BRINGING THE WORLD TO YOUR BOOKSHELF THROUGH TRANSLATION

While learning a language is always a good idea, unfortunately we don’t all have the time or opportunity. That's where professional translators and translations come in. There’s a lot more to translation than simply looking up a dictionary, as anyone who has had mishaps with Google translate can attest. A good translation is like looking through a stained glass window, where the world you know suddenly takes on new colours and shapes.

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Just 2-4% of books published in English each year are translations, and it’s been estimated that of new fiction alone there are at least 1,500 good books published each year that are never translated. And then consider the potential backlog of books that no longer have a living author or current publisher to promote them. There are literally millions of books which are simply not accessible if you do not speak the language in which they were written. 

But what about the common idea that English speakers do not like to read books in translation? We think rather that the limited availability of translated literature and its ‘ghettoisation’ into a separate section of the bookshop results in the lower sales. However, the digitalisation of the publishing industry is underway and publishing for niche markets is now a viable business proposition due to print on demand and ebook technology. 

Kabaty Press was founded to take advantage of these opportunities – to increase global understanding through translating the ‘great untranslated’ while showing that translated literature can be a winning business proposition. Thank you for following us on our journey!