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Amazon starts imprint for translated literature

beer good

Well-Known Member
AmazonCrossing

World Literature in Translation
Exciting new books are being written and published around the world every day, yet only a handful are translated for English-speaking audiences to enjoy. At Amazon.com, we're fortunate to have customers who have introduced us to outstanding works from other countries and cultures, and we want to share these books with our English-speaking customers. With this in mind, we're proud to announce AmazonCrossing, which will introduce readers to emerging and established authors from around the world with translations of foreign language books, making award-winning and bestselling books accessible to many readers for the first time.

Similar to AmazonEncore, Amazon.com's first publishing imprint, AmazonCrossing uses customer feedback and other data from Amazon sites to identify exceptional works that deserve a wider, global audience. AmazonCrossing will acquire and translate the works and introduce them to the English-speaking market through multiple channels and formats, such as the Amazon.com Books Store, Amazon Kindle Store, and national and independent bookstores.

What Experts Are Saying About AmazonCrossing

"As president of the Nobel Committee for Literature, I have seen how recent laureates--Elfriede Jelinek, Imre Kertesz, JMG Le Clézio, Herta Müller--were virtually unknown and unprinted in England and the U.S. and only after the Nobel Prize were they able to find readers in English, yet they are in my view equal to anyone writing in English. AmazonCrossing deserves praise and support. Such translation and distribution of good literature from so-called minor languages can only stimulate our cultures and inspire writers to widen their horizons." --Per Wästberg, President of the Nobel Committee for Literature

"There are many thousands of books out there worthy of being translated and published in English, but that are currently unavailable to us monolingual readers. The more international books that are available in English, the better. It’s exciting to see a company like Amazon investing in such a worthy cause like AmazonCrossing, and in a way that will definitely help expand the audience for literature in translation." --Chad Post, Publisher at Open Letter Books

"Only a tiny percentage of the titles published in the U.S. and UK today are works in translation, and AmazonCrossing holds enormous promise for increasing those numbers by introducing Amazon’s millions of customers to previously inaccessible works of world literature. I am excited to see the impact on writers, translators, and readers around the world." --Esther Allen, Chair of the Advisory Board of the PEN Translation Fund
I trust Amazon much less far than I can throw a Kindle, but I like the initiative.
 
I think this is a great idea. We in the entire english speaking world tend to be very insular.

Obviously part of that is that english is the lingua franca but we are missing out on a whole host of great books without more translations.

I welcome this development.
 
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