The news that Mills & Boon have decided to translate their slushy romantic novels into Polish raises some interesting questions about the nature of translation and the world of translated literature. As most translators know, the most translated book in the world is of course the Holy Bible. Statistics (from UNESCO’s Index Translationum) suggest that the most translated authors include (the works of) Walt Disney, Agatha Christie, William Shakespeare and Vladimir Lenin to name a few.
Polish is 14th on the list of most translated languages and 8th on the list of languages most translated into - an interesting discrepancy.
To return to the issue of Mills & Boon translating their novels into Polish, it is interesting taking this in its context. The Harlequin publishing house has a strong foothold in the Polish market which would make it difficult for Mills & Boon to make an impact. However, the reason why Mills & Boon have decided to translate into Polish is due to the fact that they have noticed a great interest in their novels amongst Polish immigrants in Britain, not amongst Polish people in Poland.
These new Mills & Boon books will be published to begin with in Great Britain, rather than in Poland. Strangely enough, a new (translation) market niche has been created which effectively means that Polish language literature has two separate markets - the market in Poland and the market outside Poland. This in turn could effect the Polish being used in each market: the Polish used by Poles in England already differs somewhat from the Polish used in Poland. Might this discrepancy in the two Polishes be increased by the publication of Polish books in England?
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