[infecto]

I appreciate the discussion but this does read a bit ridiculous to me. If we are speaking English and we say the best books of 2023 I cannot imagine any scenario that we would think the books are not written in English. I would immediately assume this includes translated books but again in English. Similar if it was the best book list in German or any other language I would assume all of the books are written in that language.

I don’t understand what there is to hate. If I was visiting a site written entirely in French I would have zero expectation that any book list would clarify that the books are French language. What game is being played?

[infruset]

Thanks for your answer. I will try to clarify a bit.

Of course we all know the books are going to be written in English. I am not trying to ask for an idiot-proof label stating the obvious lest a reader might waste a click expecting German-language books.

The point I am trying to make is that the word "book" in the dominant anglosphere has come to mean almost exclusively books coming from an English-speaking country (and even among those I'm sure the proportions are skewed towards the US/UK, although I would be happy to be disproved). So if I discuss "books" in an English conversation (English being the language we are all forced to speak globally now) it is often implicitly expected that we are discussing those books, the books of the anglosphere. Some food for thought, less than 1% of books read in the US are translations[0], which is not the case in other countries (if only because a lot of countries read a lot of translated books from.. English).

> If I was visiting a site written entirely in French I would have zero expectation that any book list would clarify that the books are French language

This comment seems to assume that all languages are equal and interchangeable; they are not. This is maybe hard to realize from within the English-speaking global culture, but other languages are now vassals of English. What I'm saying is that it would be a small act of acknowledgement of this hegemony to remember what is being left out of the conversation.

[0] https://lithub.com/why-do-americans-read-so-few-books-in-tra...

[bwb]

Creator here: Translations are on my radar, and I will look at how I can identify translations as well to break them out into their own subsection of this list in future years (I think there is value in that). I don't know how to do that yet :).

To the larger point, I understand what you are saying. The world is moving toward one global language, and that has pros and cons. My hope is it has more pros than cons, but we could also be losing or minimizing some very special aspects of culture/thinking that language impacts. I think about this a lot as I live in Portugal, and I am likely moving to France in 2024.

I was just reading this NY Times about this type of thing happening within French today: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/12/world/africa/africa-frenc...

[infruset]

Thanks for the link! And I really appreciate any work about books, really, and yours is of great magnitude, thanks for sharing your project. If you ever look to expand it to French, I could be interested in helping.

[bwb]

Sweet, how can I get in touch? my email is [e-mail] if you want to drop me a hello :)

[pm215]

I think you might have some sympathy with the arguments made in the book-length essay 日本語が亡びるとき: 英語の世紀の中で, which also argues that the English language dominance has a deleterious effect on non-English-language literature and that English speakers don't really notice this. (The book is available in English translation under the title "The Fall of Language in the Age of English". I don't think it's available in French translation, which is another example of English-language-dominance: English books get translated into lots of other languages, non-English books often get an English translation only, if that.)

[infruset]

I've read it, and I warmly recommend it! And it is true and ironic that the only language I could read it in was.. English

[9dev]

It’s funny, because your response highlights the problem:

For a native speaker, it’s obvious. For the rest of the world that speaks English as a second language, there is no such implication; most content we consume and platforms we visit online is in English, and the language also serves as a common denominator between speakers of several foreign languages, where the only shared one is English. Hence, we absolutely use English platforms to discuss non-English content.