Most Asian literature—with the exception of works by authors belonging to an anglophone elite that is increasingly globalized—will come to readers via translation. Without translators, then, most writing from China, Japan, Korea, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, the Arab World—just to name places from which translations have recently appeared in the Asia Review of Books—would be entirely inaccessible English-language readers.

But translations are most often noted when they are clunky or when the translation appears directly via footnotes.

So we invited five experts covering different languages, countries and parts of the process to discuss translations, translators and the role they play in bringing Asian literature to English-speaking readers:

Julia Lovell, Lucas Klein, Sophie Lewis, Arunava Sinha, and Marcia Lynx Qualey