Project Gutenberg mainly offers English-language ebooks, but
multilingualism has become one of its priorities. French is the second
language of the project. There were ebooks in 60 languages in December
2010.
# In 1990-94
Initially, the ebooks were in English. As Project Gutenberg was
launched from the University of Illinois (United States), with the help
of English-speaking volunteers, its first goal has been to provide
ebooks to the English-language community, that is to say 95% of
internet users in the early 1990s. (Non-English-speaking users reached
50% in summer 2000, with a percentage steadily growing ever since.)
Project Gutenberg was also inspiring other digital libraries elsewhere.
Projekt Runeberg, for classic Nordic literature, and Projekt Gutenberg-
DE, for classic German literature, started respectively in 1992 and
1994.
Projekt Runeberg was the first Swedish digital library of books from
public domain, and a partner of Project Gutenberg. It was created by
the students' computer club Lysator, in cooperation with Linköping
University, as a volunteer project to produce and organize free
electronic editions of classic Nordic (Scandinavian) literature. Around
200 ebooks were available in 1998, with a list of 6,000 Nordic authors
as a tool for further collection development.
Projekt Gutenberg-DE was the first German digital library of books from
public domain, and also a partner of Project Gutenberg. A number of
texts were available for online reading in 1998, with one web page for
short texts and several web pages - one per chapter - for longer works.
There was an alphabetic list of authors and titles, with a short
biography and bibliography for each author.
# In 1997
French was the second language of Project Gutenberg, and still is in
2010.
The first ebooks released in French were six works by Stendhal and two
works by Jules Verne, all released in early 1997.
The six works by Stendhal were four short novels: L'Abbesse de Castro
(published in 1837), Les Cenci (1837), Vittoria Accoramboni (1837) and
La Duchesse de Palliano (1838), and two novels: Le Rouge et le Noir
(1830) and La Chartreuse de Parme (1839).
The two novels by Jules Verne were: De la terre à la lune (1865) and Le
tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (1873).
Three novels by Jules Verne were already available in English: From the
Earth to the Moon (original title: De la terre à la lune), released in
September 1993; Around the World in 80 Days (original title: Le tour du
monde en quatre-vingts jours), released in January 1994; and 20,000
Leagues Under the Seas (original title: Vingt mille lieues sous les
mers, 1869-70), released in September 1994.
Since then, Jules Verne has constantly been in the most downloaded
authors, at 11 in the “Top 20” available on the website of Project
Gutenberg in December 1999, and at 6 in the “Top 100 during the last 30
days”, on October 7, 2010.
As a side remark, the first pictures ever made available in Project
Gutenberg were French Cave Paintings, released in April 1995 as eBook
#249, with an XHTML version available in November 2000. This ebook
offers four copyrighted photographs of paleolithic paintings found in a
grotto in Ardèche, a region of south-western France. The photographs
were sent to Project Gutenberg by Jean Clottes, a general curator for
cultural heritage (conservateur général du patrimoine), for everyone to
enjoy them.
Released in August 1997, eBook #1000 was La Divina Commedia (1321) de
Dante Alighieri, in Italian, its original language.
# In 1998
In October 1997, Michael Hart expressed his intention to produce more
ebooks in other languages. In early 1998, there were a few titles in
French, German, Italian, Spanish, and Latin.
Stendhal and Jules Verne were followed by Edmond Rostand with Cyrano de
Bergerac, published in 1897 and released in Project Gutenberg 100 years
later, in March 1998.
# In 1999
Released in May 1999, eBook #2000 was Don Quijote (1605), by Cervantes,
in Spanish, its original language.
In July 1999, Michael Hart wrote in an email interview: "I am
publishing in one new language per month right now, and will continue
as long as possible."
# In 2000
Released in December 2000, eBook #3000 was À l'ombre des jeunes filles
en fleurs (In the Shadow of Young Girls in Flower), vol. 3 (1919), by
Marcel Proust, in French, its original language.
# In 2001
Project Gutenberg Australia was launched in July 2001, and began
producing ebooks in English and in other languages, for example some
volumes in French of À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost
Time, 1913-27) by Marcel Proust. (The last volumes of Proust's
masterpiece are still copyrighted in the United States, the reason why
they are lacking in Project Gutenberg's main website.) 1,750 ebooks
were available in Project Gutenberg Australia in February 2009.
Released in October 2001, eBook #4000 was The French Immortals Series
(1905), in English. This book is an anthology of short fictions by
authors from the French Academy (Académie française): Emile Souvestre,
Pierre Loti, Hector Malot, Charles de Bernard, Alphonse Daudet, and
others.
# In 2002
Released in April 2002, eBook #5000 was The Notebooks of Leonardo da
Vinci (early 16th century), as an English translation from Italian, its
original language. Since its release, this ebook has regularly stayed
in the “Top 100” of downloaded ebooks.
# In 2003
The Project Gutenberg Consortia Center (PGCC) was affiliated with
Project Gutenberg in 2003, and became a sister project. Since 1997,
PGCC has been working on gathering collections of ebooks from other
sources, in a number of formats and languages, with 75,000 ebooks in
2010.
# In 2004
In early 2004, there were works in 25 languages in Project Gutenberg.
In February 2004, Michael Hart went off to Europe, with stops in Paris,
France; Brussels, Belgium; and Belgrade, Serbia.
He gave a lecture on February 12, 2004 at the headquarters of UNESCO
(United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in
Paris. He chaired a discussion at the French National Assembly on
February 13.
The following week, he addressed the European Parliament, in Brussels.
Then he went to Belgrade to meet with the team of Project Rastko and
support the launching of Project Gutenberg Europe and Distributed
Proofreaders Europe.
Project Rastko, a non-governmental cultural and educational project,
was founded in 1997 in Belgrade as part of the Balkans Cultural Network
Initiative, a regional network for the Balkan peninsula in south-
eastern Europe.
Distributed Proofreaders Europe (DP Europe) has used the software of
the original Distributed Proofreaders, created in 2000 by Charles
Franks to share the correction of ebooks among many volunteers.
DP Europe has offered a plurilingual interface right from the start,
with its main pages translated into 12 European languages by volunteer
translators as soon as April 2004. The long-term goal was 60 languages,
for the interface to be available in most European languages.
# In 2005
In May 2005, DP Europe finished processing its 100th ebook. These
ebooks were in several languages, as a reflection of European
linguistic diversity. DP Europe has supported Unicode to be able to
proofread ebooks in many languages. 600 ebooks were available in
February 2009.
In July 2005, there were works in 42 languages in Project Gutenberg,
including Sanskrit and the Mayan languages. The seven main languages
were English (with 14,548 ebooks on July 27, 2005), French (577
ebooks), German (349 ebooks), Finnish (218 ebooks), Dutch (130 ebooks),
Spanish (103 ebooks), and Chinese (69 ebooks).
# In 2006
Released in December 2006, eBook #20000 was the audiobook of Twenty
Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Vingt mille lieues sous les mers,
1869), by Jules Verne,
in its English version.
In December 2006, there were ebooks in 50 languages. The ten main
languages were English (with 17,377 ebooks on December 16, 2006),
French (966 ebooks), German (412 ebooks), Finnish (344 ebooks), Dutch
(244 ebooks), Spanish (140 ebooks), Italian (102 ebooks), Chinese (69
ebooks), Portuguese (68 ebooks), and Tagalog (51 ebooks).
# In 2007
Project Gutenberg Canada (PGC) was launched on July 1st, 2007, on
Canada Day. Distributed Proofreaders Canada (DPC) started production in
December 2007, with 100 ebooks in English, French, and Italian in March
2008, and 250 ebooks in February 2009.
# In 2010
On October 7, 2010, there were works in 59 languages in Project
Gutenberg. The ten main languages were English (with 28,441 ebooks),
French (1,659 ebooks), German (709 ebooks), Finnish (536 ebooks), Dutch
(496 ebooks), Portuguese (473 ebooks), Chinese (405 ebooks), Spanish
(295 ebooks), Italian (250 ebooks), and Greek (101 ebooks). They were
followed by Latin, Esperanto, Swedish, and Tagalog.
# In 2020, may be
It is hoped machine translation software will be able to convert the
ebooks from one to another of many languages.
In ten years from now, machine translation may be judged 99%
satisfactory - research is active on that front, and software is
quickly improving – allowing for the reading of literary classics in a
choice of many languages.
The machine translated ebooks won't compete with the work of literary
translators and their labor of love during days and months if not
years, but they would allow readers to get the gist of some literary
works that have never been translated so far, or only translated in a
few languages, for commercial reasons.
The output of translation software could then be proofread by human
translators, in a similar way the output of OCR software is proofread
by the volunteers of Distributed Proofreaders.
So, may be, we will see Distributed Translators one day, as a partner
or sister project of Distributed Proofreaders and Project Gutenberg?