Choosing books for our translation project was not an easy task. Our aim was to bring forth books from diverse cultures that hadn’t been translated before into many of our target languages. We sought to offer to our audience something fresh and engaging. At the same time, we wanted LitMT to feature books from a wide range of genres, including dramatic poems, theatrical plays, crime, satire, historical fiction, psychological stories, autobiographies, and romance.

Given that many famous authors have their best known work already translated into English and many other languages, we had to often look for less known titles or for authors who are established within their own countries but might not yet be recognized globally. This often entailed an extensive search in the source language, utilizing machine translation tools when necessary.

Naturally, we also had to be mindful of the copyright landscape, which varies greatly around the world. The Berne Convention offers a degree of consistency with its standard of protecting works for 50 years after an author's death, but the rules are not universal. In the EU, the duration stretches to 70 years, while in the US an alternative option of 95 years from the publication year is available. Our primary sources of texts were **Project Gutenberg** and Wikisource, which host collections of copyright-free books. However, for certain titles that caught our attention, we have purchased the e-books, provided the copyright status was clear and permissible for our use.

We also conscientiously sought to balance our selection with equal representation of male and female authors. This was a deliberate step to address the gender disparity often found in literary translations, especially into English, where works by female authors are often less likely to get translated. We are pleased to report that our efforts were successful, achieving a balanced lineup with half of the 20 books in our collection penned by female authors.