Spreading its words

Pathlight magazine introduces contemporary Chinese literature and is published in Russian.

"Pathlight is lucky to work together with Eric Abrahamsen from the beginning," Wang said at a Beijing Language and Culture University forum last month discussing the magazine's good reception.

Abrahamsen, from the US city of Seattle, is the winner of 2015 China Special Book Award for his contributions in promoting Chinese literature. He also started a translators' agency, Paper Republic.

"We definitely tend to aim at younger writers, and those with more unique voices. We're not really concerned with the status of the writers inside China, we're mostly just interested in their ability to write," Abrahamsen tells China Daily, adding that is where his team sometimes comes into conflict with their Chinese partners.

The editors of both languages pitch themes and select works together, ensuring the final choices have quality and also appeal to the targeted readers.

"The process of editing always takes longer than we expect at the beginning," Gong says, recalling the birth of the first German issue.

The other versions, which are all annual, follow the English edition. Each of them has one Abrahamsen counterpart who is an arbiter of the taste of that audience's readers, according to Shi. For Italian, it's Lisa Carducci; for the Swedish language, it's Anna Gustafsson Chen.

The first German version features 18 writers on the theme of "thinking".

"Thinking of ordinary people in the process of radical social changes. It is about humanity, not necessarily the 'Chineseness' of the characters. I think the readers are very satisfied with the magazine and would like to read more," Gong says.