Gabriel García Márquez, Isabel Allende, Jorge Luis Borges, and Mario Vargas Llosa Among Latino Authors Most Translated in the World, Report Finds

Gabriel García Márquez, Isabel Allende, Jorge Luis Borges, and Mario Vargas Llosa Among Latino Authors Most Translated in the World, Report Finds
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Latin American literature continues to thrive.  

According to a report conducted by Instituto Cervantes as part of the World Map of Translation (Mapa Mundial de la Traducción), they were able to gather the Latine authors most translated from the Spanish language to other languages. Among those authors were Gabriel García Márquez, Isabel Allende, Jorge Luis Borges, and Mario Vargas Llosa. 

Colombian author García Márquez took the lead of the most translated author. His books have been translated to Russian the most. This is based on the registry of titles published between the years 2000 and 2021. 

“It is a result that is not of much surprise because García Márquez is an author who has enormous prestige in the literary, editorial and academic fields. He is also a very popular author because he is widely translated, widely published, widely read and highly appreciated by readers,” said the Colombian publisher Martín Gómez, who has been a delegate of the Caro y Cuervo Institute at the Cervantes Institute in Madrid when asked about the report while on Radio France International.  

“This is due in large part to the fact that his work has a great capacity to connect with the sensibility of different types of readers, regardless of their cultural background, their geographical origin and their native tongue,” Gómez added. 

(Please note that the above quote was translated from the Spanish language to English.) 

The Spanish-language publication, Infobae, explained that the World Map of Translation is a tool that tracks and analyzes metadata to collect information on works originally published in the Spanish language and translated into ten languages. The ten languages they focus on are: English, Mandarin Chinese, French, Arabic, Russian, German, Japanese, Portuguese, and Italian. They gather their data for the years between 1950 and 2022. 

Bridging worlds by being translated

Though El Gabo took the top place, he was well accompanied by other greats in the world of literature. 

Chilean author, Isabel Allende, was placed in second place and was followed by Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges. Coming in at fourth place was Mario Vargas Llosa – a legacy to Peru.  

The report found that Allende and Vargas Llosa were translated to Swedish the most. And, like García Márquez, Borges’ books were mainly translated to Russian.  

Aside from Russian, however, García Márquez, has been translated to Arabic and Portuguese. Meanwhile, Allende’s books have seen great success in Italian, English, and German. 

This project was presented on March 29th by the Instituto Cervantes in a presentation on “Diversity and unity of the Spanish language.” 

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