The Ministry of Culture promotes translation of works by Taiwanese authors by featuring them on a “Books from Taiwan” platform, and licensing translation and publishing rights so that they can reach a more international audience.
The government has been developing different initiatives since the early 2010s to make a name for Taiwanese literary works on the international stage, Deputy Minister of Culture Ting Hsiao-ching (丁曉菁) said.
Since 2013, the ministry has hosted an annual Taipei Rights Workshop that invites publishers and agents from all over the world to visit Taiwan and discover Taiwanese works.
It was during the 2015 workshop that Michael Heyward, publisher and chief executive officer of Australia’s Text Publishing, found out about Taiwanese author Wu Ming-yi’s (吳明益) 2015 book The Stolen Bicycle (單車失竊記) and acquired its global English-language rights.
A translation of the book by Taiwan-based academic Darryl Sterk is now a contender for this year’s Man Booker International Prize, the winner of which is to be announced on May 22.
The ministry started the Books From Taiwan periodical and an online platform in 2014 and 2015, respectively. The platforms feature excerpts from select Taiwanese works of fiction and non-fiction that have been translated into English.
The platform has allowed for Taiwanese literature, classical and new, to find its way into a new market outside the Chinese-speaking community.
The ministry last year provided NT$4.5 million (US$154,358) in subsidies for the translation and publishing of works so that Taiwanese books could become a recognizable brand in the global market, Ting said.
The Taipei Department of Health yesterday said it has launched a probe into a restaurant at Far Eastern Sogo Xinyi A13 Department Store after a customer died of suspected food poisoning. A preliminary investigation on Sunday found missing employee health status reports and unsanitary kitchen utensils at Polam Kopitiam (寶林茶室) in the department store’s basement food court, the department said. No direct relationship between the food poisoning death and the restaurant was established, as no food from the day of the incident was available for testing and no other customers had reported health complaints, it said, adding that the investigation is ongoing. Later
REVENGE TRAVEL: A surge in ticket prices should ease this year, but inflation would likely keep tickets at a higher price than before the pandemic Scoot is to offer six additional flights between Singapore and Northeast Asia, with all routes transiting Taipei from April 1, as the budget airline continues to resume operations that were paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, a Scoot official said on Thursday. Vice president of sales Lee Yong Sin (李榮新) said at a gathering with reporters in Taipei that the number of flights from Singapore to Japan and South Korea with a stop in Taiwan would increase from 15 to 21 each week. That change means the number of the Singapore-Taiwan-Tokyo flights per week would increase from seven to 12, while Singapore-Taiwan-Seoul
POOR PREPARATION: Cultures can form on food that is out of refrigeration for too long and cooking does not reliably neutralize their toxins, an epidemiologist said Medical professionals yesterday said that suspected food poisoning deaths revolving around a restaurant at Far Eastern Department Store Xinyi A13 Store in Taipei could have been caused by one of several types of bacterium. Ho Mei-shang (何美鄉), an epidemiologist at Academia Sinica’s Institute of Biomedical Sciences, wrote on Facebook that the death of a 39-year-old customer of the restaurant suggests the toxin involved was either “highly potent or present in massive large quantities.” People who ate at the restaurant showed symptoms within hours of consuming the food, suggesting that the poisoning resulted from contamination by a toxin and not infection of the
BAD NEIGHBORS: China took fourth place among countries spreading disinformation, with Hong Kong being used as a hub to spread propaganda, a V-Dem study found Taiwan has been rated as the country most affected by disinformation for the 11th consecutive year in a study by the global research project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem). The nation continues to be a target of disinformation originating from China, and Hong Kong is increasingly being used as a base from which to disseminate that disinformation, the report said. After Taiwan, Latvia and Palestine ranked second and third respectively, while Nicaragua, North Korea, Venezuela and China, in that order, were the countries that spread the most disinformation, the report said. Each country listed in the report was given a score,