According to the National Endowment for the Arts, "fewer than 3% of all books published in the U.S. . . . were translations," writes John O'Brien ("A Simple Question," Context, No. 14, 2003, at <http://www.centerforbookculture.org/context/no14/simpleQ.html>). In contrast, says O'Brien, "In Western European countries, the percentage of translations is about 40-50% each year. Many of these are from the United States, but a significant number are from a wide range of other countries." I submit that American intellectuals are not cosmopolitan at all.
[WS:] I do not think it is a fair comparison. EU is multilingual, hence more translations. US is not, hence fewer translations.
I do not think you can make blanket comparisons of countries of this kind. A more useful approach would focus into different types of readers and consumers of culture based on class and the position within the profession or the academe. Thus you would need to compare the reading habits of middle level management in the US and EU - social science academic, or economists, or natural scientists and so on.
My understanding, based on unscientific observation is that while the general middle class readers in the US tend to more parochial in their reading selection than their EU counterpart, the US academics are somewhat less parochial than their EU counterparts. There might me some exceptions though e.g. economists or business management types which tend to be more parochial in the US.
Wojtek