Working Paper: CEPR ID: DP6432
Authors: Victor Ginsburgh; Shlomo Weber; Sheila Weyers
Abstract: Books are an important factor of cultural transmission, but need, in most cases, to be translated. According to some authors, this may lead to a form of cultural domination, in particular of English, on other languages. All these papers ignore that the population speaking English as a first language is, with the exception of Mandarin, the largest in the world. It is therefore not surprising that English produces more fiction (and much more scientific literature, as scientists from all countries write more and more in English) than any other language. We develop a theoretical model of translation, which is estimated on the basis of UNESCO translation data. We show that translations from English are dominated by translations from other languages, including Scandinavian ones and French.
Keywords: Cultural and linguistic distances; Languages and translations
JEL Codes: L82; Z11
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| population of the source language (pi) (C80) | number of translations from source language i to destination language j (tij) (F22) |
| population of the destination language (pj) (J11) | number of translations from source language i to destination language j (tij) (F22) |
| literacy rate of the destination language (lj) (I25) | number of translations from source language i to destination language j (tij) (F22) |
| average income of the population speaking the destination language (wj) (J31) | number of translations from source language i to destination language j (tij) (F22) |
| cultural distance (dij) (F29) | number of translations from source language i to destination language j (tij) (F22) |