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Thursday 24 November 2016

The Translations, a Statistical Analysis - Part Two, the Lists


All the Brontë novels
It’s an exciting race for the top scorer competition of the amount of languages. Wuthering Heights has taken the lead, with 51 languages. Jane Eyre has 49. But there must be more. As a comparison Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland can be given. It has 174 languages. Jane Eyre especially, who is almost as iconic as Alice, should be able to come considerably closer. It is interesting to note that Jane Eyre took a 11-1 lead in the 19th century, against Wuthering Heights.

Villette is a very good third, with 31 languages.  On fourth place come The Professor  and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, with 28. Shirley has 27. Agnes Grey is last, with 25. There will be more for them too.
One would think that the amount of translated editions of The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, Shirley and Agnes Grey come close to the amount of The Professor (150). I would guess that there are at least about 2500 translated editions of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, each. Of both braille versions have also been found, but, especially because they are in English braille, these cannot be regarded as translations.

Update 29 December 2016. The latest scores are: Wuthering Heights 61, Jane Eyre 59, Villette 31, The Tenant of Wildfell Hall 30, Shirley 29, The Professor 28 and Agnes Grey 26.

In tables 8a-e you can see all the languages that have been found. The first two tables have the year in which the first translations of Villette and The Professor in a certain language was published.





















Table 9 gives the full list of translations of Villette and The Professor since 1853.


1853-1872


1874-1944

1945-1956


1957-1970

1971-1977
1978-1990


1991-1997
1998-2004

2005-2008

2009-2012
2013-2015

2016-2017


Eric Ruijssenaars



2 comments:

Julie said...

Very informative, thank you! I only wish there were such a list for The Tenant of Wildfell Hall.

Eric Ruijssenaars said...

Hello Julia,

Thank you for your compliment. Yes, it would be great if someone would do it with Anne's novels. Best wishes,
Eric