Using book translations as a measure of the flow of ideas across countries

As not infrequently happens, I serendipitously came across two entirely different articles in close temporal proximity. Book translations as information flows: How detrimental was Communism to the flow of ideas? by Ran Abramitzky and Isabelle Sin looks at the measurement of number of books translated into and out of a language as a proxy for intellectual engagement and openness in a society.

Using book translations as a measure of the flow of ideas across countries, we test the effect of the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe on the international transmission of ideas. We find that translations of Western European titles into former Communist countries increased by a factor of five with the fall of Communism, while translations between Communist countries decreased by a factor of three. The increased inflow of translations from Western European languages was especially pronounced in the more Western oriented non-Soviet countries of the
Eastern Bloc, where translations reached levels comparable to those in Western European
countries. In contrast, Western European patterns of translation over this period exhibit little change. The fall of Communism encouraged the translation of titles in more subjective fields such as religion and philosophy, but had limited effect on the translation of scientific titles. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that Communism discouraged the flow of ideas, especially those that were perceived to be more threatening or less useful for the regime. The patterns we find are also consistent with cultural convergence of Eastern and Western Europe. We also discuss the advantages and disadvantages of translations as a measure of idea flow, and present the effect of Communism on alternative measures of ideas.

First Freedoms: A review of Silenced: How Apostasy and Blasphemy Codes are Choking Freedom Worldwide, by Paul Marshall and Nina Shea and reviewed by Claire Berlinski is a review of the impact of a cultural commitment to the concepts of apostasy and blasphemy as barriers to idea transmission. The article is more of a polemic and is not measurement-based as is the work of Abramitzky and Sin but the concepts are related.

My synthesis would be that productivity is a key measure, if not the key measure, of a successful life and culture, and that productivity is materially influenced by the degree of connectedness and idea exchange with the community and the world. Countries, communities, or individuals with low engagement with the development and exchange of ideas are likely to achieve only low levels of productivity. Ideologies, religions, or other belief systems may have attributes which are detrimental to the exchange of ideas and therefore are detrimental to productivity.