Report: Generative AI Translation Boosts Chinese Online Literature Industry's Global Sales

Explore the impact of generative AI on China's online literature industry, boosting global sales by revolutionizing translation efficiency and reducing costs.

on Dec 07, 2023

Report: Generative AI Translation Boosts Chinese Online Literature Industry's Global Sales | Frontlist

According to a new research by Tencent Holdings, the industry's revenues increased by about 40% last year. According to the Shanghai company, China Literature AI has increased translation efficiency by more than 100 times and reduced expenses by more than 90%.
According to a new study, China's online literary business has experienced a surge in global sales due to the rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) technology, which allows Chinese web novels to be translated swiftly for foreign consumption.

According to a report issued on Tuesday by Tencent Holdings-backed China Literature, the sector would earn 4.06 billion yuan (US$572 million) in foreign sales in 2022, indicating a nearly 40% year-on-year increase.

The research, backed by the China Audio-Video and Digital Publishing Association, a commercial association affiliated with the Communist Party's Publicity Department, emphasised the significance of technologies like generative AI in increasing efficiency and lowering costs.
According to the research, these AI tools have expedited the traditionally labor-intensive translation process, allowing the conversion of Chinese material into various languages for worldwide markets.

According to the survey, the Chinese industry issued more than 34 million online publications last year, with some being translated into over 20 different languages and promoted in more than 40 countries and regions across Southeast Asia, North America, Europe, and Africa.
The results were announced at the second Shanghai International Online Literature Week, which runs from December 5 to December 8. The event brings together 18 countries' writers, translators, scholars, and representatives.

Since Microsoft-backed US start-up OpenAI made ChatGPT available to the public a year ago, generative AI has altered the way many organisations function, assisting users in drafting emails, summarising reports, and writing speeches.

Since then, Chinese enterprises ranging from Big Tech to AI start-ups have built similar chatbots and advocated the usage of their ChatGPT competitors in traditional industries.
According to China Literature, AI has increased translation efficiency by more than 100 times and reduced expenses by more than 90%. The company has been boosting investments in the technology since early this year to improve its internal translation workflow.

Mythical Era: I Evolved Into A Stellar-Level Beast, a fantasy novel translated from Chinese to English, and The Duke's Masked Wife, a fantasy romance translated from English to Spanish, are among the company's largest global web novel blockbusters that were translated with the use of AI.

However, not all readers were impressed.

"Terrible translation and poor grammar make this painful to read and ultimately not worth the headache," a Mythical Era page user named Kastelan said.

"Good story ruined by garbage machine translation," remarked Tardtastic, another user.

Others were more encouraging.

"I won't lie, the beginning is rough, especially the translation of names, but if you stick with it, it gets a lot better," BadgeLeopard2A7, a user, remarked.
According to the Shanghai-based corporation, WebNovel, the global online fiction platform owned by China Literature, has distributed over 3,600 works translated from Chinese. It intends to use artificial intelligence to translate its works into additional languages, including English, Spanish, Bahasa Indonesia, German, French, Japanese, and Portuguese.

The survey also discovered that Gen-Z, or those born between the mid-to-late 1990s and the early 2010s, accounted for more than 80% of WebNovel readership, with readers hailing from over 200 nations and regions.