Translation plays a major role in the circulation of books in the social sciences and the humanities (SSH). An indicator of international recognition for scholars, it also reflects the power relations between countries. What factors favor or hinder the translation of an academic book in another language? The present paper will propose a set of factors impacting the circulation of SSH books, based on a quantitative and qualitative study of the flows of translations between French and English (US and UK) since the 1990s, in the context of the growing hegemony of the US in the global field of the social sciences and humanities.

Gisèle Sapiro is Professor of sociology at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) and Research director at the CNRS. She is Vice-President of the EHESS for international relations. Her interests include the sociology of intellectuals, of literature and of translation, as well as the history and the epistemology of the Social Sciences and the Humanities. The author of La Guerre des écrivains, 1940-1953 (1999; English transl.: French Writers’ War, Duke UP, 2014), La Responsabilité de l’écrivain. Littérature, droit et morale en France, XIXe-XXe siècles (2011) and La Sociologie de la littérature (2014).