This was the question a Danish translation agency set out to answer – and they found some surprising results, explains Lasse Nielsen who is part of the external online marketing team at the Diction agency. Lasse can explain this better than I can so let me hand you over to him.
We did this research to hopefully inspire someone who sees it to read books by authors other than the ones they’re used to reading and furthermore to learn more about the must successful Danish authors. The inspiration to the research came from my favourite Danish author Peter Høeg, whose book Miss Smilla’s Sense of Snow, which is his most popular work, celebrates its 25 year anniversary this year. Miss Smilla is number eight in the list of top translated authors.
Our study is based on the UNESCO database of translated authors where you can find every translation of authors in the world. There we found the Danish authors and for each of them documented how many times their work had been translated and into how many languages. The ten most translated authors feature in our graphic. For each author mentioned you can see their place of birth, their most popular work and the number of languages into which that work has been translated.
Our research showed, no surprise, that Hans Christian Andersen is by far the most popular author in the matter of translation and reach worldwide. His Fairy Tales has been translated into 180 languages. But for us Danes there were a few surprises as well, particularly finding Carla Hansen whose Rasmus Klump is on the list and the Puck Series by Lisbeth Werner (pseudonym) were so popular worldwide.
We’ve had a surprising reaction to the research and our graphic. Besides the fact that Andersen and Søren Kierkegaard came top of the list. I think that most Danes didn’t know many of the other authors who have become popular outside Denmark – people like Sven Hassel who was born in Denmark but moved to Germany to escape the depression.
Unanswered Questions
Looking through this piece of research, a few things struck me.
One is that my knowledge of Danish fiction is even lower than I expected. I haven’t heard of most of the authors in the top 10 (the exception being of course Hans Christian Anderson). I need to start delving into some of these other authors. Since I’ve never heard of them or even know what genre in which they work I had to do a bit of internet research. Wikipedia came to my rescue so below you’ll find a potted biography of the top 5 (after Anderson who needs no introduction).
Secondly none of the six titles Marit mentions as ‘required reading’ because they are considered classics of Danish fiction, make an appearance in the top 10 identified by Diction. Isn’t that odd? I’d have thought a classic would be one of the first to be translated. Classics from many other European countries are widely available (I’m thinking Crime and Punishment from Russia, Les Miserables, L’Etranger from France, The Trial from Germany, Don Quixote from Spain and any one of Dickens or Austen’s works).
So why aren’t Danish classics translated? Is it that publishers think the market is limited because the books deal with issues of interest or meaningful only to Danish people? Unlikely – one of the authors Marit lists is Tom Kristensen whose best known work is Hærværk (published in English as Havoc in 1968). This is the story of a Danish journalist who is driven to self-destruction by drink. It’s theme is the intellectual, political and personal crisis experienced by many European writers and artists between the World Wars. Another ‘classic’ text is Alphabet, a collection of poems by Inger Christensen that deal with themes of nuclear war and ecological devastation. Surely these are topics of interest well outside the borders of Denmark?
Or are these novels not really ‘classics’? A thorny question this because there are so many ways to define ‘classic’. I took another look at the criteria used by the Italian author and journalist Italio Calvino (I wrote about his 14 point definition in this post) in the hope in might cast some light on my question. A lot of his points could apply to the titles in Marit’s list but there was one point that got me thinking. Calvino says “a classic is a work that comes before other classics, but those who have read other classics first immediately recognise its place in the genealogy of classic works.” So maybe one of the issues is that these Danish works are standalone texts rather than ones that have a connection to the past and set a tradition for ones coming after.
I wish I knew the answer. Maybe one of you who has better knowledge of how publishers reach decisions on what to translate, will be able to cast some light on this.
Top 5 Danish Authors Who’s Who
Søren Aabye Kierkegaard (1813 –1855) was a Danish philosopher, theologian, poet, social critic and religious author who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher. He wrote critical texts on organized religion, Christendom, morality, ethics, psychology, and the philosophy of religion, displaying a fondness for metaphor, irony and parables. Fear and Trembling (the book mentioned in the graphic) dates from 1843 and has been translated into 20 languages.
Sven Hassel (1917-2012) was the pen name of the Danish-born Børge Willy Redsted Pedersen who wrote novels set during World War II. He moved to Germany in 1937 to join the army. There are competing stories of what role he played in WW2. According to Hassel he was a naturalized German citizen fighting with the German armed forces. He claimed to have surrendered to Soviet troops in Berlin in 1945 and to have spent the following years in prisoner-of-war camps in various countries. But it seems he was actually arrested in Denmark and was held in prison as a German collaborator. He began writing his first book Legion of the Damned while he was interned. His 14 books which depict the brutality of war, describe the exploits of a 27th (Penal) Panzer Regiment composed of expendable soldiers – sentenced criminals, court-martialed soldiers and political undesirables.
Lisbeth Werner sounds like a Danish version of Jacqueline Wilson. It’s the pseudonym of Danish writers Knud Meister and Carlo Andersen who wrote a series of 46 popular teenage books about Puk(Puck), a girl that attends a boarding school. The series is available in five languages in addition to Danish.
Ole Lund Kirkegaard (1940-1979) was a Danish writer of children’s literature and youth literature and a teacher. He mainly wrote about the interaction between adult and child. The main character in his books is usually an anti-hero and the events are inspired by his own childhood experiences. His most popular title Otto is a Rhino has been translated into 15 languages.
Willy Breinholst (1918 – 2009) was a Danish author, screenwriter, and humorist. He was rather prolific – according to one web site he has around 165 titles to his name, most of them taking a comic look at the family.