“Translation is an enterprise demanding a heart that could abide loneliness.” This is a refrain constantly heard in the Fifth Session of the Council Meeting of Translators’ Association of China (TAC), held in Beijing from November 4 to 7.

“The nature of a translator’s work requires us to render a message and disappear,” said Betty Cohen, president of the International Federation of Translators who honoured the conference with her participation. “We are so accustomed to disappear that we forget how indispensable we are.”

It is estimated that since the 1990s about 30 per cent of the books published each year in China are introduced from abroad. But while the translated books are jostling with each other on bookstores’ shelves, their translators appear to be increasingly remote from the public focus.

As a result, the TAC’s decision to hold a ceremony to pay homage to 41 translators with long and outstanding literary translation career during the council meeting, held once every five years, is considered as one of the much-needed steps to hopefully secure the profession from public indifference.

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