Shevchenko's "Testament" among world’s TOP-5 most translated books

Ольга Проскурова

Taras Shevchenko's "Testament" is the most translated book in Ukrainian and one of the world's top five most translated books.

That's according to Chytomo referring to the Preply educational platform.

It is noted that the platform compiled a list of 195 countries and researched data about the books that were most translated in each of them. Data from the world's largest online library catalog WorldCat and acclaimed information sources were taken into account. Religious texts and books translated into less than five languages ​​were not researched.

The list of top 10 most translated books per country is as follows:

• The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery (over 382 translations) – France;
• The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi (over 300 translations) – Italy;
• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (over 175 translations) – England;
• Andersen's Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen (over 160 translations) – Denmark;
• Testament by Taras Shevchenko (over 150 translations) – Ukraine;
• The Indigenous Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha by Miguel de Cervantes (over 140 translations) – Spain;
• The Way to Happiness by Lafayette Ron Hubbard (over 112 translations) – USA;
• The Adventures of Tintin by Georges Prosper Remi (over 93 translations) – Belgium;
• The Tragedy of Man by Imre Madach (over 90 translations) – Hungary; and
• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho (over 80 translations) – Brazil.

In the ranking by continent the leaders are: "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupery (382 translations) – Europe; Lafayette Ron Hubbard's Way to Happiness (112 translations) – North America; "The Alchemist" by Paulo Coelho (over 80 translations) – South America; "The Upright Revolution, or Why Humans Walk Upright" by Ngugi wa Tiongo (over 60 translations) – Africa; "Autobiography of a Yogi" by Paramahansa Yogananda (over 50 translations) – Asia; " and "The Thorn Birds" by Colin McCullough (over 20 translations) – Oceania.

Overall, children's literature dominates the first positions. The Little Prince is still the number one, holding the Guinness World Record as the book translated into the largest number of languages. The most widely translated book in the United States is The Way to Happiness, which is often used by Scientologists "as a recruitment tool," researchers say.