Charles Dickens's work published in print, translated by Yeeyan's Project Gutenberg. Photo provided to China Daily

War of words for Chinese translators

Poetic profits revive in China

"Then we thought, why not first translate and share the things we have read for people back in China," says Zhao.

The three of them then started a blog that posted translated articles on technology and innovative business models, and as more and more readers demanded to join them, the blog turned into an open platform.

But not everyone is confident in crowdsourced translation.

"Maybe it works for technical translation," says Liu Wenfei, a famous translator of Russian books into Chinese. "I will never read literary works translated by multiple translators."

The process of translating literature involves reinvesting the original setting, he adds. "It is the same reason you don't have too many novels written by multiple writers."