Knowledge available only in English

With the fact that the English is a modern Latin and the language of science, probably everyone has already accustomed. At least it seems so, until students or academics, but also other professionals in any industry, realize that they still have to learn, but can only really rely on English-language literature.

Why specialist books are not translated?

It’s not exactly that they are not explained. They simply don’t translate for everyone, and even if they do, some bookstores prefer to stay with distributing the originals – this is what https://www does, among others.abe.pl/. There are several reasons for this and the fact that many of the recipients have a good command of English is just one of them.

A small edition of the original. If the subject matter is very niche, even the global circulation will only be in the tens or hundreds of thousands. That’s very little, and if you break it down into Polish, French, German, Italian, Russian and other national editions, someone would have to undertake printing a few thousand or a few hundred copies in an edition, and that’s very expensive. Translation, typesetting, reviewing, proofreading and technical preparation alone would cause extreme price increases.

Publishing policy. Some publishers simply do not resell the printing rights further. They only do their job and do not allow further translation. Although this attitude on the surface seems to be selfish, it is often not so unfavorable for the recipient if only because of the first point of this list.

Lack of specialists. Translating a specialist book on quantum physics or the historical politics of 14th century Florence is a challenge that only a few experts in the field can meet. And they usually have very tight schedules and simply would run out of patience and buy an untranslated copy before Polish readers would see the translation. Then the whole translation would be completely unnecessary and unprofitable, so the length of the publishing cycle is of great importance.

How much does it matter?

Today, the interest in specialized literature is enormous and the language in which books are published does not matter much. English editions sell very well and this is reported by the owners of many bookstores, who sometimes even compare the sales of the Polish and the original language version – it happens that English editions, especially when it comes to scientific literature, are more popular. This is not a Polish phenomenon – the Germans and the French are observing the same, and there is nothing to indicate that this trend will soon be reversed.