The Prescribed Reading List and Works in Translation - what's up with that ?

… and the winner is … the Bible.  No surprises there, probably.

Depending on how you look at it or who you ask, the Bible has been translated into 3312 languages, 2191 languages or 670 languages.  Whatever the case may be, it is by far the text that has been translated in the highest number of languages.

Teachers of IB Literature and of Language & Literature are starting to acquaint themselves with the new Prescribed Reading List that dictates which authors’ works can be studied in these two courses from August 2019 onwards.  Leaving the “free choice” aspect to the side, a vast number of authors have just been shortlisted across the fifty-odd languages that are automatically available.

One of the requirements in the Literature course is that at least four (HL) and three (SL) texts are taught or studied in translation. 

MIH Unlimited has embarked on a mega project that invites all the Group 1 teachers around the world, from any language, to contribute their knowledge, their experience and their expertise in literature and help us develop a vast database of authors, works, themes and global issues that will assist teachers and students in constructing relevant, challenging and inspiring courses of study.

Teachers who would like to contribute towards this completely free resource can click on the below link and follow the guidelines.  Ten minutes of everyone’s time will be sufficient to see this resource grow to epic proportions in a short period of time.

https://www.mihunlimited.com/free--prl-authors-and-texts.html

As we all look for texts in translation, I have taken the liberty of checking which works of literature have been translated into the most languages.  We already know that the Bible takes the top prize, but what about the works of authors who appear on the IB Prescribed Reading List ?

Well, Wikipedia has drawn up a list of the 100 works that have been translated in the most languages.  Out of these 100 works, 32 authors appear on the PRL, and so we should be able to find the following texts in plenty of translated versions :
 
Title - Author - Date - Translated into this number of languages - Original language

1. The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint Exupéry - 1943 - 300 - French

2. Andersen's Fairy Tales - Hans Christian Andersen - 1835–1852 - 160 - Danish

3. El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha - Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra - 1615 - 140 - Spanish

4. The Upright Revolution: Or Why Humans Walk Upright - Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o - 2016 - >78 - Gikuyu

5. Pippi Longstocking - Astrid Lindgren - 1945 - 70 - Swedish

6. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain - 1885 - 65 - English

7. Nineteen Eighty-Four - George Orwell - 1949 - 65 - English

8. Quo vadis - Henryk Sienkiewicz - 1895 - 61 - Polish

9. My Name Is Red - Orhan Pamuk - 1998 - 60 - Turkish

10. The Good Soldier Švejk - Jaroslav Hašek - 1923 - 58 - Czech

11. A Doll's House - Henrik Ibsen - 1879 - 56 - Norwegian

12. Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro - 2005 - 52 - English

13. Out Stealing Horses - Per Petterson - 2003 - 50 - Norwegian

14. The Bridge on the Drina - Ivo Andrić - 1945 - 47 - Serbo-Croatian

15. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro - 1989 - 47 - English

16. The Stranger - Albert Camus - 1942 - 45 - French

17. The Moomins - Tove Jansson - 1945 - 43 - Swedish

18. Atonement - Ian McEwan - 2001 - 42 - English

19. The Prophet - Kahlil Gibran - 1923 - 40 - English

20. Amsterdam - Ian McEwan - 1998 - 39 - English

21. The Family of Pascual Duarte - Camilo José Cela - 1942 - 39 - Spanish

22. The General of the Dead Army - Ismail Kadare - 2003 - 37 - Albanian

23. Perfume - Patrick Süskind - 1985 - 37 - German

24. Dictionary of the Khazars - Milorad Pavić - 1984 - 37 - Serbian

25. Norwegian Wood - Haruki Murakami - 1987 - 36 - Japanese

26. White Teeth - Zadie Smith - 1999 - 36 - English

27. Cien Años de Soledad - Gabriel García Márquez - 1967 - > 35 - Spanish

28. Pan Tadeusz - Adam Mickiewicz - 1834 - 34 - Polish

29. The Time of the Doves - Mercè Rodoreda - 1962 - 34 - Catalan

30. 'Art' - Yasmina Reza - 1994 - 30 - French

31. Buddenbrooks - Thomas Mann - 1901 - 30 - German

32. The Tale of Genji - Murasaki Shikibu - 1001 - 30 - Japanese

 Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_literary_works_by_number_of_translations
 
This table tells us also that the PRL authors’ works that have been translated into the largest number of other languages were originally written in :
1.       English (8 works each)
2.       French, Spanish (3 works each)
3.       Swedish, Polish, Norwegian, Serbo-Croat, German, Japanese (2 works each)
4.       Danish, Kikuyu, Turkish, Albanian, Catalan, Czech (1 work each)

Looks familiar ?

Which of the PRL authors and texts do you plan to teach ? Why ?

Which texts do you feel combine well with your chosen works in translation ?

And how can students in languages other than English try to avoid that their works in translation mostly come from the English literary tradition ?

The construction of the program of texts is very likely to become an organic exercise that grows as the students familiarize themselves with one text after another.  Once they have read text 1 and understand its features, its content and context, they can do their research on texts in other languages that share comparable features, content and context. 

If you are at the stage of planning for your new course, feel free to add any strategies, discoveries and plans in the Comments section.  We’re all in this together and we can all learn from each other.

See you next time, cheers !