The short answer
- The demand: people search for classics 2.7 million times a month in the 24 other languages together, 82% of the English total.
- Where our check found least: no audiobook for Hindi (97%), Indonesian (90%), Arabic (88%); no dedicated summary for Hindi (93%), Finnish (91%), Danish (90%); neither audio nor a summary for Hindi (92%), Indonesian (76%), Arabic (76%).
- The typical language: our check found no audiobook for 62%, no dedicated summary for 68% and neither for 45% of the classics it looked up; in English the same check says 13%, 38% and 12%.
- Read with care: "not found" means our automated check found nothing, so it overstates the gap, most of all in scripts where names have several spellings.
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Demand and supply, language by language
For each of the 25 languages: how often people search for classics in it, and what our check found for the 360 titles with the most demand that have a name in that language.
The check looked for an audiobook and for a dedicated summary or study guide; "neither" means it found neither. The columns, from left to right, are the searches a month and the share of those titles with no audiobook found, with no summary found and with neither found.
| Language | Searches a month | No audiobook found | No summary found | Neither found |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| English | 3.28M | 13% | 38% | 12% |
| Arabic | 17.1K | 88% | 81% | 76% |
| German | 188K | 37% | 71% | 33% |
| Spanish | 469K | 32% | 32% | 19% |
| French | 162K | 43% | 46% | 27% |
| Hindi | 730 | 97% | 93% | 92% |
| Indonesian | 33.7K | 90% | 81% | 76% |
| Italian | 257K | 49% | 48% | 33% |
| Japanese | 296K | 73% | 52% | 42% |
| Korean | 69K | 70% | 51% | 40% |
| Dutch | 25.9K | 66% | 74% | 55% |
| Polish | 259K | 32% | 70% | 28% |
| Portuguese | 233K | 52% | 41% | 30% |
| Russian | 169K | 30% | 66% | 25% |
| Chinese | 68.1K | 31% | 32% | 19% |
| Danish | 15.7K | 50% | 90% | 46% |
| Swedish | 16.9K | 56% | 86% | 52% |
| Norwegian | 10.9K | 60% | 85% | 49% |
| Finnish | 9.7K | 70% | 91% | 64% |
| Czech | 80.8K | 34% | 39% | 22% |
| Turkish | 223K | 64% | 54% | 44% |
| Romanian | 31K | 72% | 66% | 56% |
| Hungarian | 29.9K | 80% | 78% | 66% |
| Croatian | 21.2K | 82% | 62% | 53% |
| Catalan | 9.3K | 76% | 83% | 66% |
What the table says
- Demand is large. The 24 other languages together search for classics about 2.7 million times a month. Spanish, Japanese, Polish, Italian, Portuguese and Turkish each add 220K to 470K.
- Supply is uneven. In Hindi, Indonesian, Arabic, Hungarian and Catalan our check found neither audio nor a dedicated summary for 66% to 92% of the classics it looked up, against 12% in English.
- Where the searches land on nothing. Of the searches for the classics we checked, about 92K a month go to titles for which our check found neither audio nor a dedicated summary. Japanese, Turkish and Indonesian lead: Japanese about 16K, Turkish about 12K, Indonesian about 9K.
How to read the numbers
- "Not found" is an upper bound. Our check is automatic. It misses material on local sites it does not know, so the real gap is smaller. Where it says something exists, it is right in about three cases of four.
- Names have several spellings in Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Chinese, so a title may be missed there.
- Open catalogue data is thin for every language but German, Spanish, French and Italian, so evidence of a modern edition is often missed. That measure is in the file and not in the table.
- No title is named as missing. A name that is spelled differently can hide an edition that exists, so this page makes no claim about any single book.
How we measured
- Demand. Google Ads keyword volumes (12-month average to September 2026) for each title's local name with seven kinds of search, summed over the language's markets and scaled from the titles measured to all our titles, with a 90% range in the file (measured on 24 October 2026).
- Supply. For the titles with the most English demand and a name in the language, we read the first Google results for three searches in the local words on 24 October 2026 (about the book itself, a summary and an audiobook), and looked for an edition since 1990 in open catalogue data and in shop and catalogue pages.
- English is the control. The same check run for English finds no audiobook for 13%, no summary for 38% and neither for 12%, so the gaps in the table are a language effect, not a method effect.
- The three shares. All three are counted over the same titles. "Neither" is the share for which no audiobook and no dedicated summary or study guide was found, so it can never be larger than either of the other two.
Questions
In which languages did our check find the least?
Our check found neither audio nor a dedicated summary for the largest share of the classics it looked up in Hindi, Indonesian, Arabic, Hungarian and Catalan. Hindi and Indonesian rest on few titles with a name in the language, so read those numbers as an upper bound on the gap.
Does "not found" mean it does not exist?
No. It means our check found nothing. A title spelled differently, or sold only on a local site, can hide an audiobook, a summary or an edition that exists.
Can I use this data?
Yes, under CC BY 4.0. Credit the Library of Alexandria Press (the name and a plain-text address are enough).
Cite this
Library of Alexandria Press (2026). Classics in your language: what readers search for, and what they find [Data set]. Version 2026-10-27. https://libraryofalexandria.com/pages/classics-in-your-language. CC BY 4.0.
