Chinese online literature starts new chapter overseas

After more than two decades of development, Chinese online literature has not only become one of the pillar resources of the pop culture market in China, but it is also an important way for people from different cultures to learn about each other, and communicate in the comment sections.

According to a recent report by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the overseas market value of Chinese online literature has surpassed 4 billion yuan ($554.59 million). By the end of 2023, about 410,000 overseas writers created around 620,000 original works on the international platforms of Chinese online literature, which attracted 230 million readers from more than 200 countries and regions. Readers from the United States made up the biggest proportion.

For years, Chinese online literary works were translated by fans and published on websites like Wuxiaworld, but these translations progressed too slowly, so some eager readers had to use translation tools. In 2017, to provide a solution to the translation of literature, Funstory.ai was founded. To date, the company has helped to translate more than 7,000 online novels with artificial intelligence.

At the end of 2019, Webnovel, the international platform of the China Literature Group, one of the leading online literature providers in the country, started posting online novels translated by AI and launched a function that allows readers to revise translations, which can help to upgrade AI.

With AI, Chinese online literary works and their adaptations can enter the international market more quickly and at a lower cost.

As quoted in the report, Tong Ye, chief executive officer of Funstory.ai, says that AI can make translation 3,600 times more efficient, and cut down cost by 99 percent.

At the China Literature Group, translation speed has dramatically increased from more than 10 chapters per day to hundreds of chapters per day, and costs have dropped by 90 percent. AI can translate online novels into languages including English, Spanish, Indonesian, Portuguese, German, French, Japanese and Chinese.

Since 2023, Webnovel has been advancing its translation mode — cooperation between humans and the machine. In this mode, the translations of Suming Zhihuan (Circle of Inevitability), which was first released in Chinese in March 2023, have become the second-most-read work from China. The English translation of Spanish online novel The Duke's Masked Wife has also become popular.

"Currently, the translation quality of online literature is not even, especially when target languages are minority languages," says Wu Yiqin, a member of the National Committee of the 14th Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and vice-president of China Writers Association. "Due to a lack of minority language data, AI can't translate very accurately and the quality can't be guaranteed."

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