Which language should you translate your book into?

There is no single answer to which language to translate a book into, but there is a right order to ask: first where readers of a book like yours already are, then what the language does to the book itself, and only last what the stores allow. Most authors skip the first two questions and pick English because that is what people do.

Sometimes English really is the answer. Sometimes it is the answer that makes a book vanish among a million others.

Why English is the default

English has two real advantages. The first is size: it is the largest self-publishing market, and most of the tools and services in this field are built around it. The second is less discussed — once you have an English version, every further translation gets easier, because almost every translator and every tool works better from English than from a small language.

The drawback is that same size. The English market holds an enormous number of books in every category. A good book with no marketing simply is not seen there, and that is especially frustrating after you have paid for a translation.

First question: where are people already reading books like yours

This is the most useful check you can run, and it takes twenty minutes.

Pick a country, open that country's Amazon store, and search for three to five books similar to yours — same genre, same audience, comparable length. Now look at two things: whether those books exist at all, and if so, whether they have reviews.

Similar books with reviews mean readers who are looking for exactly what you wrote. A market that looks completely empty is almost always a market with no demand, not an opportunity nobody noticed.

There is one more sign worth looking for: books from your own country, or books translated from your language, that are already doing well there. If somebody has paved the road, readers there are open to it.

Second question: what the language does to the book itself

Not every book crosses into every language with the same ease.

Non-fiction, a professional guide or a self-help book travels almost anywhere — its problem is universal. A novel set in one specific neighbourhood, with local humour and cultural hints, needs different work: not just translating words but deciding what to explain to a foreign reader and what to leave deliberately foreign.

A children's book adds a layer: the text is short, but it has to sound good read aloud, and it is tied to illustrations that do not move. We went into those differences in choosing a translation route by book type.

What the stores actually allow

This is a small technical check that saves a disappointment. Amazon publishes a list of supported languages for publishing through KDP (Amazon's self-publishing platform), and it is a defined list — not every language is on it.

Two things are worth knowing about it. First, some languages carry a format restriction: a few appear for ebooks only, and a few appear for print only. Second, Hebrew is on the list without such a restriction — meaning the opposite direction, translating a foreign book into Hebrew, is publishable too.

If the language you picked is not there, it does not mean you cannot publish in it. It means you will need a different store, and it is better to know that before the translation than after. We explained what this platform does with your book in what KDP is.

How to actually choose

Three common situations, and what fits each:

Your situation	The language to start with
Non-fiction or a guide, no existing audience	English — the most readers, and the easiest to continue from
A novel with strong local colour	A language where books from your region are already read
Readers abroad already write to you	The language those messages come from

And once you have chosen — choose one. The temptation to translate into three languages at once is strong, especially now that the translation itself is no longer the bottleneck. But every extra language is its own cover, description, categories and sales tracking, and that is the part that takes time.

The cheapest way to test is to start with a short passage in one language, see how the book sounds in it, and only then decide. If you are still at the decision stage, frequently asked questions lays the steps out in order.