Beyond the Translation: How Philippine Books Find Their Readers—from Bikol Novels to The Anakpawis Doctrine
For Kristian Sendon Cordero, translation’s promise depends on sustained publishing support and connections across Philippine languages. From novels circulating within the country to the forthcoming launch of The Anakpawis Doctrine in The Hague, the larger challenge is helping books become part of readers’ lives.
Words by Mye Mulingtapang
Photos courtesy of Kristian Sendon Cordero and Fidessa Literary
Part 2 of our conversation with Kristian Sendon Cordero
Asked which Philippine novels deserve translation into major world languages, Kristian Sendon Cordero begins by questioning the conditions behind the list.
“Every list is always incomplete. So rather than enumerating titles, I would begin with the conditions that make translation possible,” Cordero wrote.
His answer shifts attention from selecting exceptional books to a more demanding question: who gets the opportunity to read them?
“For me, the first priority is intra-national translation. Before we ask the world to read Philippine literature, we must first make it possible for Filipinos to read one another across our many languages,” Cordero explained.
For a writer, translator, and publisher whose work crosses linguistic boundaries, international publication remains an important ambition. But his interview makes a sustained case for examining the journeys that books must also make within the Philippines.
A novel can belong to Philippine literature while remaining inaccessible to Filipino readers who do not understand its language. Translation offers a way across that distance. Whether the book reaches anyone on the other side depends on the publishers, booksellers, libraries, schools, and readers who give it a continuing life.
Translation Across Philippine Languages
Cordero imagines readers in Bikol encountering Ilokano novels, readers in Cebu discovering Waray poetry, and readers in Manila engaging with Kapampangan essays. These encounters would make different literary traditions part of the country’s shared reading life.
“Translation is perhaps the most important infrastructure we can build,” Cordero said.
Infrastructure is a revealing word. It asks us to consider translation in terms of access, continuity, and the people it serves. A completed manuscript is one stage in that work. Publication, distribution, teaching, criticism, and the availability of books help determine whether a translation becomes a sustained encounter.
Cordero acknowledges that regional literary communities have reasons to nurture their own traditions. Yet he also asks whether those communities can become too enclosed, reproducing the boundaries they seek to overcome.
Strengthening a language’s literature, in his account, includes making room for its readers and writers to encounter others. That requires more books moving between Philippine languages and institutions prepared to keep those exchanges going.
Building Readers for Philippine Books in Translation
When asked to identify the greatest barrier facing Philippine literature, Cordero places readers at the centre.
“If I were to identify the greatest challenge today, it would not simply be producing excellent books, nor translating them, nor even finding international publishers. It is cultivating readers,” Cordero emphasised.
He immediately complicates what could otherwise become an easy appeal to read more. People need money to obtain books, but they also need time and space to read them.
The existence of a translation does not establish that its intended readers can afford it, find it, or fit reading into their lives.
At Savage Mind, the independent bookshop he established in Naga City, Cordero sees evidence of the appeal of familiar stories in Philippine languages. He identifies translations of The Little Prince into Waray, Bikol, and Kapampangan among the shop’s bestselling titles. He describes the pleasure of encountering a beloved character speaking in a parent’s language.
His account offers a glimpse of the readership at one independent bookshop. It also suggests how translation can invite people into a book through recognition: a story they already know acquires another intimacy when encountered in a familiar language.
For publishers, the challenge is to create more such encounters and sustain the places where they happen.
Funding Translation and Independent Publishing
Cordero resists turning independent publishing into a story sustained entirely by devotion.
“Bookshops must pay rent. Publishers must pay printers, copyeditors, designers, booksellers, and staff. Writers deserve to be compensated for their labor,” Cordero pointed out.
These expenses shape the possibilities of translation. A publisher’s enthusiasm cannot, by itself, finance production or ensure that a book remains available. A translator’s commitment cannot substitute indefinitely for paid work.
Reflecting on cultural spending in his own region, Cordero questions whether some resources devoted to ceremonies might have a longer life as writing grants, translation fellowships, research funds, publishing subsidies, library acquisitions, and literary residencies.
His argument invites a practical test of cultural investment: what remains available to readers after the event ends?
A library acquisition can place a translated work within reach of people unable to buy it. A fellowship can give a translator time to work. Support for distribution can help an existing title reach another community.
Each addresses a stage at which a book’s journey can stall. Together, they make translation part of an ongoing publishing and reading culture.
Beyond Literary Awards: Keeping Books in Circulation
Cordero points to the Premyo Valledor, which recognises novels in Bikol, and names Niles Breis, Jerome Hipolito, and Anthony Diaz among the writers whose work it has celebrated.
“But awards alone are not enough. These novels must circulate. They must be reviewed, discussed, taught, translated, and championed,” Cordero stressed.
He cites the Filipino translation of Breis’s Kalatraban sa Alkawaraan through UP Likhaan’s translation programme as an example of the exchange he wants to see more often. Translation, in this instance, extends the possibilities of a work’s readership beyond its original linguistic community.
There is a useful connection here with David Damrosch’s What Is World Literature?, which approaches world literature through circulation and reading rather than a fixed catalogue of great books. His framework directs attention to the lives works acquire as they move beyond their originating contexts.
Read alongside Cordero’s argument, that approach suggests that a book’s passage into another Philippine language deserves serious attention in its own right. Crossing an international border is only one kind of literary movement.
The encounter between a Bikol novel and a Filipino-language readership can also generate new interpretations, comparisons, and conversations. Its significance lies in what readers make of the work once it becomes available to them.
English as a Bridge for Philippine Literature
The routes outward bring another practical difficulty into view: finding translators able to work directly from Philippine languages into other languages.
“In my own experience, my foreign translators begin with my English translations before working into Spanish, German, Czech, or other languages,” Cordero explained.
English therefore serves as an intermediary in the journeys he describes. His account also emphasises the close collaboration this process has allowed between him and his translators.
That experience raises questions about where investment is needed. Which language combinations receive training and support? Who can develop the expertise to translate directly? How can collaboration remain possible when a work passes through an intermediary language?
Counting translated titles alone cannot answer those questions. They concern the people and working relationships that make translation possible—and the publishing commitments that carry their work towards readers.
From signing authors to finding readers
The international publication of Philippine literature raises many of the same questions Cordero identifies at home: how books are distributed, who encounters them, and what sustains interest beyond their release.
Fidessa Literary’s publication of Philippine works in English offers a context for examining these questions. Its titles include Genevieve L. Asenjo’s Lumbay ng Dila, translated as The Melancholy of the Tongue by Ana Margarita Nuñez, and Virgilio S. Almario’s The Anakpawis Doctrine (Doktrinang Anakpawis), translated by Mikael de Lara Co. The latter will be introduced at a literary gathering organised by the Philippine Embassy in The Hague and Fidessa Literary this month.
Such gatherings give potential readers an opportunity to discover a translated work and discuss it with others. For audiences outside the Philippines, they can provide an entry point into literature they might otherwise never encounter. What follows matters just as much: whether the book remains available, receives critical attention, reaches libraries and classrooms, or prompts further conversations.
The work of building readership therefore continues well beyond signing an author or launching a title. It involves publishers, translators, distributors, booksellers, educators, and cultural institutions making sustained efforts to bring books within reach. International publication opens possibilities; the depth and reach of a book’s readership develop over time.
This brings the discussion back to Cordero’s emphasis on circulation within the Philippines. An English edition abroad and a translation into another Philippine language may serve different audiences, but both need places where books can be found and people who encourage others to read them. These efforts can develop alongside one another, expanding a work’s readership across linguistic and geographical boundaries.
The question running through Cordero’s interview extends beyond securing a translation or celebrating its release: how does the book become part of readers’ lives?
Kabulig: Sustaining a Shared Reading Culture
Cordero offers a word for the kind of literary relationship he hopes to build: kabulig.
In his explanation, it evokes a companion who helps carry another person’s burden. He connects that understanding to a publishing philosophy open to writers beyond Bikol.
“To be kabulig is not simply to belong to one place or to a small group of writers, it is to accompany one another across languages, histories, and imaginations,” Cordero reflected.
The idea gives his argument about infrastructure a human scale. Translators, editors, publishers, booksellers, teachers, librarians, critics, and readers participate in different stages of a book’s life. Their work makes it possible for a literary encounter to continue beyond publication day.
Asked for a list of novels deserving translation, Cordero ultimately offers a question:
“What literary ecosystems do we need to build so that many such lists become possible?” Cordero asked.
It changes how success might be measured. Alongside foreign editions and international attention, there are other outcomes to pursue: a translated novel borrowed from a library, discussed in a classroom, reviewed beyond its home region, or passed between readers who could not previously have read it.
From a Bikol novel finding readers in another Philippine language to The Anakpawis Doctrine being introduced at a gathering in The Hague, publication opens a possibility. What follows depends on the people who keep the book available, bring it into conversation, and make room for it in their lives.
Disclosure: This feature forms part of an editorial collaboration between In The Mix Magazine and Fidessa Literary. In The Mix Magazine is also listed as a partner of the Philippine Literary Gathering in The Hague. Information about Fidessa and the event comes from publishing materials and the organisers’ invitation; it is separate from Cordero’s interview.
Sources
[1] Philippine Embassy in The Hague and Fidessa Literary, Philippine Literary Gathering: The Anakpawis Doctrine event invitation, supplied to In The Mix Magazine. Event scheduled for 19 November 2026.
[2] Supporting scholarship: David Damrosch, What Is World Literature? Princeton University Press, 2003. Its application to translation between Philippine languages is this article’s interpretation.
Publishing information: Fidessa Literary’s public catalogue cited in the relevant passages.
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