Information Sheet Number 6
April 2000

Translations of Books by P G Wodehouse

P G Wodehouse’s books have been translated into many languages. The first translation known was the Swedish version of Piccadilly Jim, published in 1920. It would be tempting providence to try to define the number of titles which have been translated into a particular language, as new translations appear every year. At the time this information sheet was prepared, more than thirty titles have been published in:

Bulgarian

Finnish

Italian

Spanish

Danish

French

Norwegian

Swedish

Dutch

German

Russian

A smaller number have appeared in:

Burmese

Estonian

Japanese

Russian

Catalan

Hungarian

Polish

Turkish

Czech

Icelandic

Portuguese

Ukranian

Esperanto

In addition, one of the classic short stories, The Great Sermon Handicap, was the deserving subject of a linguistic experiment in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The late Jimmy Heineman commissioned translations in a total of 59 languages, ancient and modern, and the results were published in six volumes. English and Phonetic English versions appeared in each volume, and the allocation of the remainder was as follows:

Volume 1

Volume 2

Volume 3

Catalan

Afrikaans

Danish

French

Chaucerian English

Faroese

Italian

Dutch

Icelandic

Latin

Flemish

Norwegian

Portuguese

Frisian

Nynorsk

Rhaetoromansch

German

Old Norse

Rumanian

Luxemburgian

Swedish

Spanish

Mittelhochdeutsch

Plattdeutsch

Swiss German

Yiddish

Volume 4

Volume 5

Volume 6

Basque

Amharic

Bulgarian

Breton

Ancient Hebrew

Czech

Esperanto

Arabian

Macedonian

Finnish

Aramaic

Polish

French Creole

Armenian

Russian

Gaelic

Coptic

Servo-croatian

Hungarian

Maltese

Slovakian

Irish

Modern Hebrew

Slovenian

Papiamento

Sanskrit

Ukranian

Pidgin English

Somali

White Russian

Romany

Welsh