01 · the list
A short list chosen with care.
Some translated books win awards. Some sell by the million. We want books that do both: stories with real craft that you'll still stay up until 2am to finish.
tr. note: the first titles are being chosen now, by readers who know them in the original.
shelf 01 · polish page-turners
02 · why we exist
Lost Found in translation.
Every year, extraordinary novels become bestsellers in Warsaw, São Paulo and Istanbul, and English readers never get to read them. Only about three percent of books published in the US are translations.
Readers know what they're missing when one gets through. Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend, translated from the Italian by Ann Goldstein, and Asako Yuzuki's Butter, translated from the Japanese by Polly Barton, became word-of-mouth phenomena in English.
Have a book you love that deserves English readers? tell us about it →
the usual way
English → the world
the worldbeeter way
The world → English
03 · the translator's desk
Every sentence is a decision.
Translation is where taste lives. Here's what a translator weighs, one line at a time.
original
Kasieńko, chodź tu.
one name, four moods
KatarzynaformalKasiaeverydayKasieńkatenderKaśkarough
word for word
Little Katie, come here.
on the page
“Kasia, love. Come here.”
Polish can turn a name into tenderness or contempt with a single suffix. English can't, so the translator has to find that warmth somewhere else: a pet name, a rhythm, a pause.
original
Co pan powie?
word for word
What will the gentleman say?
on the page
“You don't say.”
Poles address strangers as pan and pani, sir and madam, and that politeness can turn icy or sarcastic in an instant. English has no equivalent, so a detective's contempt has to live in the rhythm and the word choice instead.
original
Nie mój cyrk, nie moje małpy.
the safe choice
Not my problem.
on the page
“Not my circus, not my monkeys.”
Sometimes the best translation is the literal one. This Polish saying has already crossed into English, and flattening it to “not my problem” would lose the color that makes the line sound like its speaker.
04 · now translating
Polish
Poland's bestselling novelists sell millions at home and are still largely unknown in English. That's where our first list comes from, with more of the world close behind.
05 · for publishers & agents
Your authors, in front of English readers.
We license world English rights for whole series and publish them in ebook, print and audio, with editing, covers and marketing handled in-house.
If you represent authors whose books deserve a bigger world, we'd love to talk.