PUBLISHING HISTORY OF TRANSLATIONS

as of 2026

This table documents 518 known print publishing events of translations of Jaroslav Hašek’s The Good Soldier Švejk across dozens of languages since the 1920s. The record also suggests a striking pattern: Švejk spread earliest and most vigorously in Central and Eastern European languages before gradually moving westward.

Language Number of Editions Time Span
Abkhazian 1 1973
Albanian 3 1961 - 1973
Armenian 4 1936 - 1978
Azerian 3 1959 - 1978
Bashkirian 1 1958
Basque 1 1992
Byelorussian 9 1931 - 1932
Bulgarian 7 1932 - 1969
Catalán 1 2001
Chinese 3 1950 - 1978
Chuvash 1 1968
Danish 10 1930 - 2018
Dutch 11 1929 - 2025
Esperanto 1 1934
Estonian 19 1928 - 2003
English 27 1930 - 2026
Finish 18 1932 - 2013
French 22 1928 - 2017
Georgian 2 1960 - 1964
German 115 1926 - 2016
Greek 7 1932 - 1979
Hebrew 3 1952 - 1967
Hindi 1 1961
Hungarian 24 1930 - 2010
Icelandic 3 1942 - 1970
Indonesian 1 1949
Italian 10 1951 - 2008
Japanese 14 1951 - 1974
Kazakh 2 1971 - 1975
Korean 1 1965
Latin 1 1960
Latvian 6 1927 - 1991
Lithuanian 9 1932 - 2010
Mari 1 1958
Moldavian 2 1973
Mongolian 1 1965
Norwegian 7 1958 - 1973
Persian 1 1946
Polish 33 1929 - 2022
Portuguese 3 1961 - 1971
Rumanian 4 1956 - 1971
Russian 37 1926 - 2023
Slovak 1 1955
Slovenian 10 1928 - 1966
Serbo-Croatian 19 1929 - 1965
Spanish 3 1980, 1981, 2000
Swedish 20 1930 - 2018
Tadzhik 1 1961
Tartar 2 1932 - 1957
Turkish 6 1963 - 1972
Turkmen 1 1957
Ukrainian 16 1930 - 1970
Uzbek 3 1963 - 1971
Vietnamese 1 1978
Yiddish 4 1928 - 1931

Total Editions of Translations Published:
518

Note: The figures above count distinct print publishing events (paperback or hardcover issues) that reintroduced a translation into the marketplace. They do not attempt to catalog every ISBN variant, impression, or minor reprint, nor do they constitute a complete bibliographic census of all global editions.

The purpose of this table is not archival exhaustiveness but historical vitality: to demonstrate the continued re-publication and circulation of Švejk across languages and decades.

This table is not counting leaves in a herbarium. It is showing that Švejk refuses to die.