Legal restitution is needed for misappropriated words

William Shakespeare’s tragedies translated by “Mai Mang” and published by the Tianjin People’s Publishing House in 2016 has been found to be exactly the same as the classic version of the book translated by poet and translator Zhu Shenghao (19121944), which was published in the 1940s.

The publishing house published translated versions of nearly 100 classic foreign literary works between 2016 and 2018, and all of them are translated by three translators all together — Mai Mang is one of them.

That is almost a mission impossible in terms of the tremendous workload that translating such works involve. It is justified for people to question whether the names of the three translators that appear on the covers of the books are fake.

It is interesting the Tianjin People’s Publishing House has kept silent over the incident since it responded earlier last week that it is “consulting with the editors to know what’s going on”.

The son of Zhu Shenghao, now the owner of the copyright of his father’s translation of the book, said he is reviewing the so-called Mai Mang’s translation, and might defend his rights through legal means.

As publishing industry insiders have said, the problem exposed by the incident is only the tip of an iceberg when it comes to published translations of foreign literary works.

The peak of the problem came around 2008 and 2009, when some productive “translators” would translate and publish several books a year. For instance, “Song Ruifen” — nobody knows who he or she is — translated and published more than 20 famous English, French, Russian and Japanese literary works in four years. Yet, most of the books have proved to be incubated from some classical versions translated by veteran translators earlier last century, as only sporadic changes, though unnecessary, are made on the original basis.

So if that is a problem not merely restricted to one or two publishing houses, it is necessary for the National Copyright Administration, the National Press and Publication Administration and the National Intellectual Property Administration to look into the matter as soon as possible to plug any institutional loopholes.

Now is the time for the State to show its determination to protect intellectual property rights by supporting the IPR owners defending their rights and interests through legal means.