Foreign Translations of Our Building Books

Over the years we’ve had many translations done of our fitness books. For example, Stretching is in 23 languages.

   Less so for our building books. In the mid-’70s, Shelter was translated into Spanish, French and German.

   In recent years, we’ve had a bunch of our building books translated. Shown here, left-to-right:

Tiny Homes in Korean

Builders of the Pacific Coast in Korean

Homework in Japanese

Homework in French

Homework in Korean

Shelter in Korean

Shelter in French

Shelter in German

Shelter in Japanese

Shelter in Spanish

Almost all of our books have been translated into Korean, for some reason.

Each of our contracts with foreign publishers has a clause that says they can make no changes in the general layout or the cover. When we got the Korean version of Builders of the Pacific Coast, they had completely redesigned the book and its cover. It was totally different! And guess what — I loved it! — and emailed them to tell them so. Like the French did with Shelter in the ’70s, they understood the spirit of the book and interpreted it for their readers. Wonderful.

About Lloyd Kahn

Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include Shelter, Shelter II (1978), Home Work (2004), Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008), Tiny Homes (2012), and Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:

2 Responses to Foreign Translations of Our Building Books

  1. am glad you were okay/pleased with the Korean Re Design…It also points out (the appropriate changes), how in different cultures/languages it is sometimes important to do things different/show things different etc.

Leave a Reply