FOREIGN books have been flooding into China since the May Fourth Movement in 1919. Over the years, translated books have become an important segment of the Chinese publishing industry.

    Realizing the huge market potential, international publishers began to establish their presence in China in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Penguin Books, for instance, set up their offices — their first non-native English speaking offices — in Beijing, Shanghai and Jiangmen in Guangdong Province, in 2005.

    Apart from bringing books from the United Kingdom and the United States to China, Penguin has also tried to introduce works by Chinese writers to the overseas market, focusing mainly on children’s books and classics.

    It paid a record high US$100,000 (636,000 yuan) for the worldwide English copyright of Chinese bestseller “Wolf Totem” in 2005, and had Howard Goldblatt translate the book, which won the inaugural Man Asian Literary Prize and was described as “the best Chinese book for many years” by British literary magazine Literary Review.

    “When we buy books from Chinese authors, we simply look for something that we think is appealing, interesting, and considered the best of its kind, whether it is literature, crime fiction, or memoir,” said Jo Lusby, managing director of Penguin China. “We must also be confident that it will successfully make the transition from Chinese into English.”

    Lu Kai, general manager of McGraw-Hill Education China, emphasizes this point as well. “The most important is its readability — whether it suits the tastes of overseas readers.”

    Lu explains that the Chinese mindset is given to deduction and could therefore easily accept abstract concepts, while Western readers are more used to inductive thinking and understanding concepts through analysis and examples.

    Zhu Qifei, Greater China senior business development manager of Cambridge University Press, says it might be difficult for exported titles to do well, since not too many Chinese subjects could arouse the interest of or strike a chord with Western readers.

    Both Lu and Zhu point out the need to foster a group of Chinese writers with an international outlook and influence.

    (SD-Agencies)