Create a fund, paid for by many countries, to support book translation so it does not favor only a few languages
Steps to make it happen
- Countries work together to find out which languages the world's books are translated from and into, and put the results in a table.
- Countries pool money to pay for translating books from languages that are rarely translated into other languages.
- A group of translators, writers, and readers, not the government, chooses which books to translate.
- The fund helps small languages translate directly into each other without going through a big language.
- Books show the translator's name clearly, and translators are paid fairly for their work.
- The finished books are sold by publishers and also sent to libraries around the world.
- It becomes normal for people to read stories from many languages, wherever they live.
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The proposal in detail
This proposal would use money contributed by many countries to create an international fund for translation. The fund would bring books from languages that have rarely been translated to readers of other languages. It would cover a wide range of books, including novels, poems, children's books, essays, and nonfiction. As a rule, it would not cover translation between large languages that the market already translates well on its own. Each country's contribution would be set according to its economic strength. To keep countries that give more from steering which books get translated, the choice would be made by a review body kept separate from governments. Translators, writers, librarians, and ordinary readers from many language regions would serve on it in rotation, and the reasons for each choice would be made public. The support would cover translators' pay, help with clearing the rights to the original work, and part of the cost of publishing and making digital editions. To receive support, a book would have to put the translator's name on the cover or the copyright page and meet a minimum pay standard. The fund would not rely on relay translation, where a book is first put into a big language and then translated again. It would also cover direct translation between small languages and training programs that prepare new translators. Machine translation could be used for a first draft, but a human translator would be responsible for the final text, and its use would have to be stated openly. Books published with support would be given free to public libraries in many places, in a set number of copies or as digital editions.
BenefitsEveryone can share the variety of the world's stories
The biggest benefit is that works once read only within one language region would reach readers around the world. Readers would have more chances to meet lives, histories, and ways of seeing that differ from their own, which can help weaken the habit of picturing people in other places as a single type. For writers, continuing to write in a small language would connect to a path toward being read worldwide. That makes it easier to keep the will to create in that language, and it also helps pass the language on to the next generation. When translators' names and pay are protected, translation can more easily become a real profession, and people who connect small languages to each other will be trained. Unlike grants where each country promotes its own literature, a joint fund with an independent body making the choices can be expected to be fair, so works are chosen no matter how big or rich their country is. Sending books to libraries widens the chance to read for people who cannot afford to buy books, and turns the idea of sharing knowledge and culture with everyone into something concrete.
DrawbacksBooks chosen with public money could force one culture's taste on others
The biggest worry for opponents is that choosing which books to translate with public money could itself become a power, in which a few people decide what counts as literature worth introducing to the world. However independent the review body is made, if the tastes and values of those who choose are lopsided, the image of one region's writing could become fixed, and writers might drift toward styles that pass review more easily. Pressure cannot be fully prevented either: works inconvenient for a government might be dropped, or works might instead be used as tools of cultural promotion. On the money side, there will be voices in countries that lack support for reading and literacy at home saying that paying for translation for other countries is the wrong priority. Publishers and translators who have done translation in the market are also concerned that public support would distort competition. Moreover, with machine translation advancing quickly, people will ask what sense there is in spending large sums on human translation. It is also pointed out that publishing large numbers of books unlikely to sell might mean they are not actually read and simply sit on library shelves.
Learn the background
The world has thousands of languages, and each one carries its own stories, poems, and ideas built up over time. Yet researchers of publishing and translation have said again and again that book translation flows heavily in one direction: from a few widely spoken languages into other languages. Excellent works written in languages with few speakers often do not reach even readers in the next country. When they do, it is often through relay translation, a translation of a translation made through a big language, and some of the flavor of the original can be lost. Translation takes a long time and sales are hard to predict, so it is difficult for publishers to take on as a business. Translators tend to be paid little, and it is not unusual for their names to be left off. Many countries already have grants to introduce their own literature abroad, but most of these serve partly to promote the country itself, and they can hardly play the role of connecting small languages to each other. Now that machine translation is spreading, there is also the question of how to support high-quality translation by people, and the people who do it.
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This proposal was written in Japanese by AI (claude-opus-5-5, policy version 2026-10-15d) and translated by AI (claude-sonnet-5-5). Nobody has checked the facts. Read the original (日本語) How the AI writes