Are there book reviews (written in English) of books that haven't yet been translated into English?

[Boojatta]

If not, then how do people decide that, among all the books that they could invest money to get translated into English, the ones that they are investing money to get translated into English are the best choices?

If there are such book reviews, then where can I find a lot of them?

[CJCRANE]

1. There are book reviews of non-existent books written in Polish and translated into English

if that helps.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Perfect_Vacuum

[Boojatta]

2. "non-existent books"

It sounds off-topic to me.

Perhaps I should clarify one aspect of the title of this thread.

A book review is itself a text expressed in some language. In this case, I'm interested in book reviews expressed in the English language, although the books being reviewed weren't written in English and haven't yet been translated into English.

[CJCRANE]

3. The book reviews in question were written in Polish

and translated into English.

The books do not exist therefore they were not written in English. Sounds on topic to me.

[Boojatta]

4. If something doesn't exist, then on what basis can you conclude that it's a book?

Also, doesn't the phrase "not yet" signify something to you?

Suppose you receive notification that you have won "a key to a car that has not yet been driven, along with a transfer of ownership of the car to you." If the key is to a car that doesn't exist, then is the notification ...

... accurate but misleading;

... inaccurate; or

... accurate and not misleading?

[CJCRANE]

5. "I'm interested in book reviews

expressed in the English language, although the books being reviewed weren't written in English and haven't yet been translated into English."

A Perfect Vacuum (translated) is an anthology of book reviews written in English. The books being reviewed haven't yet been written therefore neither have they yet been translated into English.

As far as I'm concerned I've fulfilled your requirement.

I'm not sure your analogy about cars is relevant but just for the sake of argument: there are also cars that don't yet exist for purchase, they are called "concept cars". It's possible to put a down payment on one of these cars before they have been built and therefore theoretically receive a key (as a symbol and in good faith) for a car that doesn't yet exist.

[muriel_volestrangler]

6. Why would publishers depend on book reviews?

If they are a publisher who translates books, then they'll have an employee who can read the book, before or after it's published in its original language, in the original language and decide if it's worth translating. Just like pulishers have employees who can read a manuscript in English, before deciding if it's worth publishing in English. They don't need reviews.

[Boojatta]

7. "they'll have an employee who can read the book"

The employee doesn't provide anything that might be called a "review"? Does the employee simply make a decision that money will be spent to have the whole book translated?

What if some other employee thinks that the money should instead be used to translate some other book? Is there no budget for all translations but instead, for each language, a separate budget for books to be translated from that one language?

[muriel_volestrangler]

8. Well, you might call the company's internal documents 'reviews', I suppose

but they won't be available to you, will they? As to whether companies used fixed budgets for languages, I have now idea.

[Boojatta]

11. "they won't be available to you, will they?"

They might be available to me, provided that they aren't considered trade secrets. I suppose that it's a question of the publisher's policies, what I can afford to pay, etc.

[Hippo_Tron]

12. I would imagine there's a lot of market research involved

The company probably tries to get a picture of how the book would sell among English speakers mostly by using statistical methods.

[Gwendolyn]

9. Books are usually picked up by other countries after they've proved successful...

in the original market. Just like film. Publishing houses also have staff on hand to scour global book lists and make estimated guesses on what will become successful in their markets. Award-winning books also have a great shot at being translated into other languages.

There are sites/periodicals all over the place that review books in other languages. Here is one.

http://www.complete-review.com/rest/foreign.html

[Boojatta]

10. Thank you for the link.

If you used a general search engine to obtain that website address, then what was your search string?

If you found it by following a sequence of hyperlinks from a specialized website, then what is the website that you started at?

[Gwendolyn]

13. No problem Boo! :-)

I had that site bookmarked for awhile so am not sure how I found it, but think I originally linked it through some random poetry site. I seem to remember there being a few sites like it, but just now when I googled foreign language books and english reviews, nothing much came up. Didn't see or know of anything specifically catering to Korean fiction. Sorry I couldn't be more helpful.

This may sound very rudimentary, but what I do is check out France's Amazon.com for interesting looking fiction, then google for reviews separately. Also, US Amazon has foreign language books in many different languages, so if you're looking for translations of Korean books, that might be a start? I did a quick search myself, and this looks like something I personally wouldn't mind sinking my teeth into.

http://www.amazon.com/Guest-Hwang-Sok-yong/dp/1583227512/ref=pd_sim_b_1

Did a quick google of the author's name and found this, which also looks really good.

http://www.sevenstories.com/book/?GCOI=58322100231150

Hope at least that gives you some searching ideas. :)

[Boojatta]

14. Kick