Book and Literary Translation Service in Chinese

Working together with our experienced and qualified translators, voiceover artists, interpreters, audiovisual translators, transcribers and subtitlers, we offer a wide range of language services.

Available in over 200 languages within the UK and beyond, our linguists can get you heard in any language of your choice. While we do not offer a walk-in service, we are only one phone call away from discussing your language requirements.

Completed by qualified Chinese literary translators

Literary translation is probably one of the most challenging forms of translation and we are delighted to be able to offer a very strong team of experienced Chinese translators.  The art of translating prose or poetry into or from another language is in some ways a lot less straightforward than translating an operating manual.  The technical translator must of course be familiar with the specific terms of his or her area of expertise, but for the literary linguist, the challenge is different every time.

To translate a book, script or piece of poetry from or into another language the linguist will need to know how to handle abstract language, find the right rhythm, idioms and adapt culturally dependent references in order to produce a piece of the work that works as well in the target language as it did in the source.  We would argue that literary translation is an art form in its own right.

Our team of Chinese literary linguists can also abridge, edit, proofread and prepare written texts ready for audio book production.

Just let us know how we can help you.

Whom do we work with?

• Published authors
• Not yet published authors
• Script writers
• Poets
• Individuals and agents

What sort of material?

• Books
• Poetry
• TV and film scripts
• Drama
• Audio book scripts
• Fiction and non-fiction

How is the cost for Chinese literary and book translation calculated?

• The cost depends on the volume
• Translation is calculated per source word of original content
• Proofreading/revision is calculated by the hour

Get in touch with one of our lovely project managers and they would be very happy to discuss all the available options with you. Do also take a look at the security procedures and infrastructure we already have in place to protect your data.

While you’re here… some quite interesting facts about the Chinese language.

Chinese is an umbrella term to describe various languages. Accounting for 70% of Chinese speakers, Mandarin is more widely spoken than any other form of Chinese – with some 955 million native speakers globally. That’s 14% of the world’s total population. In fact, there are more native Mandarin speakers in the world than speakers of any other language. Mandarin is just one of several Chinese dialect groups, which can be kind of confusing. In places like Taiwan and People’s Republic of China it’s the official language. Mandarin dialects are spoken throughout most of northern and southwestern China. Despite their similarities, some Mandarin dialects are actually not “mutually intelligible”. Other varieties of Chinese include Wu, Xiang, Yue, Min, Hakka and Gan. It is written using traditional characters. Written using simplified characters, Cantonese, or Standard Cantonese, is a variety of the Chinese language spoken around Canton (Guangzhou) and its vicinity in southeastern China. In mainland China, it is the lingua franca of the province of Guangdong and neighbouring areas such as Guangxi, being the majority language of the Pearl River Delta. It is the dominant and official language of Hong Kong and Macau. Cantonese is also widely spoken amongst overseas Chinese in Southeast Asia (most notably in Vietnam and Malaysia, as well as in Singapore and Cambodia to a lesser extent) and throughout the Western world.

Where is Chinese most widely spoken?