Unpacking the Bias in English-translated Asian Literature: Where are the Southeast Asian Authors?

by Dai-An Le

Here’s the thing: I love translated works, and I think Australia does too. Walk into any bookstore and you’ll see names such as Han Kang, Mieko Kawakami and Liu Cixin lining the shelves in the new releases section and on the staff recommendations list.

Here’s the other thing: the translated works I find in Australia are very … similar, as to their country of origin. As in, Asia is apparently a two-country continent comprised of Korea and Japan and sometimes a three-country continent including China now that The Three-Body Problem has become popular. East Asia is all of Asia, it seems, when it comes to translated literature.

But what about the other parts of Asia? What about Southeast Asia? Where are the authors with names that look like mine, or the voices that speak in the rise and fall of my father? It’s not for a lack of material when there’s an entire street in Ho Chi Minh City dedicated to Vietnamese books and Indonesia is ranked fifth in the world when it comes to the number of books published per year.

So why the discrepancy?

How publishers decide what gets translated

Publishers hold power when they choose what books to translate. They can act as cultural gatekeepers, and there are many factors that influence what books they choose to translate.

The first is selling and acquiring translation rights, which takes time and money—a luxury not all countries, writers and publishers have. Then, as publishing is a business after all, it’s about choosing books that can sell—and Korean and Japanese works sell a lot.

In Britain, of the two million translated fiction books bought in 2022, the most popular were those from Japan with almost half a million sold. South Korea followed in second place. Closer to home, Readings’ ten bestselling translated fiction list of 2020 comprised primarily of books from Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Sayaka Murata, Mieko Kawakami and Han Kang.

Why, then, is there such a demand for Korean and Japanese works? The Booker Prize Foundation contends that Korean and Japanese books have become so popular for a few reasons including their introspection, themes of isolation and suspension of tension through language—but there’s also another factor that isn’t as widely discussed.

Recipient of the 2016 Man Booker International Prize, Korean author Han Kang’s The Vegetarian has sold over half a million English copies. Photo by Charcoal Soul. Used with a CC BY-ND 2.0 licence.

The role of cultural prestige

It’s somewhat fashionable, I think, to be a certain type of Asian right now. The K-pop, K-drama, anime kind and not so much the darker-skinned, wider-nosed, raised-in-the-humid-heat kind. The me kind. Having grown up in Australia as a child to Vietnamese refugees, it’s hard not to notice the difference between people’s receptiveness to East Asian culture and their—at best—indifference towards the Southeast.

Certainly, Korea and Japan hold a soft power and cultural capital over Western audiences that Southeast Asia does not. While these countries are regarded as ‘cool’, Associate Professor Long T. Bui of the University of California contends that ‘Southeast Asia has become a convenient marker and racial signifier for Asians from lower-income countries’.

This hierarchy of acceptable Asian cultures influences how we read and perceive these cultures and in turn, the works that are translated. Sure, this lack of translated Southeast Asian literature can be attributed to a lack of translators and funding—that’s certainly a large part of it. Yet, our preconceived notions and favouring of some Asian identities over others cannot be completely ruled out.

It becomes cyclical then. There’s little demand for Southeast Asian works, so there are few translated. The lack of translated works results in little exposure and little growth in demand. So why limit ourselves in our reading because of what is deemed fashionable and what is not? Why not step outside the cycle and look beyond our existing bias?

Celebrating other voices

To read translated literature is to read the way a language can be reshaped in different minds and different mouths, the way a sentence can be a winding curl or a staccato beat, and the way English can be made new. It is, as translator Frank Wynne contends, ‘the most powerful way of fostering empathy, of nurturing curiosity, of developing an understanding not only of others, but of ourselves’—but there’s more to translated works than the books of one or two countries.

Bookstores in Vietnam offer a range of translated works from a variety of different countries. Perhaps it’s time to follow suit. Photo by Hue Cheung. Used under the Unsplash License.

So where are the Southeast Asian authors? Well, they’re where they’ve always been—here, there, present within their own publishing sectors. They’ve just not been given an equal opportunity to be heard or read in English. Yes, give me Haruki Murakami, Kyung-sook Shin and Liang Hong, but give me Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai, Nukila Amal and Pitchaya Sudbanthad as well. Give me Asian literature that isn’t simply from the fashionable Asian cultures.

If you want to read more works from Southeast Asian authors, why not give Love & Other Rituals by Filipino writer Monica Macansantos a try? Otherwise, there’s a range of translated Southeast Asian works from Tilted Axis Press and Amplify Bookstore that can get you started.

Dai-An Le is a current student in the Master of Creative Writing, Publishing and Editing at the University of Melbourne.

Cover image by Daniel Bernard. Used under the Unsplash License.