Chinese media, advertising, and urban life.

Translation, 2005.02

Two literary magazines bid goodbye this year. Eslite Reader (诚品好读), published by Taiwan's Eslite Bookstore, published its final issue in April before what it calls a temporary haitus, And Translation (译文), published by the Shanghai Translation Publishing House, will call it quits at the end of the year.

Neither magazine has been around long enough to become an institution. Eslite Reader launched in April 2000 (its previous incarnation, Eslite Book Review, lasted from 1992 to 1996), while Translation started in 2001. But their deaths, even if temporary, have brought about yet another round of hand-wringing over the decline of literary culture.

Eslite had the good manners to inform its readers in a notice from the editorial department that hinted at future plans

The rise of the Internet and Web 2.0 have quickly replaced unidirectional communication of information. As a print media entity that has run for a number of years, Eslite Reader is carefully considering new media possibilities. To make preparations and to plan as early as possible, we choose to put the magazine on hiatus with this issue and to say "goodbye" to readers.

Translation's shut down, on the other hand, had been rumored for weeks before the Jiefang Daily finally verified the news in a 29 April report, writing, "The subscription and editorial departments finally confirmed: Translation will cease publication at the end of the year. This news has not yet been publically announced, but it is basically fixed."

The paper speculated that the price of paper had something to do with the decision to shut down the magazine:

Opinions diverged on the notion that economic concerns had caused Translation's shutdown. Some said that literary magazines' pure drive for profit was a shame, while many other netizens expressed understanding: "You can't look toward a small group or collective to sacrifice their own interests for the betterment of society."

An informed individual said that this is the year for literary magazines to close down. First there was Eslite Reader at the beginning of the year, and now Translation is coming to the end of a sentence.

At the beginning of 2008, the news that the price of paper had gone up permeated through the publishing world, with periodicals reacting several months later than the book market. The price of paper for an ordinary 320-page, 16mo book would rise 1.8 yuan, and when a magazine like Translation is no thinner than the average book, that means that the contracting marketplace for pure literature comes under even more pressure. An employee of Xinhua Bookstores said that that the rising price of paper won't have very much effect on the book market: "If someone really likes a book, a mere two yuan won't be enough to dissuade them from buying it." But for a periodical, a price adjustment is a long-term measure that has implications for general planning and market positioning.

Of the purely literary magazines run under the auspices of Shanghai Translation Publishing House, Window on the World (世界之窗) ended a few years ago, and with this shut down of Translation, it is left with just the parent magazine, Foreign Arts (外国文艺).

But the newspaper also reported that Translation was not easy for readers to obtain: