From Shakespeare and Dickens, to Orwell and Wilde; the English-speaking world has produced some of the finest and most celebrated writers ever known.

Indeed, William Shakespeare’s work alone has been read, performed and analysed by millions of people across the globe and has been translated into every major living language – and some minor ones too, including Albanian, Yakut and even Zulu.

But it’s not just the English classics that are being translated for the whole world to enjoy. The 39th Korean Literature Translation Awards, held in early November, were designed to honour those who have produced the most accurate and compelling translations from modern Korean literature into English.

The two main categories were fiction and poetry, with the grand prizes set at 10 million South Korean won (around £5,000) and 2 million won (£1,000) respectively.

The overall purpose of this annual competition is to promote a better understanding of Korean literature across the globe whilst also helping Korea’s top writers gain greater exposure on the world stage.

And from an English-language publisher’s point of view, it can make good financial sense to consider investing in foreign literature too.

It costs a considerable amount of money to secure the rights to a book by a mediocre, midlist author in the UK or the US, which can inhibit smaller publishers from competing in the market. But by looking to world-class foreign authors, who have already been published in 18 other languages, it is often possible to secure the rights for a fraction of the cost of an English language book.

Furthermore, there are numerous government-sponsored cultural agencies in Europe that help to subsidise the cost of translating books from one European language into another, something which otherwise might have deterred many publishers from considering going down the translation route.

And given that ‘globalisation’ is perhaps the greatest business buzzword of the 21st century, this can only help to liberate the literature world and bridge the cultural and linguistic divisions that have thus far restricted non-English authors from getting the global recognition they deserve.