Translated Literature Published in Ireland, 2016-2025

The Dataset This dataset collects titles of translated literature published by Irish publishers between the year 2016 and 2025. It includes any print edition of a literary title published by a publisher in the island of Ireland during the period 2016-2025 that has been translated as part of its publication process; more information on these criteria is provided below. The dataset contains information on: Year of publication ISBN Publisher Title Original Title (i.e. title in source language, if available) Source Language Target Language Author Translator (in several cases, multiple translators are listed in this field) Additional contributors listed Genre (our list of genres is as brief and broad as possible, for ease of initial classification and overview of publishing categories - e.g. fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, children's - but we may add subgenres in future iterations of the dataset.) Creation and Sources To create this dataset, we collated and cross-referenced data manually from a range of different sources. In the first instance, we relied upon our own knowledge of the Irish publishing industry to guide an investigation of publisher's catalogues and websites, supplemented by enquiries to publishers themselves to clarify details and fill in missing information. We cross-referenced our lists of titles with listings on the websites of Irish booksellers as well as the listings of the National Library of Ireland and of the British National Bibliography (which is, at the time of writing, still in beta mode following the cyberattack on the British Library's online information systems in 2023). We frequently supplemented our information by consulting product listings on Amazon. Information provided by Oireachtas na Gaeilge (which awards the annual Gradam de Bhaldraithe Prize for works translated into Irish, founded in 2019) was also helpful in guiding our survey of Irish-language works in translation. The list of titles here is unlikely to be comphrehensive, and should be understood as the product of the researchers' best efforts to collate and synthesise data from a range of sources rather than a conclusive list. Our process carries the inevitable risk of human error (particular titles and data points required using our own own judgement in choosing between different versions of available information) as well as the possibility of gaps or inconsistencies in the sources used. The definition of a book is, as other researchers have observed, no longer self-evident in the digital age, and our criteria are devised with this definitional uncertainty in mind (Kovač et al, 3-11). A series of researchers and reports on translation have noted persistent problems in the quality and consistency of available data on translated works. As we note in a recent publication, this is is likely to remain an ongoing issue for scholars, since 'different sets of bibliographical data are held by publishers, funders, and industry data providers; these sets are often incomplete and imperfect, reflecting different institutional priorities and capacities.' The availability and consistency of data on translated works varies widely across countries, and no single institution provides a clearly categorised and searchable list of translated book published in Ireland; indeed, the creation of this dataset is motived by our difficulty in discovering a single source that would enable discovery and analysis of Irish-published works in translation. We welcome any correspondence on errors or omissions, and we will update the Dataset accordingly as we receive corrections. Criteria for Inclusion Titles in this dataset include any print edition of a literary title published by an Irish publisher during the period 2016-2025 that has been translated as part of its publication process. To be included, titles required an ISBN: we included different editions in cases where we found both a hardback and paperback edition. Our definition of literary includes children's books, but excludes reference works such as dictionaries or textbooks. By translated, we mean that one or more translators has been involved and that the majority of the work has been translated (there are, for example, books of experimental poetry containing multilingual elements, or books in English aimed at a wide audience structured around Irish-language encounters (e.g. Manchán Magan's Thirty-Two Words for Field, published by Gill Books in 2020), that fall outside this definition). Possible Uses This dataset may be of use to readers interested in exploring translated works in Irish or English. It may also be useful to publishers, translators, and other publishing industry professionals interested in finding more information about particular publishers, publishing areas, and genres, or in particular languages and language pairs. The dataset may also be of use in particular ways to scholars who, like us, are interested in more accurately mapping the publication of translations in contemporary literature, or in better understanding translation flows between particular languages. Listing 325 unique titles, the dataset reflects the small size of the Irish publishing market as well as the minor status of translation within that market (a reflection, in turn, of the still minor status of translation within Anglophone publishing markets more generally, as well of the size of Irish-language publishing within the domestic market). It is, however, large enough to draw some conclusions and note possible research directions which we can be briefly sketched. Some of our initial findings, which we will present in greater detail in forthcoming work, can be summarised as follows: There is a clear and relatively consistent increase in the overall number of translated titles throughout the course of the decade surveyed here. There were 22 titles publised in 2017, for example, against 42 in 2025. This number may reflect the increasing popularity of translated fiction in Anglophone publishing more widely as well as developments in Irish-languages publishing. Irish is comfortably the most popular target language here, with 256 titles translated exlusively into Irish as against 53 into English. This follows longstanding patterns related to the political economy of translation into minority languages noted by Michael Cronin (185-6), but also reflects thriving activity in particular areas such as children's publishing (as noted further below). English is the most popular source language overall, with 137 titles translated from English into Irish. Irish is the most popular source language for translations into English, with 25 titles. French and German are popular sources languages (for both destination languages). Gabriel Rosenstock is the most active translator in the dataset, with 53 titles (almost all of children's books). There are a number of other active translators working primarily with single publishers, although looking at a translator like Antain Mac Lochlainn (with 8 titles listed) allows us to see a translator working with a cross-section of publishers (an Gúm, Dalen Éireann, Barzaz, New Island) across the industry and in different genres. Children's books constitute the largest genre in the dataset (at least according to our loose system of categorisation) with 207 titles, followed by poetry (52) and fiction (47). The prevalence of children's books is influenced in part by the number of children's titles being translated into Irish (including popular English-language titles such as Dog Man published by Futa Fata, and the Tintin and Asterix series published by Dalen Éireann); publishers include long-running An Gúm as well as newer entrants such as Futa Fata. Emer O'Sullivan has described children's literature in Ireland as a case of 'one country, two languages, and two children’s literatures, each with their own tradition, into which books are (or are not) translated under different conditions' (56), and the information here enables one way of glimpsing these differing conditions. The dataset shows the emergence of newer publishers with an interest in translation during the past decade. For example, Bullaun Press (founded 2022) is the first Irish publisher dedicated to the translation of international literature, specialising in the kind of fiction in translation that more commonly reaches Irish readers via UK and US publishers; Skein Press (founded 2017) has also increasingly turned towards translation, with recent poetry titles translated from minority languages such as Galician and Asturian. The criteria for this dataset also exclude a number of publications and, more broadly, literary activities that might be included in a fuller account of translation in contemporary Irish literary culture. These include: as pamphlets and digital publications without ISBNs (including, for example, some publications by the Munster Literature Centre and the Dublyon language and intercultural initiative during this decade); translation in literary journals (The Stinging Fly, for example, introduced a New Translator's Bursary and a position of Translator in Residence in 2021); literary prizes and translation (the Dublin Literary Award regularly highlights translated works of fiction and allocates one quarter of its prize money to the translator); the activities of Literature Ireland, the national agency for the promotion of Irish Literature abroad, which published a series of five Irish short stories in translation together with Dublin UNESCO City of Literature in 2023; the inclusion of translated literature in programmes in Irish literary festivals, including festivals with a global focus (e.g., Cork World Book Fest) or with a dedicated national or linguistic focus (for example, the Festival of Italian and Irish Literature, founded in 2022 during the period covered in this dataset). We will explore several of these research directions further in forthcoming publications, and we hope that other scholars might find additional uses for the data collected here. Bibliography Cronin, Michael. Translating Ireland: Translation, Languages, Cultures. Cork University Press, 1996. Groenland, Tim and Michaela Králová. 'Data, Discoverability, and Translation in the UK and Irish Book Markets.' Mémoires du livre / Studies in Book Culture 16.2 (2025), 1-26. Kovač, Miha, Rüdiger Wischenbart, Yana Genova, and Anja Kamenarič. Books in Translation: Trends and Transformations in the European Publishing Market. ThinkPub, April 2026. https://thinkpub.eu/materials/the-thinkpub-report-books-in-translation/ O'Sullivan, Emer. 'Two Languages, Two Children's Literatures: Translation in Ireland today.' In Children's Literature in Tranlsation: Texts and Contexts, edited by Jan Van Coillie and Jack McMartin, Leuven University Press, 2020.