply the reection of the structural contradictions in the world economy,
as leading proponents of world-systems theory have maintained (for example,
Wallerstein 1991). Cultural exchanges have a dynamic of their own which is based on
a certain autonomy vis--vis the constraints of the world market. Instead of conceiv-
ing the cultural realm as merely derivative of global economic structures, it is more
fruitful to view transnational cultural exchange as a relatively autonomous sphere, as
an international arena with economic, political and symbolic dimensions. This spe-
cic constellation, itself part of broader structures, is best conceived as a transnational
cultural eld, in Pierre Bourdieus sense, or as an emerging cultural world-system in
Abram de Swaans term (de Swaan 1995). Such a view avoids both the economism of
certain varieties of world-systems theory and the culturalism which tends to prevail
in cultural studies.
4
Within this general orientation, I argue that the dynamics of the international
translation system is based on a core-periphery structure and outline some of the
main consequences of such a model for the understanding of translation practices. In
the nal part of the article the limits of the general model proposed will be discussed,
together with suggestions on how it may be developed and further rened.
The international system of translation
As the basic units of the world-system of translation are language groups, the object
of analysis is the structure of the translation ows between these language groups.
Language groups do not always coincide with nation states: some of the more central
languages English, German, French, Spanish have a supranational character. The
ow of book translations between these language groups can be analyzed by using
book statistics, which regularly include gures for translations. In relying on these
gures, however, a great deal of caution is required. Contrary to the normal primary
use of ofcial statistics, the statistical material itself has to be critically examined
before it can be used.
International translation statistics have been produced since the 1930s. The Insti-
tute for Intellectual Collaboration, which formed a part of the League of Nations,
started during the interwar years with annual publications about translated books,
the Index translationum (193240). The activity was part of the initiatives after the
First World War to promote international collaboration and mutual understanding
between nations. After the Second World War, Unesco resumed publication of the
translation statistics; they have been published in the Unesco series of Statistical Yearbooks
ever since. A closer look at these statistics reveals that they are not very reliable. The
most obvious problem is one of denition. What is considered to be a book or
a title varies from country to country. Certain publications qualify as a title or a
308 johan heilbron
book in one country, whereas they are considered to belong to the grey literature
in other countries and are therefore eliminated from ofcial book statistics. Such is
the case for doctoral dissertations, school books, governmental, parliamentary and
administrative documents, and annual reports from enterprises. When it is reported
that 21 percent of the published books in Spain in 1982 were translations, this
percentage does not have the same meaning in other countries. Rigorous compari-
sons between translation ratios are therefore impossible on the basis of the Unesco
gures.
When analyzing the Unesco statistics for one country alone, precisely in order to
avoid such denition problems, it turns out, furthermore, that they exhibit great
uctuations over the years. According to the Unesco gures, 14 percent of the pub-
lished books in the Netherlands were translations in 1979, a percentage which has
risen to 34 percent ve years later. Such a uctuation is highly improbable and it does
not correspond with the data provided by the Dutch agency, the Stichting Speurwerk,
which produces the national book statistics for the Netherlands. Their gures indicate
that the percentage of translations in national book production is more regular,
varying between 22 percent and 25 percent between 1979 and 1984 (Heilbron
1995). The Unesco data are therefore not very reliable: it remains unclear to what
extent they are actually comparable, and even for single countries they exhibit very
improbable uctuations. Unfortunately, these gures are the only international data
which are readily available. I will therefore use some of them, but merely in an
indicative manner to highlight structural patterns. I will refrain from giving any tables
and breakdowns in categories and sub-categories of books, because in the form in
which they are usually published they suggest a degree of accuracy which is mislead-
ing if not unfounded.
If one cautiously combines the international translation statistics with some of
the more reliable national data and with what is known from several case studies, a
coherent model can be constructed of the structural dynamics of the international
translation system. I will outline somewhat schematically its main properties and
illustrate their signicance for understanding translation practices.
A hierarchical structure
The international translation system is, rst and foremost, a hierarchical structure,
with central, semi-peripheral and peripheral languages. Using a simple denition of
centrality, one can say that a language is more central in the world-system of transla-
tion when it has a large share in the total number of translated books worldwide. The
international gures available unambiguously indicate that English is by far the most
central language in the international translation system. More than 40 percent of all
the translated books worldwide around 1980 were translated from English (Curwen
1986:21, Venuti 1995:14). Over the years, from 1960 to about 1987, this percentage
seems to have gone up, despite the fact that the percentage of English books in
the total number of books worldwide has decreased (Mlitz 1998:3637). On the
European continent the position of English is even more predominant, with about
5070 percent of published translations being undertaken from English.
5
Following the ranking downwards, three languages also have a central role,
although their share is signicantly smaller than that of English: French, German and
Russian. Each of these languages had a proportion somewhere between 10 percent
and 12 percent of the international market for translations around 1980. It follows
book translations as a cultural world system 309
from these gures that three-quarters of the total number of translated books
worldwide were translated from four languages only. The international translation
system is thus marked by a very uneven distribution and is rmly dominated by
English.
After these central languages, with English in a kind a hyper-central role, ap-
proximately six languages have a semi-peripheral role, to use Immanuel Wallersteins
terminology, each with a proportion of 13 percent of the total number of translated
books. In 1978, for example, these languages were: Spanish, Italian, Danish, Swedish,
Polish and Czech.
6
These semi-peripheral languages, however, cannot be separated
very clearly from the peripheral ones. Contrary to the distinctions between hyper-
central, central and semi-peripheral, which are relatively clear cut, the differences
between semi-peripheral and peripheral languages are far more gradual. One might
say provisionally and for analytical purposes that all languages with a share of less
than one percent of the world market occupy a peripheral position in the inter-
national translation system. Among these peripheral languages, then, are Chinese,
Japanese, Arabic and Portuguese, each representing a very large number of speakers,
yet occupying a peripheral position in the translation system. The size of language
groups is clearly not decisive for their degree of centrality in the translation system.
A dynamic constellation
But the structure of the international translation system is obviously not a static but a
dynamic constellation. The position of language groups changes over time, central
languages may lose something of their share, more peripheral languages can improve
their positions in the international ranking. The translation system is a historical
system, marked by a specic genesis and minor and major transformations over time.
The major changes are long-term processes. When considering the relations between
English, French and German, for example, one observes that both the hegemony of
English and the relative decline of French have a long history. French was the most
central modern language in early modern Europe, more important than English or
German. The rst major change in the constellation occurred at the end of the
eighteenth century. For geo-political and geo-cultural reasons, French lost some of its
centrality, as is indicated in the translation statistics for the Netherlands. The propor-
tion of books translated from French declined fairly rapidly during the last decades of
the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century (Korpel 1992). German
especially proted from the French decline; English also gained but the growing share
of translations from English was a relatively slow process for quite some time. The
breakthrough of English probably occurred only after the Second World War, when
the hegemony of the US gave English a decisive advantage over its main rivals.
7
Changes in the international position of languages do not generally occur
abruptly. They require a cultural reorientation which takes at least a change of gener-
ation, and often more than that. Changes in the position of languages and language
groups occur suddenly only if the position of a language depends closely on the
political power of a rgime. The central position of Russian, for example, which is
clear from the Unesco statistics for the 1980s, will undoubtedly have declined rapidly
since 1989. Its predominant role in the system of international translations was based
on the domination of the Soviet Union over Eastern Europe, implying obligatory and
quasi-obligatory translations in nearly all elds, not merely those which were bound
to the MarxistLeninist orthodoxy. Since the fall of the Soviet empire, the use of
310 johan heilbron
Russian has declined sharply in Eastern Europe, just as, undoubtedly, translations
from Russian have.
The consequences of centrality
Distinguishing languages by their degree of centrality not only implies that transla-
tions ow more from the core to the periphery than the other way around, but also
that the communication between peripheral groups often passes through a centre.
What is translated from one peripheral language into the other depends on what
is translated from these peripheral languages into the central languages. In other
words, the more central a language is in the translation system, the more it has
the capacity to function as an intermediary or vehicular language, that is as a means
of communication between language groups which are themselves peripheral or
semi-peripheral.
The role of French in early modern Europe is a case in point. Given the central
position of French in European culture, not only French books but also translations
into French attracted special attention from authors, translators and publishers.
French translations were often retranslated into other languages. Although known as
the belles indles, unfaithful adaptations to indigenous norms of elegance and clarity,
French translations were nevertheless commonly retranslated into other languages.
The most widely translated Spanish authors, Cervantes and Gracin, were translated
into German from their French translations. English philosophers were translated into
Italian on the basis of their French rather than their English editions, and English
literature appeared in German most often while being translated from the French
(Blassneck 1934, Von Stackelberg 1984, Graeber, 1991). The retranslation of French
translations, which was common practice during the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, fell into disrepute at the end of the old rgime, when nationalism became a
political and cultural force. German and English literature gained wider recognition
and translations into French lost their exemplary role.
The retranslation of translations, indirect or second-hand translation, has be-
come much less common. To a certain extent, however, the phenomenon persists.
Even when the translations themselves are far more often made directly from the
original language, the decision to publish a translation from a peripheral language
still depends on the existence of a translation in a central language. Literary transla-
tions from Spanish into Dutch after the Second World War, for example, were nearly
always preceded by their translation into one of the central languages. This was
particularly the case for the most prominent authors (Borges, Cortzar, Garca
Mrquez, Vargas Llosa), who were all translated into French or English before being
published in Dutch (Steenmeijer 1989). Although these books were translated from
Spanish, many signs indicated that the English or French translation had actually
served as the example. The choice of the title, the text on the cover, the quoted praise
from reviews, all revealed the exemplary role of the English or French translation.
There were only a few cases in which Dutch publishers published a translation
before their English or French counterparts. But they paradoxically conrm the
dominant role of central languages. Not only were these translated authors minor
writers, who were discovered by Dutch specialists, but their translations into Dutch
were not well received, either by the critics or by the public. They illustrate, a contario,
that peripheral and semi-peripheral language groups tend to follow the example of
the international centres, including books, etc., that are imported into the centres.
book translations as a cultural world system 311
Much of the international communication about books works in this manner
and is dependent on the role of the leading centres of the international system. Once a
book is translated into a central language by an authoritative publisher, it immediately
catches the attention of publishers in other parts of the globe. The simple fact that
an American or English publisher will publish an author from a semi-peripheral
language is used extensively by the original publisher, because it is the best
recommendation for publishers elsewhere to acquire the translation rights. The
international recognition of Dutch literature is a good example of the leading role of
literary centres in the translation business.
Translations from Dutch and Flemish have been made for centuries. Although
a few literary gures in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries seem to have had a
certain international renown, none of them entered the canon of world literature
(Schenkeveld 1991). In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries very few books
were translated from Dutch, and it was only from the end of the nineteenth century
onwards, following the European recognition of Russian and Scandinavian literature,
that the number of books translated from Dutch started to rise. It increased more or
less regularly, with a total number of approximately 500 or 600 titles per year since
the 1960s.
8
Despite the relatively steady growth in the number of translations during the
twentieth century, Dutch literature has remained largely unknown. Until recently not
a single Dutch writer was internationally acknowledged as a major literary gure.
Financial support and sustained translation efforts proved insufcient, and the lack of
literary recognition outside the Netherlands seemed an inescapable fate (van Noesel
and Janssen 1985, Vanderauwera 1985, Paul 1990). The lack of success was attrib-
uted to the doubtful quality of the translations, to the fact that they were published by
small and often marginal publishing houses, and to the virtual absence of good
translators, who would not only produce proper translations, but who could also
inform publishers, write reviews and train future translators.
The change started during the 1980s when a few Dutch authors were published
by well-established literary publishers; some of the translators won literary prizes.
9
The emerging interest was not restricted to a single country; the breakthrough
occurred in Germany, and from there spread to other literary centres as well as to
more peripheral language groups. Compared with other centres in the international
translation system, German publishers were best prepared for Dutch authors, since
Germany was the only country with a central position which had a tradition of
translating Dutch literature and incorporating it into a national cultural strategy. Since
the end of the Napoleonic wars, Germanists had come to consider the Low Countries
as a cultural province of Germanic culture, and as a minor but not irrelevant ally
against French civilization (Kloos 1992). Dutch and Flemish were perceived as a kind
of Platt-Deutsch and popular novels especially were translated into German to meet the
rising demand.
Apart from popular writers, some of the more established literary gures were
also translated, but their role remained a very minor one. It was only in the 1980s that
leading German publishers started to publish translations of major Dutch writers:
Suhrkamp published Cees Nooteboom, Klett-Cotta Hugo Claus and Hanser Harry
Mulisch. Their books were favourably received by literary critics and some sold quite
well. More translations followed and German critics acclaimed Cees Nooteboom,
in particular, as an outstanding European writer. When in 1993 the Netherlands was
the focus of the international book fair at Frankfurt, the conditions were favourable
for the German recognition to snowball. Since then the number of translated Dutch
312 johan heilbron
authors has substantially increased, as has the number of languages in which their
work is translated.
The Dutch case illustrates the essential role of prominent cultural centres in the
international diffusion of literatures from the semi-periphery. International cultural
centres are not only interested in the diffusion of their own goods, they also have a
vested interest in transit trade and the benets this offers. Symbolic and economic
transit prots are an essential component of the working of the international cultural
system.
The example of Dutch literature also shows that dependency on the international
centres works the other way around. Once a peripheral literature has had some degree
of international recognition, the recognition abroad will contribute to and may
indeed interfere with indigenous reputations. In the Netherlands it was common
to speak of the big three of postwar Dutch literature: Willem Frederik Hermans,
Gerard Reve and Harry Mulisch. Some would add a fourth, Hugo Claus. For decades
their reputation was not seriously threatened by anyone, not even by Hella Haasse and
Nooteboom. But since Haasse and Nooteboom enjoy a growing international fame,
whereas Hermans and Reve do not, the indigenous canon is undermined. Especially
in small countries, the process of canonization is increasingly affected by the inter-
national market place.
Centrality and variety
The more central a language is in the international translation system, the more
types of books are translated from this language. Book statistics in the Netherlands
distinguish 33 categories of books, ranging from religion and law to prose
and history. Only the translations from the most central language, English, are
represented in all 33 categories. Translations from German are found in 28 categories,
translations from French in 22 categories, from Italian in 10 categories, etc. Centrality,
in other words, implies variety. Since the small number of books translated from
peripheral languages is generally concentrated in very few categories, the opposite
also holds true: book translations from peripheral languages lack the variety that
increases with the degree of centrality.
The limits of monopolization
Since the international translation system is so rmly dominated by one hyper-central
language, one might presume that translations from other languages will decrease,
leading to a virtual monopoly for translations from English. Jacques Mlitz has
explicitly suggested such a possibility in his economic model of the world book
market: If the market in one particular language is sufciently larger than any other,
the total lack of technical barriers to diffusion can lead to the exclusive translation of
imaginative works from that particular language into the rest (Mlitz 1998).
The available statistics for the Netherlands do not conrm Mlitzs hypothesis. In
fact they suggest a different pattern, which needs to be checked for other countries.
As far as the Netherlands is concerned, the enormous growth of translations from
English has not diminished the translations from other languages; it has essentially
diminished the role of indigenous books. In order to perceive this effect the usual
mode of calculating proportions has to be revised. The proportion of translations
from a certain language is commonly calculated only as a percentage of the total
book translations as a cultural world system 313
number of translations. It is in many ways more accurate, however, to calculate the
percentage of translations from a certain language as a proportion of the total number
of books published. In that way book production in the indigenous language
becomes part of the competition. And it is possible, indeed, that translations from
English have not replaced translations from other foreign languages but mainly
indigenous books. That, at least, has been the case for the Netherlands, where transla-
tions from English increased from 2 percent to 17 percent of total book production
during the years 194690. In the same period translations from German increased
from 1.4 percent to 4.3 percent, translations from French from 0.6 percent to
2.2 percent, and translations from other languages from 1.2 percent to 2.7 percent
(Heilbron 1995). Thus although English has proted far more from the growth
of translations than any other foreign language, these other languages have also
increased their share in national book production.
The levels of cultural importation
The structure of the world-system of translation also determines the level of import-
ation. The more central a language is in the international translation system, the
smaller the proportion of translations into this language. The most central languages
tend to have the lowest proportion of translations in their own book production. In
the UK and the US less than 5 percent of all published books are translations, a gure
that has hardly changed since 1945. In France and Germany, the proportion of trans-
lations is consistently higher, uctuating between 10 percent and 12 percent of
national book production during the postwar period. In Italy and Spain the relative
weight of translation is more important, at approximately 1220 percent. In coun-
tries with more peripheral languages like Sweden and the Netherlands, 25 percent of
all published books consist of translations, and in Greece the proportion amounts to
more than 40 percent.
These gures, although incomplete and at best indicative, clearly suggest an
inverse relationship between the centrality of a language in the international transla-
tion system and the proportion of translations in national book production. The more
central the cultural production of a country is, the more it serves as an example to
other countries, and the less it is itself concerned with the cultural production from
other countries. Instead of assuming that translations normally occupy a marginal
position (Even-Zohar 1990:50), it is far more accurate to say that their role varies
signicantly, and that the variation depends on the degree of centrality in the inter-
national translation system. The core of an international cultural system has the
highest status; it is carefully observed, followed and emulated, and at the same time it
is much less oriented towards products and producers from outside the centres.
The same can be observed in international exchange among the sciences. As
indicated by citation patterns, scientic research in the US is the most central and
most prestigious part of the scientic world-system. But scientic production in
the US is also characterized by the lowest percentage of foreign references, foreign
co-authors and publications abroad. The percentages of foreign references in scien-
tic articles and foreign publications in US citations are both about 25 percent. In
Japan and the European countries the gure lies somewhere between 40 percent and
71 percent; for the developing countries it varies between 70 percent and 92 percent
(Schott 1991). Instead of an equilibrium between import and export, the reality
of transnational exchange is a process of uneven exchange. For every book that
314 johan heilbron
is translated from Dutch, for example, there are six books translated into Dutch.
Imbalances of this kind characterize the very structure of transnational exchange.
In order to understand the structure of the international ows there is no need to
invoke the peculiarities of national cultural traditions. Comparing the proportion of
1012 percent translations in France, for example, with the signicantly higher per-
centage for Sweden, one might deplore the relative closure of French culture. Some
even consider this to be a specic feature of French culture. Wasnt Chauvin a
Frenchman? Comparing the French with the UKs much lower percentage of transla-
tions, one might be equally tempted to invoke the opposite argument, namely that it
testies to the very richness of the French cultural tradition. The traditionally high
esteem for culture then appears as being reected in a high level of translations.
Neither one of these arguments is necessary for explaining the level of cultural
importation. The proportion of translations in France corresponds to the inter-
national position of French in the world-system of translation, and is perfectly com-
parable with the role of German and the proportion of translations in Germany. As
argued above, it is not so much the national tradition, but rather the international
position of national cultures, which determines the level of cultural importation.
Towards a sociology of translation
The sociology of translation may well become a new branch of the sociology of
culture and a promising domain for the study of the cultural world-system. As a
research eld it can draw on social science research on culture, international
exchange and globalization, as well as on a variety of publications in the eld of
translation studies. Some of the most interesting work in translation studies has been
inspired by polysystem theory. Polysystem theorists have rightly shifted the analytical
focus from an exclusive concern with the source text to the more broadly conceived
target culture. But to understand the role of translations in a target culture, it is by no
means sufcient to analyze them as being part of the literary system of the target
culture. It is essential, as I have tried to show, to consider target cultures as a part of an
international system, of a global constellation of language groups and of national or
supranational cultures.
To develop and rene the approach outlined, two directions seem appropriate.
On the one hand, numerous questions may be raised about the international cultural
system, its genesis and its actual functioning. The analysis of the international transla-
tion system can benet from comparisons with other transnational systems and from
the continuing debate about globalization. On the other hand, there are questions to
be raised about the signicance of such an international system for the understanding
of specic translation practices. There is obviously no simple and immediate transi-
tion from analyzing a world-system to analyzing a national publishing industry
or particular translation strategies. The world-system is concerned with the most
general set of conditions, and for a more complete survey, it is necessary to link
these conditions to the social dynamics of the publishing business and its different
segments.
In certain categories of books, for example, translations are virtually absent, in
others they have a major role. In what is regularly the largest category of books,
schoolbooks, translations have practically no role whatsoever. The market for school-
books is in a way protected, not so much by economic barriers, but by national
regulations and control agencies. Other market segments are more open: in the
book translations as a cultural world system 315
categories of prose and childrens books translations have a major and sometimes
predominant role and there are typically no ofcial instances and far fewer regulatory
institutions. The social organization of the market is thus a crucial dimension for
assessing the role of translations, and the sociology of markets is very relevant
(Swedberg 1994). A more complete sociological analysis may therefore seek to con-
nect the dynamics of the international translation system with the actual working of
the book market and its various segments.
Notes
1 In the remarkable project directed by Roger Chartier and Henri-Jean Martin (198286) on
the French book trade, which contains more than 3000 pages, there is not a single chapter on
translations or translators. Literary history also tends to ignore translations since it is com-
monly conceived as national history. The only literary domains in which translations are a
regular part of the research agenda are reception studies and comparative literature. In both
elds, however, the scope of the work is generally restricted to canonical literary works.
2 For historical texts on translation, see the anthologies of Lefevere (1992b) and Robinson
(1997b). Historical overviews are presented in Ballard (1992), Delisle and Woodsworth
(1995), Kelly (1979), Rener (1989), Steiner (1975) and Van Hoof (1991).
3 Translation studies is a recent, interdisciplinary eld which emerged in the 1970s and 1980s
in a few small countries (Belgium, Israel, the Netherlands). It was based on attempts to unite
different elements from previous approaches into a single framework. The pioneering state-
ment was given by James S. Holmes, an American translator living in Amsterdam, at the
International Congress of Applied Linguistics in 1972. The full text of his paper, The Name
and Nature of Translation Studies (1972), existed only as a mimeographed pre-publication
for 15 years. When it was eventually included in the posthumous collection of Holmes
papers (Holmes 1988:6780), translation studies were in the process of gaining some
institutional recognition. For overviews of the eld and its history see Gentzler (1993) and
Baker (1998).
4 In the literature on cultural globalization, the work of Ulf Hannerz is particularly illumi-
nating (Hannerz 1992, 1996). For an interesting comparison see the analysis of the
international system of modern sports (Van Bottenburg 1994).
5 Besides the gures reproduced in Curwen (1986), Barret-Ducrocq (1992), Venuti (1995)
and Mlitz (1998), I have consulted the Unesco Statistical Yearbooks for 196585.
6 This list, based on the Unesco gures for 1978, is somewhat different from the grouping
of Venuti (1995), who has taken the Scandinavian languages, as well as Greek and Latin,
together.
7 Book translations from English have an ever growing share in the number of books published
in the Netherlands. In 1946, 39 percent of all translated books were translations from
English; in 1990 the proportion was up to 65 percent (Heilbron 1995).
8 These approximate gures are based on the bibliography of translations from Dutch which is
produced by the Royal Libraries of The Hague and Brussels. The absolute numbers are less
signicant than the trend they indicate (see Heilbron 1995).
9 Important translation prizes were awarded to Philippe Noble for his French translation of
E. Du Perrons Le pays dorigine (1980) and to Adrienne Dixon for her translation of Rituals
(1983) by Cees Nooteboom.
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