An analysis of world literary translations for 1979 to 2008 was published, and Russian language literature ranked fourth after English, French, and German. The study shows that Russian was one of the strongest, but after 1991 it declined sharply, and the largest number of translations in the world are in Germany and France. Russian experts note that many contemporary authors are translated, but Russia still has no world scale giant of literature.

An analysis of statistics on literary translations in the world for the period 1979–2008 has been published. Russian-language literature entered the ranking of the most popular on the global book market, taking fourth place after English, French, and German. Russian experts identified the most in-demand author, but agreed that Russia still does not have a “giant of literature.”
The report on translation statistics in Europe was published on the website of Rüdiger Wischenbart Content and Consulting. The study analyzes the full statistics of translations from 1979 to 2005 and partially includes the period up to 2008. The sources were UNESCO data, as well as internal information on the markets of Austria, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, and Poland.
Special attention in the report is given to the languages of Central and Southeastern Europe. The researchers set out to understand what was happening with translations behind the fallen “iron curtain.”
“Among the strongest languages was Russian. However, this is the only major language that, after 1991, over just a few years, experienced a sharp decline,” the study says.
The ranking of the leading source languages from which translations are most often made looks like this:
1. English (1 million 758 translated books)
2. French (186,036 thousand)
3. German (169,387 thousand)
4. Russian (93,779 thousand)
5. Italian (55,397 thousand)
6. Spanish (43,365 thousand)
7. Swedish (30,738 thousand)
8. Latin (16,602 thousand)
9. Danish (16,222 thousand)
10. Dutch (16,050 thousand)
11. Czech (14,642 thousand)
12. Ancient Greek (14,315 thousand)
13. Japanese (13,437 thousand)
The ranking of the languages into which translations are made looks different: Germany takes first place by the number of translations, followed by France. Translations into English account for only 2–3% of the total worldwide.
Russian experts assessed the state of Russian literature and suggested which contemporary authors are among the most popular.
A great many books by Ulitskaya and Bykov are translated from contemporary authors, as are works by Sorokin, Pelevin, and Grishkovets. This was told to the newspaper Vzglyad by Professor Grigory Kreidlina of the Department of the Russian Language at the Institute of Linguistics of the Russian State University for the Humanities. He believes that the number of translations of Russian authors into other languages depends on the standard of living in the country. If it rises, then authors will write more substantively, rather than to suit the day, just to make a living.
The director of the Institute of Linguistics, Maksim Krongauz, stated that contemporary Russian literature is to a greater extent literature for internal use. Only the emergence of a giant of literature can change this situation. Moreover, this must be a person important specifically for world culture. The scholar explains: for example, the influence of the national genius Pushkin on world literature is less than that of Tolstoy or Dostoevsky.
There are no figures of this scale in Russia now. But there are truly good writers. The scale of a writer, however, is formed by many circumstances, including political ones.