Huang Youyi, executive vice president of the Translators Association of China, speaks at the Topic Speech session during the opening ceremony of the 2017 Sino-Foreign Literature Translation and Publishing Workshop. [Photo/China.org.cn]

Huang Youyi, executive vice president of the Translators Association of China, praised the timing of the workshop.

“The Belt and Road Initiative has brought tremendous opportunities to China’s translation industry. The increasing need for translation facing China’s translators makes the participation of foreign peers more important than ever. To my great pleasure, as for seminars like today, we have invited more foreign translators, and give them an opportunity to participate in the development of China's translation industry.”

A new report by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) in late 2016 pointed out that the total value of China's cultural exports stood at US$60.1 billion, more than double that of the United States' 27.9 billion dollars.

During the 8-day-long workshop, there will be a book launch of the English version of Jia Pingwa’s book Happy. Jia is a well-known Chinese contemporary writer famous for his book The Abandoned Capital.

The workshop is jointly organized by the Ministry of Culture of China, China’s State Administration of Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television (SAPPRFT) and the China Writers Association.