Chinese-language version of Jobs biography hits bookstores
The translated version of the only authorized biography of Apple Inc.'s late co-founder Steve Jobs was released in Taiwan yesterday morning at 7 a.m., simultaneous with its English counterparts from the U.S. and the UK on the quest of revealing the volatile perfectionist's genuine character, while online presales of the book soared.
Originally scheduled for release in late November, the Chinese translation of Walter Isaacson's “Steve Jobs” (賈伯斯傳) was launched by the Commonwealth Publishing Group (CPG, 天下文化), yesterday, with all its staff dressed in the classic Jobs style: black turtlenecks and jeans.
“For the first time in the Group's history, a confidentiality agreement was required from the very beginning, during the negotiation process over the biography's copyright,” Charles Kao, founder and chairman of Commonwealth Publishing Group, said. Also, never before had the Group published such a phenomenal recount of a cultural icon's life within such limited time frame, he said.
While Isaacson spent over two years interviewing hundreds of Jobs' family, friends, acquaintances, and even rivals, the three translators had only 110 days to toil over the Chinese version of Jobs' life encounters, which translated into a total of 420,000 words.
Jobs was an extraordinary perfectionist. “He would be willing to call off a product presentation were he to find the object of interest less than impeccable,” translator of “Steve Jobs” Ginger Chiang (姜雪影) said, pointing out that the biography was in fact a record of how the combination of visionary, reflective, persistent, and obsessively perfectionist qualities Jobs possessed that had crowned him the technology and design genius he was known to be.
Jobs' character was as petulant as it was versatile, however, Chiang said. Such previously unknown genuine aspects of Apple's late co-founder, as recorded in the biography, were bound to intrigue readers — which was very much what pre-order records of the book indicated.
Pre-orders of the Chinese translation of “Steve Jobs” opened on Oct. 6, the day Jobs' death was announced; 9,239 books were ordered within one day, setting a record high of six orders per minute on an online bookstore. More than 90,000 of the Chinese translated copy had been pre-ordered over the past 19 days from across Asia, the Group announced.
Early Lineup for Release
At 6:50 a.m., yesterday, a line of about 20 people hoping to be among the first in Taiwan to obtain “Steve Jobs” formed outside Eslite bookstore near Taipei Main Station.
An Apple fan surnamed Huang, who owns an iPod, iPhone and iPad, arrived in front of the bookstore at 6:10 a.m. He was most intrigued about Jobs' childhood and early work experience: “I admired his unique personal style, always being true to himself, which was never affected by others,” he said.
According to the director of the purchasing department of Eslite, it expected to sell 30,000 copies of the Chinese edition in Taiwan on the first day and 200,000 copies in the first three months — approaching the record set by British author J. K. Rowling's first Harry Potter book.
資料來源: http://www.chinapost.com.tw/taiwan/arts-&-leisure/2011/10/25/320878/Chinese-language-version.htm
留言列表
