How we work

Roughly three percent of books published in English each year are translations. Three percent. The rest — the overwhelming majority of what English-language readers have access to — was written originally in English. Everything else is on the other side of a language wall.

Korean literature is in a golden era. Han Kang's Nobel Prize in Literature brought global attention to what readers in Seoul have known for years: Korean writers are producing work of extraordinary range and depth — from delicate literary fiction to rigorous philosophical nonfiction to deeply personal memoir. The Korean publishing industry is large, sophisticated, and producing remarkable books at remarkable speed. The English translation of that output has barely begun.

Japan presents a parallel gap. It is the world's third-largest book market, with a rich tradition of literary and intellectual publishing. Yet fewer than three Japanese nonfiction titles are translated into English in a typical year. The ideas, arguments, and stories contained in Japanese nonfiction — books that shape public discourse in Japan — remain entirely invisible to English-language readers.

That is the gap we are here to close.