KUALA LUMPUR, April 17 -- Malaysian writer Pauline Fan has been shortlisted for an international grant programme for her proposal to translate the Malay historical novel, Hari-Hari Terakhir di Jesselton, into English.

The grant by English Pen and the Booker Prize Foundation that started in 2014 has shortlisted 13 translators for 12 titles from nine languages and nine territories and aims to address the disparity by funding and promoting the work of "global majority" translators so that more literature in translation, created by more people, reaches English-language readers.

Global majority is a term used to refer to non-white ethnic groups, which reportedly represents 80 per cent of the world's population.

Fan said this also marks the ...