Most of the world's books have never been translated, and most never will be. Fortleben publishes public-domain literature as living translations.
keikaku, an AI translation engine, writes the first draft. Readers can steer it, leave notes in the margin and ask for another reading.
Fortleben is German for “living on”. Walter Benjamin used it for the life a work goes on to have in translation.
Shiraki Shizu wrote this short sketch in 1917, the year before she died. A narrow room, a laughing child, a cold potato; and in a few lines the mother sees her three years of marriage as a whole long life, and a quiet peace waiting at the end of it.
Iwano Hōmei serialised this in the Osaka Mainichi newspaper in 1918, two years before he died. Its comic was a real performer, the first Edoya Nekohachi.
Emi Suiin, a prolific writer of adventure and period stories, published this in a popular magazine in 1925. He died in 1934.
Kawakami Bizan wrote this in 1895, one of the stories built around a social idea that made his name that year. He died in 1908.
Akutagawa Ryūnosuke wrote this in 1916, retelling a tale from Pu Songling's Chinese collection Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio. He tells it with a straight face and a mock-scholarly air, and ends by offering three different answers to what the worm really was.
Makino Shin'ichi published this in 1927. He was admired by the writers who came after him, Sakaguchi Ango among them, and died in 1936.