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The impact of English dominance on literature and welfare
[journal article]
Abstract Market forces privilege the translation of English fiction and poetry into other languages, and thus pose a danger for the accumulation of capital in the form of literature. A variety of source languages in translations makes literary capital more valuable as such. Further, the importance of writing... view more
Market forces privilege the translation of English fiction and poetry into other languages, and thus pose a danger for the accumulation of capital in the form of literature. A variety of source languages in translations makes literary capital more valuable as such. Further, the importance of writing in English in order to reach a world audience lowers the pool of talent capable of contributing to literature. The paper starts with a model of the world publishing market that explains why the dominant language acquires a disproportionate share of translations. Then the reasoning proceeds from theory to the empirical evidence.... view less
Classification
Sociology of Communication, Sociology of Language, Sociolinguistics
Free Keywords
Welfare; English dominance; Language; Externalities; Publishing; Translation
Document language
English
Publication Year
2007
Page/Pages
p. 193-215
Journal
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 64 (2007) 2
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2006.10.003
Status
Postprint; peer reviewed
Licence
PEER Licence Agreement (applicable only to documents from PEER project)