Overseas communication of online literature： keeping pace with the times, the world and cultural trends
Better Days, a film adapted from online novels, landed in Australia, Britain, New Zealand and other countries, which caused widespread heated discussion. Information picture
The TV series nirvana in fire, adapted from online novels, became popular overseas. Information picture
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Mention
● From the "1.0 era" of physical copyright export to the "2.0 era" of IP diversified communication, and then to the "3.0 era" of overseas industrial layout, the overseas communication of online literature has initially achieved a "three-level jump", achieving overall progressive development, and the communication path is becoming clearer and clearer.
● The combination of artificial translation and artificial intelligence translation, with complementary advantages, may provide an overall solution for China’s online literary works to go to sea on a large scale.
● The popularity of China’s online literature and the advanced nature of its dissemination given by the Internet age make online literature carry the spirit of China, the value of China and the strength of China, reconstruct social life with great imagination, create the ultimate dream of mankind, and fuse the literary treasures of the East and the West with realistic experience and artistic imagination.
In recent years, China’s online literature carries cross-cultural transmission genes, and with the help of the advantages of the Internet, it has gone abroad from home, which has attracted more attention from readers all over the world. The overseas spread of China’s online literature is not only literature, but also literature. Network literature spreads China culture and China voice with its unique China expression and China style, which breeds the common value pursuit and realizes the beautiful wish of "Let the world have China and China have the world".
From accident to necessity
The overseas spread of online literature realizes "triple jump"
The "1.0 Era" of Entity Copyright Export
In 1991, Huang Yi’s "The Tale of Two Dragons of the Tang Dynasty" was published in Taiwan Province, and then it was serialized in the early Internet BBS. In 1994, the Internet was connected to the mainland, and these early published serial novels had a great influence on the creation of online novels in the mainland. Until 1998, rascal Cai published the online novel "The First Intimate Contact" in BBS in national cheng kung university, Taiwan Province, which immediately swept the mainland and became "the first most influential online novel". Since then, online novels have been published and disseminated through the Internet, and quickly became popular among the public. Folklore, with great imagination and creativity, has spawned a large number of authors and works.
Just three years later, in 2001, a group of young writers of qidian’s predecessor "China Fantasy Literature Association" began to expand online novels from Hong Kong and Taiwan to publishing institutions in Southeast Asia by chance, which officially opened the way for China’s online novels to spread overseas. China’s online novels in various versions and languages are collected by many overseas libraries. In Birmingham Library, the largest public library in Europe, an international student who pays attention to online literature read the Magic Knight the legend of heroes by Bao Jianfeng published in 2003.
In 2010, the overseas spread of online literature in China opened a new starting point of "cultural counterattack" and entered a new historical development stage.
"2.0 Era" of IP Diversified Communication
More and more domestic creators and readers gather, and their works are published overseas and win the first income, which makes the pioneers of online literature see the prospect and hope. In 2003, the establishment of "VIP" charging system in qidian marked the establishment of online literature business model and the rapid development of online literature in China. Since 2010, the export of physical copyright is still ahead of the road to the sea in this period. In 2011, Jinjiang Literature City signed the first Vietnamese copyright contract, and romance online novels began to go abroad in large numbers. After that, the copyright of hundreds of online novels such as "Hua Qiangu Phenomenon", treading on thin ice, Home, Breaking the Sky, Fighting the Mainland and so on were successfully exported. In 2015, it became the first year of online literature IP. Since this year, the overseas spread of online literature has changed into a variety of literary forms. Animation, film and television, games and other literary forms adapted from many popular online novels have gone to sea one after another. For example, anime Once upon a time, there was a Mountain with a Sword, Full-time Master and online TV series nirvana in fire successively landed in Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea.
In 2017, webnovel was officially launched, opening the strategic layout of enterprises, industries and industries, marking the overseas communication of online literature entering the stage of industrial output. Online literature, which is dominated by online novels, has gone from the mode of "purchasing copyright on websites, updating on the internet after translation, and paying readers to read online" to the mode of "partially authorizing overseas translation websites, stealing a large number of articles, translating online, and delaying the pursuit", and has formally entered the mechanism of "genuine-oriented, synchronous updating, diversified layout and comprehensive coverage". Under the layout of industrialized output, the spread of various literary forms has increased its landing and influence. For example, the adaptation of the online novel "Swing" has successfully landed on mainstream video websites in Europe and America and TV stations in South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong and Taiwan. The online novel is adapted from the TV series "Wu Dong Gan Kun" to realize global synchronous broadcast.
The "3.0 era" of overseas industrial format layout
"Starting Point International" is a literary platform for domestic Internet enterprise Reading Group to take the lead in developing paid reading service overseas. Since its launch in 2017, the cumulative number of users has exceeded 50 million; Users cover more than 200 countries around the world, including more than 50% users in Southeast Asia, India and Africa, involving 7 languages; More than 20 partners to promote the ecological construction of overseas communication industry; Nearly 700 works have been authorized overseas, and the online fan community has more than 60,000 daily comments. "Starting Point International" pioneered the simultaneous publishing and serializing of online literary works at home and abroad in both Chinese and English versions, thus shortening the "reading time difference" between Chinese and foreign readers.
In 2017, Chinese Online launched the "visual novel platform" Chapters in the United States. At present, the number of users exceeds 15 million, with an annual growth rate of 20% and 5 million monthly active users, making it the top two in the world and the largest visual novel platform in China. This platform, with its excellent adaptation ability and product operation ability, has become a successful pioneering work of China’s online literature enterprises in overseas formats, among which works such as The Wandering Earth and Rural Teacher are popular.
In 2018, Zongheng Literature established its subsidiary Tapread in the United States, established long-term cooperative relations with some overseas websites, and actively explored the e-reading market in North America and Southeast Asia. Its works were mainly exported to 180 countries and regions such as the United States, India, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brazil, Canada, Singapore, South Korea and Romania.
In 2015, based on seven years’ deep cultivation in the digital reading market in China, Palm Reading established a project and released an international version called "iReader", which officially started its internationalization journey and became the first domestic reading brand to enter overseas, covering more than 150 countries and regions around the world. At present, there are more than 20 million overseas users who can read 300,000 volumes of Chinese content, 50,000 volumes of English content and tens of thousands of volumes of Korean and Russian content.
By 2019, the total copyright output of Jinjiang Literature City was more than 3,000, which expanded the cooperation channels of Vietnam, Thailand, South Korea, Japan, Myanmar, Russia, the United States, Canada, Australia and other countries and regions. The three forms of overseas book publishing, information network dissemination and foreign language audio output were promoted respectively, and more than 5,000 works were adapted, including movies, games, animations, radio dramas and audio books.
Migu Digital Media actively explores effective ways to go to sea and promotes the innovative project "New Silk Road Bookstore — Overseas digital libraries for primary and secondary schools to meet the reading needs of primary and secondary schools in countries and regions along the "Belt and Road" such as Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.
In addition, a number of online literature, comics, audio and other platforms have expanded diversified and multi-channel cooperation to accelerate the pace of overseas communication. In recent years, the adaptation of cartoons from online novels has developed rapidly and become a popular product at home and abroad. Comics on online literature websites have a strong force in the sea. MangaToon, as the largest domestic cartoon platform at present, has more than 30 million users, and more than 1,000 works have been updated in five languages, ranking high in the list of animation classification apps in dozens of countries.
With the initial success of content construction, the commercialization of online literature’s overseas communication is gradually launched, focusing on the paid reading system that is the first successful in China and still plays a central role, and at the same time developing a reading model suitable for the local community. In addition to promoting the very mature mode of paying by chapter in China, it also adopts the mode of unlocking paid reading chapters by watching advertisements, which matches the different market characteristics of different overseas countries and is supported by more and more overseas readers.
Constructing the industrial chain of online literature overseas communication
From the "1.0 era" of physical copyright export to the "2.0 era" of IP diversified communication, and then to the "3.0 era" of overseas industrial layout, the overseas communication of online literature has initially achieved a "three-level jump", realizing the overall progressive development, and the communication path is becoming clearer and clearer.
In the "3.0 era" of overseas dissemination of online literature, there are three main ways to lay out overseas industrial formats: expanding copyright cooperation in overseas channels, that is, exporting translated content; Establish an overseas reading platform to promote original content at home and abroad; Cooperate with landing countries to strengthen overseas comprehensive IP authorization, and combine various product forms such as film and television, animation and audio to amplify the influence of the core content of online literature.
The layout of these three industrial formats points to the same goal: to build a complete industrial chain of online literature overseas and further enhance the international influence of online literature in China. Practitioners in the online literature industry are generally optimistic about the prospect of overseas communication. As the saying goes, "there is no competition, only blank".
From subjective to objective
The overseas communication of online literature realizes internal and external two-way drive
"New Force from Foreign Countries": Original Phenomenon of Overseas Dissemination
The overseas industrial layout of online literature brings a brand-new phenomenon, that is, the "original phenomenon" of overseas communication.
As soon as the layout of China’s online literature overseas communication industry started, it quickly updated and iterated, upgrading from a reading portal to a creative platform. In April, 2018, Qidian International tried to open its creative function to overseas users, which meant the official opening of the first year of overseas online literature originality, and immediately a "foreign new force" appeared on China overseas platform.
Up to now, the starting point of international and overseas authors comes from all over the world, which constitutes a spectacular creative phenomenon. These works have diverse themes and contents, most of which are deeply influenced by China’s online writings, and contain Chinese traditional culture such as passion, struggle, respect for teachers and respect for brothers, friends and brothers, and China’s online literature elements. For example, Aaliyah Croce’s Talented Wife is a Superstar won the best recommendation of overseas originality in the Billboard in 2019.
Good content value makes online literary works spread abroad more widely. The development and prosperity of online literature, as a unique cultural phenomenon in China, is sought after by more and more overseas readers, and even inspires overseas creators to devote themselves to online literature creation with great enthusiasm. After reading China’s online novels, some overseas readers have a strong desire to create. They write original online novels in local languages on China’s overseas platforms, which is a brand-new phenomenon for both the overseas communication of China’s online literature and the local online literature creation. At present, overseas authors have been writing full-time, and their income can support their choices. The number of overseas online literature creators continues to grow.
In the category of online novel creation, there is a big type called "fan", that is, based on the elements of the original story background, content, plot and characters, the second creation is "derived" by using creative techniques such as rewriting, imitation and continuation. For example, the classic of traditional literature, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, has tens of thousands of "fan" works; This is the case with the masterpieces of online literature, Teenagers Here and Biography of Wukong. In Europe and America, this kind of creation is vividly called "fan novel". If we take this as an example to observe the intertextuality of online literature creation at home and abroad, or we can say that China’s online literature gave birth to the phenomenon of "fan" in the development of overseas online literature.
"Chinese Overseas Chinese": the Pioneer Force of Overseas Communication
In the early 1990s, a group of overseas students created the earliest "network literature works". On April 5, 1991, North American students founded Huaxia Digest, the first Chinese electronic weekly, and Shaojun’s Struggle and Equality became the earliest online novel, which made great contributions to China’s online literature in its infancy.
After more than 20 years, online literature has developed rapidly, and a large number of overseas literature translation websites have been born one after another. These platforms have played an important role in promoting the dissemination of online literature translation content. In 2014, the North American online literature translation website "Martial Arts World" was established, with the geographical distribution of readers ranking first in North America, accounting for 24%, the Philippines and Indonesia accounting for 8% and 6% respectively. Readers from more than 100 countries and regions around the world came here to find their favorite online novels, with a total readership of about 30 million, an average monthly page view of about 100 million, and daily active users of about 300,000. The online Chinese work "Shura Wu Shen". Lai Jingping (pen name Ren Woxing), the founder of "Martial Arts World", as a young man of Chinese literature, loves China’s martial arts novels and today’s online fantasy works. He resigned from public office to specialize in the operation of "Martial Arts World".
Kong Xuesong, another Chinese-American born in the United States, has translated many famous online novels, such as Breaking the Sky and Asking about Flying Sword. He founded the online literary translation platform "Gravity Tales". Kong Xuesong, like Ren Woxing, loves China culture, martial arts novels and fantasy online texts, and at the same time, he is familiar with English expressions and western readers’ tastes. His unique subjective desire and objective conditions allow him to take the lead in the trend, and with the help of the advantages of the Internet and the globalization trend of popular culture, he has built up the leading force of China’s online literature overseas communication.
In addition, many online literary translation platforms and channels in Southeast Asia and European and American countries have played an important role in promoting the dissemination of online literary works in China. In the process of development, this kind of websites usually operate by advertising, rewarding and crowdfunding. With the further development of overseas communication of online literature, especially with the export of industrial formats, domestic online literature enterprises’ overseas self-built platforms have obvious advantages in commercial layout with content copyright and operation mode, forming a diversified and large-scale development trend and becoming a powerful new force.
"Two Translations": A Bridge for Overseas Communication
Internet literature can spread overseas, and foreign languages are indispensable media. How to break through the cultural differences between the East and the West and accurately convey China’s online literature and China’s traditional culture is very important for the spread and influence of online novels overseas.
At present, China’s online literature has been widely spread overseas, and many works have been loved by more and more readers. Translation has played a role as a bridge and link, and overseas local translation teams have become the backbone. As the first online literature overseas communication commendation activity in the world, the annual online literature overseas communication promotion released at the Canadian Forum on Cross-cultural Communication of Online Literature in 2019 is divided into three categories: works, projects and people. For the first time, translation is included in "excellent overseas communication figures", and it is placed in the same important position as works and projects (formats). For example, the "Endless Fantasy Translations" translation group was founded in 2016, and Gamer was the only translator. He translated the online novel My Father-in-law is Lu Bu out of personal interest. It began to expand in 2017, and now the translation team has more than 200 people, and there are more than 100 works being translated, covering romance, city, history, martial arts and other types. "Infinite Fantasy" translated the online novel "I wish you a bright future". Since its international launch, the total number of hits has exceeded 300 million.And received more than 800 million readers’ comments.
Most overseas translation groups are set up spontaneously, and they become translators from fans and then team partners. Just like Gaimer, as a fan of My Father-in-law is Lu Bu, he spontaneously translated this work before the foundation of Starting Point International. At that time, in the overseas online literature market, stable updating did not form industry norms. The most popular works kept updating one chapter a day at most, while most works were often interrupted or abandoned. With the opening of the "3.0 era" of China’s online literature overseas communication, the industrial model has been exported overseas, and the translation team has been developed and strengthened due to the support of industrial formats.
With the continuous emergence of overseas "explosions" of online novels, excellent translators have also surfaced. For example, CKtalon, a Singaporean, as a research engineer who graduated from American university majoring in physics, has translated China’s online novels in his spare time since 2015, and has translated works such as Zhenwu World and Absolute Option, reaching tens of millions of words. His translation style is simple and easy to understand, and readers can easily understand the stories of the eastern world. He is widely sought after by overseas readers and has a large number of loyal fans.
Although online literary works have been spontaneously translated by the initial fans to form a professional translation team in the process of overseas communication, there is still a huge gap, which cannot meet the large-scale demand of overseas communication. It is difficult to break through the bottleneck of manual translation, and it is inevitable for artificial intelligence translation to enter the market.
Major Internet platforms in China have paid attention to and invested in artificial intelligence translation research and development. For example, as the world’s first artificial intelligence translation platform for online literature, Twitter Technology focuses on translation production, channel distribution and content realization. At present, it has updated more than 2,000 works simultaneously, covering more than 40 overseas channels and more than 180 countries and regions. The combination of artificial translation and artificial intelligence translation has complementary advantages, which may provide an overall solution for China’s online literary works to go to sea on a large scale.
From internal cause to external cause
The Core Force of Overseas Communication of Network Literature
"Trinity": Forming Linkage Effect at Home and Abroad
In 2009, the office of the joint meeting of the national network literature key garden work was formally established. The office is located in the Chinese Writers Association, which is the first official trade organization in the history of online literature development. Taking this as a symbol, online literature with folk label has been concerned by governments at all levels and brought into the mainstream cultural field of vision. Nowadays, after 10 years of development, online literature organizations led by the government and associations have blossomed everywhere. The linkage of government and social forces plays an important role in promoting the production and dissemination of online literature content, the construction of related cultural industries and the overseas dissemination of online literature.
The popularity of China’s online literature and the advanced nature of its dissemination given by the Internet age make online literature carry the spirit of China, the value of China and the strength of China, reconstruct social life with great imagination, create the ultimate dream of mankind, and fuse the literary treasures of the East and the West with realistic experience and artistic imagination. Behind more than 20 million online literary works are tens of millions of online authors who stay up all night; In the face of super-large works, hundreds of millions of fans and readers continue to catch up. Network literature not only highlights the value of culturology and sociology, but also expresses China’s experience in the coordinates of world literature. Network literature makes the world no longer far away, and the starry sky is still bright. The "trinity" of authors, works and readers is the core force of overseas communication.
The network characteristics of online literature production and communication make authors and readers have instant interaction because of their works. With the production and dissemination of online literary content, fan culture has developed and grown. At present, there are dozens of works with more than one million fans, and the number of fans of Shengxu, which ranks first, has exceeded 10 million. The interaction between the author and the reader has entered a new stage of development. The reader group is more iterative, and "online generation" has become the main reading and consumption. They care about society and surpass themselves. They are positive about idolize, feel the beauty of the second dimension, reward, vote and write comments, which have become the standard for fans. The content ecosystem of online literature has gradually taken shape, which complements the IP fan culture ecosystem of "social reading, community building and fan co-creation" and is more and more suitable for the "secondary" communication channel of online literature that crosses the "three-dimensional" national border.
The dual interaction between government and social forces, writers and readers, has effectively promoted the quality of online literature, accelerated the process of fine and classic online literature, and further promoted the overseas spread of online literature. According to the survey, overseas readers of online literature in China are increasing by about 30% every year. Among them, 40% have been pursuing literature for more than 3 years, and half of them are born after 1995, which is deeply influenced by fan culture. From the content of communication, the most popular topics for overseas readers are "science fiction, romance, comedy". Interestingly, nearly half of overseas readers have a bachelor’s degree or above. From the perspective of reading acceptance, to some extent, it shows that the excellent online literature content spread overseas has a trend of integration of popularization and elitism.
The core drive of online literature content production to related cultural industries makes the social impact of online literature industry far greater than the economic benefits. This intensifies the competitive situation in the IP market of online literature and cultural industry, and also strengthens the quality vitality of online literature content production. Looking at the overseas spread of China’s literature and art, the better works we recognize, the greater the influence and the higher the acceptance. Liu Cixin’s science fiction novel Three-body is widely recognized overseas, which is a typical example. However, the online literature with cross-cultural communication genes, from accidental to inevitable, from subjective to objective, has not only become a contemporary cultural feast for readers in China, but also attracted wide attention from readers around the world, which has a strong emotional resonance. In the process of overseas communication, the international influence of online literature has been greatly enhanced. Through the linkage effect of authors, works and readers, online literature has gradually realized the cultivation from literary events to cultural effects, from industrial economy to cultural ecology.
The future is on the way: China story and world trend
With its leading industrial advantages, online literature has become an important business card for China culture to go global. The strategic layout of overseas communication of online literature is taking shape. In the development of overseas communication in the past two decades, several major problems have emerged: translation, piracy and cultural differences.
Overseas piracy usually includes that some overseas online literature translation websites translate online literature works in large quantities without the authorization of the original copyright owner, and these websites directly embezzle the contents of online literature enterprises’ own overseas platforms and channels. The main problem of translation is that it is difficult to meet the needs of complex multilingual languages and the precise requirements of content. The problem of cultural differences is that the wider the overseas users are, the more prominent the cultural differences are.
The above three problems are all around the content core, which shows from another angle that overseas readers and practitioners attach importance to the content of online literature communication. From accident to necessity, from internal cause to external cause, the new creative ecology is closely related to the industrial ecology at home and abroad, which determines that the overseas communication of China’s online literature is the only way for development.
The overseas communication of online literature is achieving diversified and large-scale overall growth from content to mode, from regional to global, and from output to linkage.
With the further development of China’s online literature overseas communication, from the perspective of industrial format, China’s online literature overseas self-owned platforms and channels are getting bigger and bigger, and a large-scale industrial ecology is initially formed; From the content of the format, the diversified and multi-modal communication with network literature as the core has become the mainstream; From the perspective of content development, the core value and creative characteristics of online literature are brought to the world with the creative mode of continuous updating and interaction with readers, helping more people who love writing all over the world to realize their dreams; From the development trend, more readers around the world are not only attracted by the online literary works created by China, but also can read the online literary works created by local culture.
All of the above shows that the overseas communication strategy of China’s online literature, which adapts to the times, the world and cultural trends, is coming into being. China’s online literature, which embodies strong cultural self-confidence, inherits the excellent Chinese traditional culture and literary pedigree, absorbs the essence of western fantasy literature, brings the spirit of China, the value of China and China’s strength to the world, pays deep attention to the "community of human destiny" and endows literature with imagination and hope for the common future of mankind.
This is an unprecedented China story, and this is a huge China story. This story spans thousands of years, across all corners of the country, from ancient myths to the other side of the ocean. The ideal life vision and beautiful home brought by online literature creation have given birth to the value pursuit shared by the whole world. All this points to a clear future: the overseas spread of China’s online literature is playing an increasingly important role in promoting exchanges and mutual learning among world civilizations.
(Author: Xiao Jinghong, a researcher at the Network Literature Center of the Chinese Writers Association and vice president of the Network Literature Research Institute of the Chinese Writers Association)