English-Language Books Are Filling Europe’s Bookstores. Mon Dieu!
English-Language Books Are Filling Europe’s Bookstores. Mon Dieu!
Young people, especially, are choosing to read in English even if it is not their first language because they want the covers, and the titles, to match what they see on TikTok and other social media.
Publishers are complaining that people prefer to read the novels in English instead of their native tongues.
If I could read a book in its original language versus an English translation, I would. Alas, I am a monoglot.
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When the Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jennifer Egan was in the Netherlands a few years ago promoting her most recent novel, “The Candy House,” she noticed something unexpected.
As English fluency has increased in Europe, more readers have started buying American and British books in the original language, forgoing the translated versions that are published locally.
The English-language books that are selling abroad are generally cheap paperbacks, printed by American and British publishers as export editions.
In an effort to combat the English-language appeal of TikTok, some Dutch publishers have started to release translated books under their English titles, with covers that are similar, or the same, as the original designs.
Ms. Hodge is part of a 35-person group chat named “Dutch Booksta Girlies,” which consists of women who befriended each other on Instagram while discussing books.
Bookstores have adapted to the trend, buying more English-language versions of popular books or focusing on English editions of young adult novels.
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1I would never read a Danish translation of an English novel. I i would even prefer an English translation if it's in a language I can't read.
I started reading in English in my early teens, and it stuck.
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