Academia Sinica and National Taiwan University (NTU) Press yesterday launched their first joint exhibition as the Taipei International Book Exhibition opened at the Taipei World Trade Center’s Halls 1 and 3.
Minister of Culture Cheng Li-chun (鄭麗君) had been scheduled to deliver the keynote address to open the six-day fair, but a delay in her schedule meant another ministry official read her prepared speech.
As the freest and most open democratic nation in Asia, the vitality of publishing in Taiwan is essential to Asian culture, Cheng’s speech said.
Photo: Wu Po-hsuan, Taipei Times
The ministry’s budget this year for translating domestic works of literature is 2.5 times that of last year, and it is inviting foreign translators to participate in a translator residency project hosted by the National Museum of Taiwan Literature, the speech said.
“A Time for Reading” is the theme of this year’s book show, and Germany is the guest nation.
The exhibition of Academia Sinica and NTU Press is titled “When academics converged into a garden” (當學術匯集成一座花園).
A university press is hard to maintain in a limited domestic market, but NTU Press has turned itself into a trendy brand, leading Academia Sinica to seek to join it instead of creating its own publishing agency, Academia Sinica Vice President Huang Chin-shing (黃進興) said.
The two institutions hope to move out of their academic “ivory towers,” and the exhibition gives them a chance to show off research works to the public, NTU president Kuan Chung-ming (管中閔) said.
They have organized 18 talks or forums to be given by 40 academics, including a talk on Russian writing in Taiwan during the Japanese colonial era by Academia Sinica Institute of Taiwan History Director Hsu Hsueh-chi (許雪姬) and another on ceramic art by Hsieh Ming-liang (謝明良), an NTU professor, NTU Press director Wang Tay-sheng (王泰升) said.
Since its founding in 1996, NTU Press has focused on publishing quality academic books, but also emphasized marketing and design, said the press’ chief editor, Tang Shih-chu (湯世鑄), who worked for a commercial publishing house before taking the NTU Press post.
It is looking to work with the University of South Carolina Press, after securing ties with the University of Hawaii Press and Japan’s Bunsei Shoin, Tang said, adding that it plans to publish more English-language science and engineering textbooks.
Additional reporting by CNA
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