The first International Communication Forum on Chinese Culture was held in Qingdao, China on August 24 and 25, bringing together dozens of translators and sinologists from all over the world; native languages included English, German, Russian, Turkish, Arabic, Japanese, and Korean.
Hosted by China Publishing Group Corporation (CPG), the event kicked off with CPG leaders in dialogue with guest sinologists and translators, discussing topics including the international spread of Chinese culture. Speakers at these panels included Vladislav Bajac, editor-in-chief of Geopoetika Publishing, B. R. Deepak, a professor at the Center for Chinese and Southeast Asian Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi, and Sabina Knight, a professor of Chinese literature at Smith College.
The second day of the conference featured sub forums, individual panels held on topics including the translation and international communication of Chinese culture in the digital era. This particular panel included speakers such as Tatematsu Shoichi, a Japanese translator whose works include A Collection of Short Stories by Mo Yan, Yunte Huang, professor of English at University of California, Santa Barbara and author of Charlie Chan (Norton, 2010), Giray Fidan, an author and expect on foreign policy between China and the Middle East, and Matthias Wahls, founder of M. Whals Publishing Consultancy in the Netherlands.
The centerpiece of the event, however, was the translation studio and symposia, which gathered the 30+ translators and sinologists together for a discussion on the state of Chinese translation. The event began with the ceremonial founding of the China Research Institute of Translation, which, going forward, will gather valuable data on translation. The new organization marked its founding by releasing the new study, The Report on the Trends of Language Service Industry in China. Panel members at the translation studio shared their opinions on the problems and difficulties they encounter when translating Chinese literary works, as well as their solutions.
