The idea was to line up the different ways each publisher translated the same classic and look at them side by side. There was one condition, and it was the hardest part — never make up a published translation. Right now it holds 1,232 works in 1,484 editions.
From 111 books to 1,232
The first batch was 111 books. Then I brought in the complete world literature series catalogs of eight Korean publishers wholesale — Minumsa (501 volumes in its World Literature series), Munhakdongne, Open Books, Eulyoo Publishing, Moonji, Moonye Publishing, Sigongsa, and Hyundae Munhak. That made 1,254 in one go, and after cleaning up duplicates, 1,232 were left. By author, that's 684 people.
The same book was listed twice
Merging the series lists as they were got tangled, as expected. In 22 cases the same book was registered separately because each publisher spelled the title differently, and in 12 more the same author had split into what looked like two people because of spelling differences. Tolstoy was one of them. I merged all of these, and changed search to recognize aliases so it still finds them if you type the old spelling. A three-volume set that had stretched into three lines in the translator and publisher lists was also folded into one line.
Translations are never made up
The easiest way to ruin this site is to make up a plausible translation. If a sentence sounds plausible, it's hard to even notice it's wrong. So I wrote the principle into the data itself as a sentence — "Published translations are never generated at will, and the archive's own translations made by checking public-domain originals are clearly distinguished from published translations." As a result, only 200 of the 1,484 editions have translation excerpts attached. Of those with sources, 167 are from YES24, 9 from Aladin, 20 from Project Gutenberg, and 15 from public-domain originals. The rest have only bibliographic information, no excerpt. That means I left them empty instead of filling in what wasn't there. The last verification run was on September 14, 2026, and 106 books were checked against the original sentence by sentence.
Lay out all 1,232 and you can't see anything
When I spread all 1,232 across the works list, most of them were books with nothing to compare, so the screen just got longer. So the grid on the front page shows only works with three or more translated editions — 59 books. Works with just one edition are the largest group at 1,098, and you can reach them through search or the translator and publisher directories. 111 works have sentence comparisons, with 163 comparison passages.
The blanks were filled by hand
The series catalogs had quite a few editions missing the translator or publication year. I tracked down and filled in the translator and year for 42 editions, and for the 59 books on the front page I filled in every original publication year too. On the other hand, I removed one Saeum edition from the list entirely. Click a translator's or author's name and a short bio opens right there; there are 31 of them so far.
The work was deciding what to compare
To compare translations, you first have to pin down "the same spot." Pick anywhere and the page numbers and chapter breaks differ by edition, so you can't line them up. There are 163 comparison passages, and they're concentrated at points that are certainly the same spot regardless of edition — 101 paragraph comparisons, 33 opening sentences, 7 opening paragraphs of chapter 1. For the rest, I chose only passages with an obvious location, like the last sentence or a famous monologue. All 163 come with the original text, so for Anna Karenina the Russian original sits at the top with the translations below it. That means you're not just comparing translations with each other but checking them against the original. For the 35 works that have a separate epigraph, I noted that too.
How to use it
There are five tabs at the top: Works, Sentence comparison, Translators, Publishers, and Saved. Press / anywhere to search works, authors, translators, publishers, and ISBNs all at once. The most rewarding part is the sentence comparison. For example, the first sentence of "Anna Karenina" has six editions side by side: Yeon Jin-hee for Minumsa begins "All happy families look much alike, and," Park Hyung-kyu for Munhakdongne begins "All happy families are more or less the same, but," and Lee Myung-hyun for Open Books begins "Every happy family resembles the others, and." It's the same single Russian sentence. Save any edition that catches your eye and it collects in the "Saved" tab. You can comment on each work, and login uses your ghmun.com Google account.