题干
Chinese writers seldom win a big prize in the world. One of those prizes is the Hans Christian Andersen Prize, the highest honor in the world that can be given to an author and an illustrator of children's books. No Chinese writer had ever won it, until April 4, 2016, when 62-year-old Cao Wenxuan received the prize. Cao received the honor at the Bologna Children's Book Fair in Italy.
Patricia Aldana praised Cao's “deeply humanistic” books. These novels admit that life can be sad for children.
Instilling children with good virtues for the sake of humankind is something that Cao stresses. He said, “It's time for us to alter our understanding of reading. Books should bring not only joy to young readers, but also have their ideas about life.”
That feature of his works has touched many adults too. “The common choice of the judges, Cao writes beautifully about the lives of children facing great challenges,” said Aldana.
After his success, Cao praised good translation for bringing attention to his work. Chinese children's literature could get high honor in the world if it were correctly translated in a style that could be easily understood, he said.
Other writers, including Jin Bo, have also blamed poor translation as the reason why Chinese literature fails to get honor in the world. Jin was named for the Hans Christian Andersen Prize in 1992, but at that time, he had to translate, in a hurry, several paragraphs from his book to give to the judges. "On one hand, the jury has little knowledge of Chinese authors. On the other hand, it is we ourselves who didn't introduce our work and promote (促进) ourselves enough," he said in a class in 2013.
