Juan Milà. Image: HarperVia
By Erin L. Cox, Publisher | @erinlcox
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Books in Translation are as American as Apple Pie
In January, Juan Milà will be speaking at January’s NYU Advanced Publishing Institute in New York City on the subject of Global Voices: The Expanding World of Works in Translation, a topic he knows well as editorial director of HarperCollins’ imprint dedicated to publishing international books, HarperVia.
Founded in 2018 under the guidance of Judith Curr, president and publisher of the HarperOne Group at HarperCollins in New York, HarperVia’s mission has been to “work with agents and translators to bring a wide selection of international voices to readers in the English language markets.“Since our first books were launched in the fall of 2019, we have published 146 new titles and inherited a backlist of more than 100 titles in translation from the HMH acquisition,” Milà says. “Together, more than 60 percent of HarperVia’s titles have been translated from 25 languages.”
The United States has often been cited as a difficult market for books in translation, but in recent years, Milà says, he has noted that there’s more of an appetite for books from other countries.“Among the more encouraging changes,” he says, “is the growing interest in international and translated books among younger readers in the 20-to-35-year range, the generation that grew up with manga and anime.
“Social media and online existence fuel a more globalized culture and many smaller categories and readerships, although it’s more challenging to break out new voices. A more data-driven intermediation between publishers and readers has helped expand the offering but also has atomized it and made print distribution more conservative.
“But even in these risk averse times,” he says, “we get support from the bookselling community, the members of which are intent on bringing the best of the international community into their stores via translated works,” says Milà.
In 2023, Spencer Ruchti, the events manager at Third Place Books in Seattle, and Justin Walls, coeditor of translation-focused pick-of-the-month series Du Mois Monthly, launched the Cercador Prize for Translation, which recognizes works in translation selected by a committee of independent booksellers located in many parts of the United States.
‘The Extra Time It Requires’
“Another challenge,” Milà says, “is always how to evaluate a translation project because of the extra time it requires. It took us more than two years to publish Charlotte Collins’ and Ruth Martin’s beautiful translation of Nino Haratischwili’s The Lack of Light, but it’s an epic story of friendship in post-Soviet Georgia and feels even timelier today.”
“While there hasn’t been a huge sensation in recent years like Stieg Larsson or Elena Ferrante, we see signs that American readers’ curiosity and appetite for different perspectives and different ways of inhabiting the world are still beating strongly.”Juan Milà
In the United States, as differing voices and perspectives are being challenged, it seems that it may be a difficult time to be publishing works in translation, but Milà says he’s undaunted.
“While there hasn’t been a huge sensation in recent years—the kind that helps expand the field, like Stieg Larsson or Elena Ferrante—we see signs that American readers’ curiosity and appetite for different perspectives and different ways of inhabiting the world are still beating strongly.
“Translations from Korean, from Han Kang to Park Seolyeon’s A Magical Girl Retires and Japanese from Asako Yuzuki to healing fiction or Uketsu’s genre-defying Strange Houses, are becoming increasingly popular.
“Whether you’re looking to escape or be moved or enlightened,” Juan Milà says, “there’s such a wealth of options among international books. Translation is only becoming more prominent.
As the saying goes, it’s as American as apple pie. And even apples were once an import.”
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A version of this story originally appeared in our Publishing Perspectives 2025 Show Magazine, which was released in print on October 15 as the trade show opened on Messe Frankfurt. If you couldn’t be with us in Frankfurt this year to pick up a print copy, be sure to download our PDF of the full magazine here.
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