Found in Translation...

Translations ... in some ways, they are the most exciting, profound thing that can happen to an author.   Your words translated into another language, read by people halfway or even completely around the world.

I've been pretty fortunate with translations of my books.  I was just looking them over.   Here are some stats and details [updated January 2013]:

. My work, at present, has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Farci (Persian), French, Italian, Portuguese, Czech, Polish, Romanian, Macedonian, Croatian, Russian, and Turkish.
. Chinese holds the record, at this point, with translations of seven of my books (all nonfiction):  Mind at Large: Knowing in the Technological Age, The Soft Edge: A Natural History and Future of the Information Revolution, Digital McLuhan: A Guide to the Information Millennium, Realspace: The Fate of Physical Presence in the Digital Age, On and Off Planet,  Cellphone: The Story of the World's Most Mobile Medium, and How It Has Transformed Everything, New New Media, and The Essential Levinson.
.Polish is a close second, with five translations.  Three are of my nonfiction books, The Soft Edge, Cellphone, and New New Media, and two are of my science fiction novels, The Silk Code and The Consciousness Plague.
.Digital McLuhan has received the most translations - seven - Japanese, Chinese (twice - Taiwan and PRC), Korean, Croatian, Romanian, Macedonian (I love that - Alexander the Great!)
.The Soft Edge has received the second most translations - five - Chinese (twice), Portuguese, Polish, and Turkish.
.The most money I was ever paid as an advance for a translation was for the Japanese edition of Digital McLuhan.
.The most royalties I have received for any translation has been for the Korean translation of New New Media.
.The French, Italian, and Czech translations have been of my science fiction short stories.  The Farci (Persian) translation was of a scholarly article about social media in 2010.  All the other translations have been of my books.

You might wonder why there is much more translation from Eastern Europe than Western Europe.  There are at least two reasons.  One is that more people read English in Western Europe than in Eastern Europe, so translations are less necessary.  Another is that the end of the Cold War has led to a remarkable intellectual renaissance in the former Soviet block...

Of course, speaking of reading English, I'm not fluent in most of these languages - I can't really read even a single word in a few - so I have no way of knowing if I'd be happy with the fidelity of the translations...

But I have confidence in the cosmos.

A few covers follow ... I'll add more as I get a chance to scan them, or find them on the Web...