I was delighted to discover recently that my book on self-compassion, The Difficulty of Being Human, has been translated into Chinese and Korean, following a translation into Romanian, which I learned about three years ago.
It’s a strange story. I came across the Romanian version by chance while browsing Amazon. I saw my name on the cover of the book, but I didn’t know the title or the language. Thanks to Google Translate, I found out that it was the Romanian version. I asked my editor about this, and it was indeed real. They had a contract with a Romanian publisher, but forgot to inform me. The editor also said that there was a possibility that a Chinese version would be published as well.
I promptly forgot about the Chinese translation until I happened to re-read the email a few months ago while looking for something else.
I asked the publisher if anything had happened about it, but the editor I spoke to didn’t know; the one who said he didn’t know was on extended leave. Two months later, they got back to me and told me that not only did a Chinese translation exist, but that it had been published two years ago. I was amazed!
I was curious about the financial aspect, so I continued the conversation, and then someone in the company mentioned “Korean translation.” What is Korean translation? I wanted to ask for more details, so I searched the internet and found it before I got a reply.
It’s funny how authors seem to be the least important part of the publishing industry.
While searching for an image of the Korean cover, I found a truly beautifully written review with a thoughtfully handwritten note next to a photo of the book (the link is a Google translation of the review).
I haven’t actually seen these books, but hopefully the publishers will find them and make them available to me, otherwise I’ll have to buy them myself and have them shipped from Asia (see what I mean about authors being the least important part of the publishing industry?).
Links to:
Requesting Righteous Thoughts and Regrets (Chinese)
and
Korean version, Japanese version (Korean)
My books are currently published in nine languages: English, French, German, Spanish, Finnish, Romanian, Taiwanese, Chinese and Korean. I would love to increase this number into double digits.
