encouraging reading (was Bible Translations....)

[Slavomír Čéplö]

Observation: "Le Petit Prince" seems to have been translated into more
than 150 languages (http://www.petit-prince.at/). Does that indicate
its appeal? And if, does it say anything about which genres, narrative
structures, themes and so forth could be considered most universally
acceptable?

bulbul

On Sat, Sep 27, 2008 at 4:44 AM, William J Poser <wjposer at ldc.upenn.edu> wrote:
> Suppose that we wanted to encourage reading in minority languages. Is
> there a single text that would be attractive everywhere, or is reading
> appeal too culture-specific?
>
> According to my mother, who was in the publishing industry a long
> time ago, the industry wisdom was that the most popular topics were
> Lincoln, doctors, and dogs, so the perfect book would be about
> Lincoln's doctor's dog. Non-Americans may not have the same interest
> in Lincoln, or dogs, for that matter.
>
> Bill
>