The most interesting translation facts
27th November 2023
1. The Bible is the most translated book.
As it stands, the Bible is the most translated book in the world. The Bible has been translated into 736 languages. At least some portions of the Bible have been translated into 3,365 languages. The New Testament has been translated into an additional 1,658 languages.
The Little Prince (Le Petit Prince) and The Adventures of Pinocchio (Le Avventure di Pinocchio) were the subsequent most translated books.
2. Translators can translate around 520,000 words per year.
A translator can translate around 2,000 words per day. This means that a full-time translator can translate an impressive number of 520,000 words a year.
3. Dedicated Translation Day.
Each year on September the 30th, the world celebrates International Translation Day.
This special day was created to honour the tireless work of translators, interpreters and other language professionals around the world.
4. The world’s most translated website is the Jehovah’s Witnesses website.
jw.org can be read in 1,077 languages including some indigenous languages.
This site is available in 738 more languages than Wikipedia (the 2nd most translated website), illustrating its incredible capabilities.
5. Agatha Christie is the most translated author of all time.
Agatha Christie’s books have been translated 7,236 times. Over 2,000 more than the runner-up Jules Verne (4,751) and William Shakespeare (4,296).
6. Spanish is the easiest language to translate.
Spanish is a Latin-based language which shares numerous words with English. Many believe that translating into and from Spanish is quite straightforward, given the abundance of cognates, making the process relatively easier.
7. Mandarin Chinese is the hardest language to translate.
Asiatic languages including Mandarin Chinese, Japanese and Thai have no similarities to European languages, making them much harder to translate.
8. The most translated foreign languages in the UK are French, German and Italian.
According to the Unesco database, French is the most translated language in the UK (9,314), followed by German (8,492) and Italian (2,461)
9. Industry worth over 25 billion dollars.
The language industry has an estimated market size of 26.6 billion dollars, according to the Slator Language Industry Market Report.
10. Ziad Fazah is the Guinness World Record holder for speaking 58 languages.
A Liberian-born Lebanese polyglot Ziad Fazah is the Guinness World Record holder for speaking the most languages. He claims to be able to speak and read in 58 languages; including Polish, Finnish, Russian, Chinese and Greek.
