Factoids: Literary Translation in China
By Bruce Humes, published January 14, 2009, 2:06p.m.
Publishing houses (all types): 2,330 (UK); 1,738 (Taiwan); 573 (China)
Over 95% of all literary works translated into Chinese over the last five years were published by just 17 firms
China pay for English-to-Chinese literary translation: RMB 50-100 per 1,000 words (US$7.31 to US$14.62) in the target language
Figures from a speech by Kite Runner translator Li Ji-Hong (李继宏) at the recent China-UK Forum on Marketing Literature in Translation in Shanghai (Jan 12-14, 2009). His new firm, 上海帛书文化传播有限公司, will focus on purchasing the rights to foreign books for publication within China.
Comments
Is that 1000 words in Chinese or a 1000 words in English?
FOARP, January 15, 2:51p.m.
Pay is based on the word count in the target language, i.e., Chinese.
Does anyone else think it's a little strange to charge according to target-language word count? If you charge by source language, it seems to have the advantage that the client knows exactly what they're paying for in advance, plus the translator isn't distracted by thoughts of payment while he/she is choosing a voice and style in the target language. I can't think of any advantages to doing it the other way…
On the other hand, in the absence of an electronic text, the client doesn't have an exact number for what they're paying for. Paying for the deliverable makes sense from a certain point of view. And as for those distracting thoughts of payments, at the rates quoted above, any padding-out of the narrative voice is probably only worth an extra 1000 kuai and as such is hardly worth the effort.
zhwj, January 16, 5:34a.m.
Okay, that's a good point about not having an electronic version of the text.
But I can make 1,000 kuai last a long time… :)
1000 yuan is a LOT of money for me these days! zhwj must be rolling in it...
Sure, laugh it up, guys. But if, like our Kite Runner translator who provided the numbers, I was churning through a novel in a month or so, I'd probably not worry too much about finessing the end product word count (at those rates, an additional 10-20k characters to worry about) when I could use that effort toward getting a jump on the next month's manuscript instead.
And since rates are somewhat flexible, a translator who expects to come up with a rather terse rendition in Chinese could negotiate a better deal before embarking on the project in earnest.
zhwj, January 16, 9:52a.m.