Last week I was at Iowa State University as the grad students’ choice of seminar speaker for the fall semester. It seems a good number of the people there have found The Evolution of the Genome useful, which is very rewarding since it was written with graduate students prominently in mind. Anyway, I returned to my office in Guelph this morning only to be presented with two copies of The Evolution of the Genome — with a Chinese cover. The cover, preface, and table of contents are in Chinese, but the rest of the book is in English. It probably would have been more useful (and more expensive) to translate the entire thing, but hopefully this will make it more accessible in some way. The funny thing is that I had no idea any other editions were in the works until today.
The funny thing is that I had no idea any other editions were in the works until today.
I’ve heard of this happening to novelists and other writers, too. Apparently, many publishers don’t notify authors of translations or new printings, leading to some interesting emails regarding foreign editions and piracy concerns.
I had a look at one of those Chinese editions when they were in the lab… interesting stuff, and very cool that you’re getting some international attention. One odd thing I noticed was the large margins – the text appears to be the same size as the English-language version, but the book is a bit larger all around, making for very large white spaces on all sides of the text. Is making notes in the margins more common in China?