NUS Press books in translation

As an English language publisher based in Singapore, we are acutely conscious of the limits of English as a medium, and of the importance of discourses in other languages in the region and beyond. Our first goal is that our books have impact in English-language academic discourse, within the deterritorialized structures of prestige that are important in academia, as well as within specific communities of English discourse and practice in and across our region. But secondly, we are concerned to understand and contribute where we can to relevant discourse in Asian languages.

But rather than publishing ourselves in other languages, as our predecessor the University of Malaya Press was enjoined to in the 1950s and 60s —when Singapore followed a different model of anticolonialism and global-South solidarity—  our current approach is to partner with top publishers in the regional markets. We do this in close consultation with our authors and advisors.

Recent examples of co-editions published by NUS Press include...

Phantom World of Digul, Insist Edition
The Phantom World of  Digul (Insist Press – Bahasa Indonesia, forthcoming), with a foreword by Hilmar Farid
Guangxi Shida edition of Singapore and the Silk Road of the SeaPan-Asian Sports, Japanese edition
Singapore and the Silk Road of the Sea (Guangxi Shida – simplified Chinese, 2023)

Pan-Asian Sports and the Emergence of Modern Asia, 1913-1974 (Isshiki Publishing – Japanese, 2019)

Our focus in recent years has been to publish in Indonesian, and simplified and traditional Chinese. We have ongoing partnerships with Kompas Gramedia, Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, Guangxi Shida, Zhejiang University Press, Tongji University Press and Xiamen University Press, among others.

Nature's Colony, published in simplified Chinese by Tongji University Press, Shanghai, 2020

the ASEAN Miracle: 14 language editions

in 2018 we published The ASEAN Miracle by Kishore Mahbubani, then Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at NUS. We were able to publish the book in 14 languages, including, thanks to generous funding from the Lee Foundation, with publishers in 8 of the ASEAN countries.

 

In addition to publishers in our Asia Pacific neighborhood over the last few years we’ve sold translations to publishers in Hungary, Spain, and France. This continues to be an important priority for us. For enquiries, please reach out to Lin Shaoyu of NUS Press.