UNESCO Collection of Representative Works
Encyclopedia
The UNESCO Collection of Representative Works (or UNESCO Catalogue of Representative Works) was a UNESCO
translation project that was active for about 57 years, from 1948 to about 2005. The projects purpose was to translate masterpieces of world literature, primarily from a lesser known language into a more international language such as English and/or French. As of 2005 there were 1060 works in the catalog representing over sixty-five different literatures and representing around fifty Oriental languages, twenty European languages as well as a number of literatures and languages from Africa and Oceania.. It also translated some works into lesser known languages, such as the translation of the Japanese
writer Yasunari Kawabata
into Indonesian
(in addition to 8 other languages), or the Urdu
poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz
into Hungarian
(in addition to 2 other languages). UNESCO financed the translations and publications, but UNESCO itself was not a publisher, instead working with other publishers who then sold the books independently.
Works were selected based on a number of criteria. Generally, new versions of translations already published were not undertaken and it was rare for a little-known contemporary author with only a small output to his name to be considered for inclusion. Works were selected by the following procedure. Member States suggested lists of works which they consider to be representative of the values of their cultures. Internationally recognized cultural organizations, such as the PEN federation of writers
and the International Council for Philosophy and Humanistic Studies
were also called upon for advice in the establishment of the lists. In addition, suggestions were received from publishers who were willing to undertake the translation of particular works which they consider worthy of a place in the Collection.
As of about 2005 UNESCO was no longer able to fund new translations, but still maintains a catalog of prior translations online.
Languages with significant numbers of works subject to translation include:
Significant groups of works translated from one language to another include:
Authors with significant numbers of translations include:
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
translation project that was active for about 57 years, from 1948 to about 2005. The projects purpose was to translate masterpieces of world literature, primarily from a lesser known language into a more international language such as English and/or French. As of 2005 there were 1060 works in the catalog representing over sixty-five different literatures and representing around fifty Oriental languages, twenty European languages as well as a number of literatures and languages from Africa and Oceania.. It also translated some works into lesser known languages, such as the translation of the Japanese
Japanese language
is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is a member of the Japonic language family, which has a number of proposed relationships with other languages, none of which has gained wide acceptance among historical linguists .Japanese is an...
writer Yasunari Kawabata
Yasunari Kawabata
was a Japanese short story writer and novelist whose spare, lyrical, subtly-shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to receive the award...
into Indonesian
Indonesian language
Indonesian is the official language of Indonesia. Indonesian is a normative form of the Riau Islands dialect of Malay, an Austronesian language which has been used as a lingua franca in the Indonesian archipelago for centuries....
(in addition to 8 other languages), or the Urdu
Urdu
Urdu is a register of the Hindustani language that is identified with Muslims in South Asia. It belongs to the Indo-European family. Urdu is the national language and lingua franca of Pakistan. It is also widely spoken in some regions of India, where it is one of the 22 scheduled languages and an...
poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz
Faiz Ahmed Faiz
Faiz Ahmad Faiz was a Pakistani intellectual, poet, and one of the most famous poets of the Urdu language. He was a member of the Anjuman Tarraqi Pasand Mussanafin-e-Hind and an avowed Marxist. In 1962, he was awarded the Lenin Peace Prize by the Soviet Union...
into Hungarian
Hungarian language
Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
(in addition to 2 other languages). UNESCO financed the translations and publications, but UNESCO itself was not a publisher, instead working with other publishers who then sold the books independently.
Works were selected based on a number of criteria. Generally, new versions of translations already published were not undertaken and it was rare for a little-known contemporary author with only a small output to his name to be considered for inclusion. Works were selected by the following procedure. Member States suggested lists of works which they consider to be representative of the values of their cultures. Internationally recognized cultural organizations, such as the PEN federation of writers
International PEN
PEN International , the worldwide association of writers, was founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere....
and the International Council for Philosophy and Humanistic Studies
International Council for Philosophy and Humanistic Studies
The International Council for Philosophy and Humanistic Studies is a non-governmental organization within UNESCO, which is a supraorganization of hundreds of learned societies in the field of philosophy, human sciences and related subjects....
were also called upon for advice in the establishment of the lists. In addition, suggestions were received from publishers who were willing to undertake the translation of particular works which they consider worthy of a place in the Collection.
As of about 2005 UNESCO was no longer able to fund new translations, but still maintains a catalog of prior translations online.
Statistics
The following is a list of the major languages works have been translated into, with the number of works translated into that language:- English: 455
- FrenchFrench languageFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
: 450 - SpanishSpanish languageSpanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...
: 71 - ArabicArabic languageArabic is a name applied to the descendants of the Classical Arabic language of the 6th century AD, used most prominently in the Quran, the Islamic Holy Book...
: 38 - GermanGerman languageGerman is a West Germanic language, related to and classified alongside English and Dutch. With an estimated 90 – 98 million native speakers, German is one of the world's major languages and is the most widely-spoken first language in the European Union....
: 25
Languages with significant numbers of works subject to translation include:
- Japanese: 152
- Spanish: 105
- Arabic: 62
- ChineseChinese languageThe Chinese language is a language or language family consisting of varieties which are mutually intelligible to varying degrees. Originally the indigenous languages spoken by the Han Chinese in China, it forms one of the branches of Sino-Tibetan family of languages...
: 61 - PersianPersian languagePersian is an Iranian language within the Indo-Iranian branch of the Indo-European languages. It is primarily spoken in Iran, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and countries which historically came under Persian influence...
: 54 - SanskritSanskritSanskrit , is a historical Indo-Aryan language and the primary liturgical language of Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism.Buddhism: besides Pali, see Buddhist Hybrid Sanskrit Today, it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of India and is an official language of the state of Uttarakhand...
: 49 (a dead language in regards to new written texts only, primarily a source of ancient texts from Hindu religion and literature) - PortuguesePortuguese languagePortuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...
: 44 - BengaliBengali languageBengali or Bangla is an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It is native to the region of eastern South Asia known as Bengal, which comprises present day Bangladesh, the Indian state of West Bengal, and parts of the Indian states of Tripura and Assam. It is written with the Bengali script...
: 34 - French: 34
- KoreanKorean languageKorean is the official language of the country Korea, in both South and North. It is also one of the two official languages in the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture in People's Republic of China. There are about 78 million Korean speakers worldwide. In the 15th century, a national writing...
: 31 - English: 29
- Hindi: 27
- ItalianItalian languageItalian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
: 24 - PaliPali languagePāli is a Middle Indo-Aryan language of the Indian subcontinent. It is best known as the language of many of the earliest extant Buddhist scriptures, as collected in the Pāi Canon or Tipitaka, and as the liturgical language of Theravada Buddhism.-Etymology of the name:The word Pali itself...
: 23 (an extinct languageExtinct languageAn extinct language is a language that no longer has any speakers., or that is no longer in current use. Extinct languages are sometimes contrasted with dead languages, which are still known and used in special contexts in written form, but not as ordinary spoken languages for everyday communication...
, primarily a source of early Buddhist texts) - HungarianHungarian languageHungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....
: 16 - TurkishTurkish languageTurkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...
: 16 - Modern GreekGreek languageGreek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...
: 14 - RomanianRomanian languageRomanian Romanian Romanian (or Daco-Romanian; obsolete spellings Rumanian, Roumanian; self-designation: română, limba română ("the Romanian language") or românește (lit. "in Romanian") is a Romance language spoken by around 24 to 28 million people, primarily in Romania and Moldova...
: 14 - Urdu: 13
Significant groups of works translated from one language to another include:
- Japanese to English: 92
- Chinese to English: 30
- Persian to English: 26
- Sanskrit to English: 23
- Korean to English: 22
- Spanish to English: 22
- Hindi to English: 20
- Pali to English: 20
- Bengali to English: 19
- Arabic to English: 12
- Spanish to French: 62
- Arabic to French: 41
- Japanese to French: 39
- Portuguese to French: 31
- Chinese to French: 23
- Persian to French: 20
- Italian to French: 19
- Sanskrit to French: 16
- English to French: 14
- Bengali to French: 13
- French to Arabic: 14
Authors with significant numbers of translations include:
- Natsume SosekiNatsume Soseki, born ', is widely considered to be the foremost Japanese novelist of the Meiji period . He is best known for his novels Kokoro, Botchan, I Am a Cat and his unfinished work Light and Darkness. He was also a scholar of British literature and composer of haiku, Chinese-style poetry, and fairy tales...
: 11 - Yasunari KawabataYasunari Kawabatawas a Japanese short story writer and novelist whose spare, lyrical, subtly-shaded prose works won him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1968, the first Japanese author to receive the award...
: 9 - Rumi: 8
- Julio CortázarJulio CortázarJulio Cortázar, born Jules Florencio Cortázar, was an Argentine writer. Cortázar, known as one of the founders of the Latin American Boom, influenced an entire generation of Spanish speaking readers and writers in the Americas and Europe.-Early life:Cortázar's parents, Julio José Cortázar and...
: 7 - Rabindranath TagoreRabindranath TagoreRabindranath Tagore , sobriquet Gurudev, was a Bengali polymath who reshaped his region's literature and music. Author of Gitanjali and its "profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful verse", he became the first non-European Nobel laureate by earning the 1913 Prize in Literature...
: 7 - Yukio MishimaYukio Mishimawas the pen name of , a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor and film director, also remembered for his ritual suicide by seppuku after a failed coup d'état...
: 5 - Mohammad Iqbal: 5