Most of the world's books have never been translated, and most never will be. Publishers can take on only so many, and a translator's months rightly go to the books that will find readers and pay for the work. The rest stay where they are, read only by those who already know the language. Fortleben is for those books. It publishes public-domain literature, Japanese first, translated by keikaku, an AI translation engine built on how literary translators and editors actually work, and gives it away free. If a translator one day takes one of these books on, theirs will be the edition to read; until then, this is a way in.
Nothing here is a final or authoritative version. Every edition is a living translation. You can read it beside the Japanese, open any paragraph to see what keikaku's readers queried and what changed, and leave a note in the margin for the next person. If you would do it differently, you can sign up, steer keikaku's reading of a book before it drafts, and publish your own edition under your name. Everything here, engine and site, is open source on GitHub.
How keikaku translates
Before it drafts a line, keikaku writes an analysis of the book: its people, its tone, what the author is doing. That analysis steers every stage after it. One model drafts. Two others read the draft separately, one against the original and one as English. An editing pass weighs their notes and decides what changes. A final read goes over the whole text.
keikaku works like a translation house. Its method comes from literary translation practice and how publishing houses work, not only from machine-translation benchmarks.
How to read an edition
Press Aa to choose how you read.
- Clean is like a printed novel: the text and the few notes you need.
- Curious marks every note, with the Japanese under each paragraph when you want it.
- Annotated sits side by side with the Japanese, with notes open under each paragraph and paragraph numbers in the margin.
Under More settings you can turn furigana and paragraph numbers on or off, and choose whether notes open under each paragraph. Open any paragraph marked * to see what keikaku's readers queried, what changed and why.
Leave a note in the margin
Anyone can scribble in the margin of any paragraph; a name is optional. Each note is checked before others see it, and then it sits beside its paragraph, like a well-worn library book.
Become an editor
Sign up, pick a book, plug in your own Meta key and steer the translation. Read keikaku's analysis of the book before it drafts, approve it, and keikaku translates the whole book. Your edition is published under your name, or as “an editor” if you would rather not be named, in a colour you pick.
Suggest a book
Anyone can paste a link to any work on Aozora Bunko on the wishlist, without an account. Editors pick books from there to translate, and anyone can become one.
Where the texts come from
The Japanese comes from Aozora Bunko's free library of public-domain texts. Editions are free to share and adapt under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Fortleben was made by hanna.fyi.