ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- In Russian versions of the Harry Potter books, the main hero is rendered somewhat awkwardly as "Garry Potter," in line with standard English to Russian transliteration.
In the official Kazakh translation of the series, the bespectacled young wizard created by J.K. Rowling has his "H" back, and the books have been a staple in local bookstores for nearly five years.
But despite that success and the Kazakh-language book market growing every year, local publishers trying to break new ground or rediscover a forgotten literary heritage still face a tough market.
Some of those challenges are rooted in decades of limited access and infrastructure for Kazakh-language literature owing to the Soviet and colonial-era dominance of Russian.
But publishers also say the government could be doing more to support businesses moving beyond the well-trodden territory of national classics and textbooks -- the categories most likely to receive government subsidies.
"Every year, a group of elders sit down and split up the funds allocated for book printing, and then reissue old books," complained Shyngys Mukan, a former government official, who founded the independent Mazmundama publishing house in 2018.
Mukan argues some of that money could be better invested in making internationally popular titles available in Kazakh.
"A language's richness depends not just on vocabulary, but on the breadth of available information," Mukan told RFE/RL's Kazakh Service. "To grow, we need to translate human knowledge -- just as we use iPhones and Samsungs, we must make humanity's intellectual achievements available in our language."
Risks And Rewards
Mukan is part of a new generation of Kazakh-language publishers balancing the necessity of profit with an ideological commitment to expanding the diversity of literature available in the country's state language.
Not every risk pays off.
But the last few years have seen strong growth in the Kazakh-language book market.
According to the country's National Library, more than 12,761 Kazakh-language books have been registered in the past five years, while in the last year alone 4,012 books were published with over 4.2 million copies in total circulation.
If at the turn of the millennium Kazakh-language titles would be a rare find at a chain bookstore in the largest city, Almaty, publishers now estimate they make up at least 10 percent of books on the shelves, with Russian-language titles continuing to dominate.
Authorities cite 80 percent of the national population of 20 million as Kazakh speakers.
But the proportion of the population that is fully literate in the language is likely be somewhat lower, including in larger cities, where books are easiest to find.
Raisa Qadyr, head of Steppe & World Publishing, founded her company due to what she saw as a paucity of children's literature in the state language.
"Although we get some government support, it often fluctuates depending on leadership changes," Qadyr said. "We wish support for this sector was more stable."
It is Steppe & World Publishing that is behind the Kazakh translations of The Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis, and -- more famously -- the Harry Potter series.
In the case of the best-selling book series in the world, the demand is clear, and speaks to a "desire to keep up with the world" that can be found in any society, she explained.
But acquiring the rights to translate the series was not easy.
And if in Soviet times English-language literature was typically translated into Kazakh via Russian, Qadyr's team of three translators and one editor worked directly from the original.
Their feat showed that "Kazakh isn't limited to local stories -- it can bring the magic of international classics into our language and culture," she said in an interview with RFE/RL's Kazakh Service.
Rediscovering The Forgotten
Mukan's Mazmundama publishing house has had some success publishing Kazakh-language translations of self-help books, with Dale Carnegie's 1936 classic How To Win Friends And Influence People among the titles it has published.
But the businessman freely admits that sales for traditional Kazakh poetry and prose are sometimes stronger, helping his company to finance new translations of foreign works.
There is perhaps an irony to this.
As of last year, the top-selling Kazakh-language title sold by the private bookstore chain Meloman was a compendium of the works of Abay Qunanbaiuly, Kazakhstan's most famous and beloved philosopher, poet, and composer.
Abay's Path, a novel about the life and era of Abay penned by Soviet-era writer Mukhtar Auezov, is another book that can be reprinted endlessly without fear of not selling.
But while prolific in his own writings, Abay was also a relentless translator of authors that he viewed as essential reading for Kazakhs, with works by Goethe, Pushkin, and Byron among them.
Abay's genius -- cemented by Auezov's massively popular novel -- allowed him to bridge the years from late 19th-century Russian imperial rule in Kazakhstan through more than three decades of independence.
Other Kazakh authors have been less fortunate.
Arman Almenbet of the Muqaba publishing house says that even recognized modern authors have become "lost," especially those writing in Kazakh closer to the fall of the Soviet Union.
"In the late 1980s, each [Kazakh] writer would have at least one book published and read widely, but then they were forgotten," Almenbet said, citing two authors from the period that Muqaba has republished in recent years.
This explains why many Kazakh publishers see the mission of rediscovering neglected literary heritage as being of equal if not greater importance than expanding the Kazakh language's coverage of international fiction and nonfiction.
Another notable retrieval project in this regard is the effort of Alqa Publishing to print Manifesto for Kazakh Women, a collection of works by Nazipa Quljanova.
An early 20th-century journalist and advocate of women's education, the effort to gather Quljanova's works has been a long but rewarding journey, said Bayan Khasanova, lead editor at Alqa Publishing, which specializes in books aimed at women.
At the same time, Alqa Publishing is committed to publishing books by contemporary women authors who are experts in their fields.
In some ways, publishing was late to respond to demand for stronger Kazakh-language content, with local television, advertisers, and even theaters getting the memo years ago, Almenbet argues.
"In the publishing sector, we are now transitioning from quantity to quality, as books are becoming better curated in response to past criticism. This makes me happy," he said.
