The New York Public Library is celebrating its 126th anniversary and its gradual reopening by releasing a top 10 list of its most-borrowed foreign-language books.
The titles include “The Case of the Golden Key” in Arabic, “The Farmer’s Daughter-in-Law” in Chinese, “One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish” in French and Spanish, “Doctor W. Wehchen and Federfant” in German, “My Grandfather’s Stick” in Hindi, “My Brilliant Friend” in Italian, “1Q84? in Japanese, “The Man in the Brown Suit” in Russian and seven novels by Humayun Ahmed that were written in Bangla featuring the author’s protagonist, Himu.
To compile the list, library researchers — who teamed up with linguists from the New York-based language-learning app Babbel — first identified the 10 non-English languages most sought out by patrons, said Andrew Medlar, the head of the NYPL BookOps division, who helped oversee the project.
They then looked at books either written in or translated to these 10 languages to determine the most circulated world-language titles.
“It’s a great list New Yorkers created by what they read and what they check out — and looking at this list, I see books that are just as varied and diverse as the readers of our city,” Medlar told the Daily News, noting that the library has circulating materials in more than 70 languages.
For each book, Babbel linguists provided additional information, including difficulty ratings for those who wish to borrow one of the books.
“The list that they came back with was so surprising and interesting. [It was a] crazy mix of titles, from children’s books to modern books,” Julie Hansen, the U.S. CEO of Babbel, told The News. “I would never have guessed that ‘One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish’ would be so popular in French and Spanish.”
“I hope readers will see this list and remember that there are so many ways to learn a language,” she added. “The more ways you can embrace language learning, the faster you will absorb it — and it’s just such a gift that in New York, we have these things available to us, that you can go to the library and get many books in many languages. That’s pretty remarkable.”