Huang Youyi: expanding Asia's cultural influence
- By Yuan Fang
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E-mail China.org.cn, December 4, 2012
Although Asia has impressed the world with its remarkable economic development, how are its cultures viewed around the world? Huang Youyi, Vice President and editor-in-chief of China International Publishing Group, shared his thoughts with China.org.cn on how to better communicate Asian culture to the world when he attended the Asia-South Pacific Consultation of the UN Alliance of Civilizations in Shanghai last week.
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Huang Youyi, Vice President of China International Publishing Group, attended the Asia-South Pacific Consultation of the UN Alliance of Civilizations in Shanghai on November 29. [Photo: Yuan Fang/China.org.cn] |
Asia's economy far outweighs its culture in terms of global influence, Huang said, stating two main factors which hinder Asia's efforts in expanding its cultural reach.
"On one hand, some countries enforce their cultures on others by wielding political, military as well as media influence and western culture still dominates; on the other hand, Asia countries are not familiar with the highly mature cultural market in the West and find it hard to locate a niche market for their cultural products there," Huang said.
However, with the growing influence of the Asian economy in the world, Asian countries are now in a better position to increase global understanding of its cultures, Huang added.
"The economic influence of the Asian economy has rendered Asian countries more capable of introducing its cultures to the world and it's now the right time for Asian countries to be more active in this regard," he said.
Asked to comment on Mo Yan's winning of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Huang cited Mo, the first Chinese writer to be given the honor, as a good example of an Asian cultural figure vigorously promoting his works in overseas markets.
"Mo Yan is a good storyteller and he grabs the foreign audience with his unique perception and true depiction of rural China. Apart from this, Mo Yan's success is also a result of years of marketing efforts by the writer in foreign countries."
With better knowledge of the cultural market in the West, Mo hires literary agents to represent him to overseas publishers, Huang said.
"These literary agents all have big databases of editors and publishing houses and they can help Mo find the right publishers and get his works translated and published."
Professional literary agents are mostly absent from the Chinese market, he added.
Mo, China's first Nobel Literature Prize laureate, is said to be the most famous contemporary Chinese writer in the world, with his works being translated into more languages than his peers, including languages spoken in Northern Europe where the Nobel Prize is headquartered.
When commenting on the popularity of South Korean artist PSY's smash-hit Gangnam Style, Huang attributed the rapper's success in part to new media.
"By using the new media, you can have instant success, the kind of success unable to be achieved through other media," he said.
As an experienced translator and an expert on cross-cultural communication, Huang also believes that to bridge cultural gaps, people of different backgrounds should have the desire to learn about each other and discover what they have in common, which can later lead to mutual respect.
"If we don't have a desire to learn about each other, how do we respect each other?" Huang said. "We need to find our commonalities while setting aside the differences in order to coexist in harmony."
Huang said he believes that when people have a respectful attitude towards others, it's easier to learn from them; developed nations should bear this in mind when interacting with the developing world.
"[It] is particularly important for economically advanced nations to understand people in developing countries, why they behave this way, why they are where they are. Then they will discover their very strong and respectful traditions," he said.
To effectively get a message across to a foreign audience and avoid misunderstanding, those involved in cross-cultural communication need to have ample knowledge of both cultures, Huang stressed.
"My years of experience in the field of translation showed that I'm not translating between two languages but actually between two cultures," he said.
In terms of relating to foreign audiences, Huang said cross-cultural communicators should present their own culture with an element that people from a different cultural background can relate to so as to arouse their interest.
"For example," Huang said, "we can compare China's Spring Festival and Western holidays. We can show the foreign audience how people celebrate Valentine's Day in China."
Huang Youyi is currently the Vice Director and Secretary-General of the Translators Association of China. While serving as a council member and vice president of the International Federation of Translators (FIT) from 2002 to 2011, Huang won the bid for the 18th FIT World Congress in Shanghai.
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