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Aug. 30 is the opening day of the 17th Beijing International Book Fair (BIBF). On the day, more than 2,000 domestic and foreign exhibitors from over 50 countries and regions including UK, France, Germany, US, South Korea and Japan gathered together at the fair. China Writers' Pavilion, sponsored by China Writers' Association (CWA) unveiled at the opening ceremony. It's for the first time that China displays and promotes Chinese Writers to the foreign countries in large-scale, concentrated way.
Chinese Writers Pavilion covers an area of 150 square meters and consists of three areas: Writers' Literature Activities Area, Display Area for Chinese Contemporary Excellent Books, and Display Area for Literary Publications and Books by CWA. According to incomplete statistics, over 1,000 Chinese contemporary literary works have been translated and introduced into the overseas market since China's initiation of reform and opening up, including the works by 100 contemporary Chinese writers as well as traditional cultural classics. In terms of genre, the largest number of works that have been translated into foreign languages and introduced abroad are novels, accounting for above 90% of the total. Only a relatively small number of prose & essays, poetry, reportage have been translated and introduced abroad.
Centered around "Chinese Literature Going Abroad," CWA also organized an exchange activity titled "Retrospect and Display -- Chinese Literature Embracing the World." Chinese writer He Jianming noted that it's no easy for the Chinese literature going abroad, and even receive wide recognition. The Writers Publishing House in China, for example, published 170 foreign works in China, but translated and licensed outbound the copyrights of only five titles by Chinese writers in the last five years. Even Chinese writers who are very popular at home were not wide recognized overseas, only to some extent. For instance, their works are sold in over tens of thousand copies or several tens of thousand copies at home, but its sales volume abroad maybe only reach several hundreds copies.
Writer Bi Feiyu held that, at present "Chinese literature going abroad" shows the trends of both "hot" and "cold." On the one hand, copyright agencies in western countries have shown great interests in the Chinese literature; and there are also a wide readership who're interested in the Chinese culture, the "hot" trend of Chinese learning is a good evidence; however, the foreign publishers are "cold," on the other hand, it's simply because the Chinese literary works haven't yet bring them huge profits.
Writer Wang Xiaofang said that, there are great gaps between the Chinese literature and the world literature, at least in terms of writing techniques and ideology.
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