The late Colombian Nobel Prize for Literature Gabriel García Márquez has surpassed the author of Don Quixote, Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, as the most translated Spanish-language author in the 21st century into ten selected languages. However, the latter remains the most translated writer since 1950.
The finding has arisen from a new World Map of Translation Prepared by the Instituto Cervantes, a Spanish public body aimed at promoting the Spanish language throughout the world and which will present this tool this week at the IX Congress in Cádiz.
The study has taken the translation data into ten languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian and Chinese, according to media such as public television.
The ten most translated authors into those ten languages since the year 2000 are completed with Isabel Allende, Jorge Luis Borges, Mario Vargas LlosaCervantes, Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Luis Sepúlveda, Roberto Bolaño and Javier Marías.
Since 1950 the list has changed slightly and the order of the writers is as follows: Cervantes, García Márquez, Allende, Borges, Vargas Llosa, Federico García Lorca, Pablo Neruda, Fuentes, Pérez-Reverte and Ruiz Zafón.
The map also shows some interesting differences between languages. Thus, the Spanish-language writer most translated into French is the Chilean-French Alejandro Jodorowsky, while the two most translated into English are Allende and the Spanish children’s author Isabel Sánchez Vegara, while, in Italy, Manuel Vázquez Montalbán ranks among top ten. (RT News)