Is there a Nobel Prize effect? Translations after the Nobel Prize a quantitative analysis of translations of germanophone literature's Nobel laureates

Abstract

The Nobel Prize is said to have many effects: increased public perception, or even political influence of the Nobel laureate and her related work on the one hand, inappropriate attributions of authoritative knowledge in areas unrelated to the laureate's expertise, distraction, and reduced productivity on the other. We want to find out the extent to which there is a Nobel effect on public perception and the development of a canon of world literature – in particular, by examining the translations of the works of the germanophone literature laureates before and after the award in a quantitative perspective.We argue that the global distribution of books is an indication for the awarding body, the Swedish Academy, that an author might be a worthy candidate and/or a result of the award. The latter aspect leads to the conclusion that the Nobel Prize in Literature could be regarded as a specific type of brand: a meta-brand that consecrates quality or even authority. This is particularly notable in the high numbers of translations published after the award. A comparison of translations of works written by Nobel Prize winners with translations by non-awarded authors, however, shows that the Nobel Prize is not a necessary condition for high numbers of translations and resulting acts of canonization of a work or an author. Consequently, the consecrating authority of the Swedish Academy may only be significant in certain cases.