Translators should be well recognized by our society-that's why this prize was founded and it has filled in a blank in our culture, he says.

Laurent Bili, French ambassador to China, also emphasized the importance of translators in his speech.

He quoted Nobel Prize laureate Portuguese writer Jose Saramago, saying that writers make national literature, while translators make universal literature.

"It is translators who allow us to read the world outside one's own country," he said on Nov 21.

"Only after translation can literary works become the carrier of cross-cultural communication."

After 12 years, translators of the French language have become increasingly younger and more professional, Dong says.

To celebrate the 12th Prix Fu Lei, an exhibition about Fu Lei's three years in France is running at the Institut Francais in Beijing.

Usually, Chinese people learn about Fu Lei through reading the letters, written by him and his wife, to their son and daughter-in-law (which have been compiled into bestselling books), and his translation of Honore de Balzac.

"We had little knowledge about his life in France until the discovery of a Chinese couple, Lu Lan and Liu Zhixia, while they were writing a book about the letters exchanged between French writer Roman Rolland and eight Chinese students studying in France, one of whom was Fu Lei," Dong says.

According to the latest discovery, Fu lived a very rich life in France from 1928-31, meeting with many French intellectuals, through which he widened his vision and experienced the richness and greatness of French culture, says Dong, curator of the exhibition.

"One particularly interesting story is of a catholic priest who tried to persuade Fu Lei to join the church, but Fu rejected, writing in letters that 'I still love my country's tradition, culture and morality'. He realized that Chinese culture and French culture can actually communicate as equals. That's why after he returned to China, he became the greatest Chinese translator of French culture," Dong says.

"Fu's experience in Paris shaped him."