List of Literary Works By Number of Translations

This is a list of literary works (including novels, plays, series, collections of poems or short stories, and essays and other forms of literary non-fiction) sorted by the number of languages they have been translated into.


This is an incomplete list, which may never be able to satisfy particular standards for completeness. You can help by expanding it with reliably sourced entries.
Title Author Year of Publication Number of languages with source Origin / Language
The Bible See Authorship of the Bible See Dating the Bible 2,527 (at least one book)
1240 (New Testament)
475 (Comprising the complete Bible, both Old & New Testaments, including the Protocanonical books)

Hebrew, Aramaic, Koinḗ Greek

Pinocchio Carlo Collodi 1883 >260 Italian
What Does the Bible Really Teach? Jehovah's Witnesses 2005 >240 English
The Watchtower, Announcing Jehovah's Kingdom Jehovah's Witnesses 1879–present 206 as of May 2013 (a monthly journal) English
Pilgrim's Progress John Bunyan 1678 200 English
The Little Prince Antoine de Saint Exupéry 1943 >180 French
Andersen's Fairy Tales Hans Christian Andersen 1835–1852 153 Danish
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea Jules Verne 1870 147 French
Steps to Christ Ellen G. White 1892 >135, >140 English
New World Translation of the Christian Greek Scriptures Jehovah's Witnesses 1950–2013 >121 (the "New Testament" portion)
>66 (the complete Bible, identified as New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures)
English
The Adventures of Asterix René Goscinny & Albert Uderzo 1959–2010 112

French

Qur'an See Origin and development of the Qur'an 650 112

Classical Arabic

Awake! Jehovah's Witnesses 1919–present 98 as of January 2013 (a monthly journal) English
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Lewis Carroll 1865 97 English
The Adventures of Tintin Hergé 1929–1976 96 French
The Imitation of Christ Thomas à Kempis ca. 1418 95 Latin
Book of Mormon See Origin of the Book of Mormon 1830 82 (Complete)
25 (partial)
English
The Alchemist Paulo Coelho 1988 67 Portuguese
Harry Potter J. K. Rowling 1997 67 English
Pippi Longstocking Astrid Lindgren 1945 64 (Several book series of Astrid's exceed 38 languages) Swedish
Kalevala Elias Lönnrot (compiler) 1835/1849 61 Finnish
Sherlock Holmes Arthur Conan Doyle 1887 60 English
The Diary of a Young Girl Anne Frank 1947 60 Dutch
The Good Soldier Švejk Jaroslav Hašek 1923 54 Czech
Quo vadis Henryk Sienkiewicz 1895 >50 Polish
Things Fall Apart Chinua Achebe 1958 50 English
Heidi Johanna Spyri 1880 50 German
El Ingenioso Hidalgo Don Quijote de la Mancha Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra 1615 48 (Although, according to some Spanish sources (Institute Cervantes), this is the book with the most translations after the Bible) Spanish
The Story of San Michele Axel Munthe 1929 >45 English
The Stranger Albert Camus 1942 45 French
The Very Hungry Caterpillar Eric Carle 1969 45 English
The Da Vinci Code Dan Brown 2003 44 English
The Moomins Tove Jansson 1945 43 Swedish
The Kite Runner Khaled Hosseini 2003 42 English
Paddington Bear Michael Bond 1958 40 English
Miffy Dick Bruna 1955 40 Dutch
Tragedy of Man Imre Madách 1861 40 Hungarian
Tirukkural Thiruvalluvar 0012 37 Tamil
The Hobbit J. R. R. Tolkien 1937 40 English
The Family of Pascual Duarte Camilo José Cela 1942 39 Spanish
The English Roses Madonna 2003 37 English
Cold Skin Albert Sánchez Piñol 2002 37 Catalan
Perfume Patrick Süskind 1985 37 German
Anne of Green Gables Lucy Maud Montgomery 1908 36 English
Norwegian Wood Haruki Murakami 1987 36 Japanese
Cien Años de Soledad Gabriel García Márquez 1967 > 35 Spanish
Freakonomics Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner 2005 35 Englisch
Dead Until Dark Charlaine Harris 2001 35 English
The Tale of Peter Rabbit Helen Beatrix Potter 1902 35 English
Totto-chan, the Little Girl at the Window Tetsuko Kuroyanagi 1981 35 Japanese
The Time of the Doves Mercè Rodoreda 1962 34 Catalan
Left Behind Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins 1995 34 English
The Power of Now Eckhart Tolle 1997 >33 English
Goosebumps R. L. Stine 1992 32 English
Alexander Trilogy Valerio Massimo Manfredi 1998 32 Italian
Gone With the Wind Margaret Mitchell 1936 32 English
'Art' Yasmina Reza 1994 30 French
Spiderwick Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black 2003 30 English
The Tale of Genji Murasaki Shikibu 1001 30 Japanese
Millennium Trilogy Stieg Larsson 2005 30 Swedish
The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency Alexander McCall Smith 1998 30 English
The Pillars of the Earth Ken Follett 1989 30 English
Chasing Vermeer Blue Balliett 2003 30 English
Buddenbrooks Thomas Mann 1901 30 German
Under the Yoke Ivan Vazov 1893 30 Bulgarian
In Defence of Global Capitalism Johan Norberg 2001 28 Swedish

Famous quotes containing the words list of, list, literary, works, number and/or translations:

    Religious literature has eminent examples, and if we run over our private list of poets, critics, philanthropists and philosophers, we shall find them infected with this dropsy and elephantiasis, which we ought to have tapped.
    Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)

    Lovers, forget your love,
    And list to the love of these,
    She a window flower,
    And he a winter breeze.
    Robert Frost (1874–1963)

    England has the most sordid literary scene I’ve ever seen. They all meet in the same pub. This guy’s writing a foreword for this person. They all have to give radio programs, they have to do all this just in order to scrape by. They’re all scratching each other’s backs.
    William Burroughs (b. 1914)

    That man’s best works should be such bungling imitations of Nature’s infinite perfection, matters not much; but that he should make himself an imitation, this is the fact which Nature moans over, and deprecates beseechingly. Be spontaneous, be truthful, be free, and thus be individuals! is the song she sings through warbling birds, and whispering pines, and roaring waves, and screeching winds.
    Lydia M. Child (1802–1880)

    But however the forms of family life have changed and the number expanded, the role of the family has remained constant and it continues to be the major institution through which children pass en route to adulthood.
    Bernice Weissbourd (20th century)

    Woe to the world because of stumbling blocks! Occasions for stumbling are bound to come, but woe to the one by whom the stumbling block comes!
    Bible: New Testament, Matthew 18:7.

    Other translations use “temptations.”