Viestejä: 8
Kieli: English
Demian (Näytä profiilli) 17. maaliskuuta 2012 13.11.32
I still remember reading somewhere the Universal Esperanto Association (UEA) has around 40,000 (or some other big figure) books in its repository. If a big fraction of them are translated, how come the UNESCO figure be so off the mark?
erinja (Näytä profiilli) 17. maaliskuuta 2012 16.17.28
The major translations of books from other languages into Esperanto were done before the 1970's. Most new Esperanto books were written originally in Esperanto, not translated from other languages. The number that UNESCO quotes may have missed some books, but it is probably accurate in terms of order of magnitude.
The number of books translated from other languages into Esperanto since the 1970's surely isn't more than 1000. It's a small subset of Esperanto literature, in both scope and time.
sudanglo (Näytä profiilli) 17. maaliskuuta 2012 23.25.16
I vaguely recall, from years back, that there would be on average around six titles a month, which would make say 70 a year. Over 30 years that would be 2100.
If anybody here is an 'Esperanto' subscriber and the magazine still includes 'laste aperis', then they could calculate an annual figure for you.
In the 1979 July/August issue of Esperanto (covers two months) there were some 29 entries in laste aperis.
The practice of publishers sending a copy to UEA so that the title could be included in laste aperis may have gone out of fashion.
pdenisowski (Näytä profiilli) 18. maaliskuuta 2012 1.04.51
sudanglo:Years ago there used to be a section, called 'laste aperis', in UEA's magazine, Esperanto. I vaguely recall, from years back, that there would be on average around six titles a month, which would make say 70 a year. Over 30 years that would be 2100.There's a great article on exactly this topic in the latest issue of Ondo de Esperanto (2012, n-ro 2) entitled "Nia libroproduktado en la 2011a jaro". The article begins with :
"Ĉiujare ni resumas la libroproduktadon en Esperantujo, daμrigante la projekton de Hungara Vivo. La statistika bazo estas la rubriko Laste Aperis en la revuo Esperanto, kiu listigas la librojn, kiujn la Libroservo de UEA ricevis kaj ekvendis en la aktuala jaro, sendepende de la eldonjaro."
For copyright reasons I can't post the rest of the article, but (like most of the articles in Ondo) it's really well-written and well-researched. [Note that a digital (pdf) subscription to Ondo is actually fairly inexpensive ... ]
Amike,
Paul
erinja (Näytä profiilli) 18. maaliskuuta 2012 1.26.08
sudanglo:I vaguely recall, from years back, that there would be on average around six titles a month, which would make say 70 a year. Over 30 years that would be 2100.The UNESCO calculation was translated titles only, though, so the translations would have to be weeded out from the works originally in Esperanto.
Demian (Näytä profiilli) 18. maaliskuuta 2012 5.21.51
I have got A Beginner's Compact Dictionary of Esperanto by Potturu V Ranganayakulu with Federacio Esperanto de Barato's mark on it. It doesn't have an ISBN number, without which I don't think it will even make it into the list of books published in India let alone the UNESCO list.
Could you people randomly pick up a few books from your collection to see if they have got an ISBN number printed on them?
sudanglo (Näytä profiilli) 18. maaliskuuta 2012 10.19.37
A translation of a recent book on the financial crisis (for example) is more significant than say a translation of a title in the Maigret series, because of the currently under-developed terminology in Esperanto in the areas of banking and high finance.
On the matter of quality, when it comes to the translation of popular books and classics, the landscape has changed.
With the Internet there a few obstacles to getting the translation collaboratively reviewed before publication by Esperantists of different mother tongues.
Also, Amazon Books (for versions of the title in other languages), online mono-lingual and bi-lingual dictionaries, and Google Translate make reliable translation that much easier.
Demian (Näytä profiilli) 18. maaliskuuta 2012 12.12.07
sudanglo:Of course, what really matters is not quantity of translated literature but its quality and also the subject matter (does it extend the language).I agree but that's not what we are discussing here, isn't it?
What we are talking about here is to find a reliable number of the books that have been translated into Esperanto. I know it's difficult, indeed, given the diversity of its speakers and expanse of the language, near to impossible, still I would like to bring this to our conscious so that at least we can try.