Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
884480 | Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization | 2007 | 23 Pages |
Abstract
Market forces privilege the translation of English fiction and poetry into other languages, and thus pose a danger for the accumulation of capital in the form of literature. A variety of source languages in translations makes literary capital more valuable as such. Further, the importance of writing in English in order to reach a world audience lowers the pool of talent capable of contributing to literature. The paper starts with a model of the world publishing market that explains why the dominant language acquires a disproportionate share of translations. Then the reasoning proceeds from theory to the empirical evidence.
Related Topics
Social Sciences and Humanities
Economics, Econometrics and Finance
Economics and Econometrics
Authors
Jacques Mélitz,