Goofing up

A wide range of foreign books are on display at the Beijing International Book Fair in August. The quality of translation has become a big concern in the country's publishing industry. Mai Tian/CFP

Chinese editions of five unrelated foreign classics have same cover image, Yang Yang reports.

What is common to the Chinese editions of David Copperfield, The Red and the Black, Resurrection, A Tale of Two Cities and Boule de Suif?

This isn't a trick question. All the classical novels in Chinese－published in the past few years－have the same cover image, with little regard for individual storylines.

The image is that of an oil painting of the double portrait of French chemist Antoine Laurent de Lavoisier, the father of modern chemistry, and his wife, Marie Anne Pierrette Paulze.

The painting by French artist Jacques Louis David is part of a collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Although both Sanqin Publishing House, which published The Red and the Black in Chinese in 2009, and Central Compilation and Translation Press, which published David Copperfield in 2011, say they have been authorized to use the painting, no information about the work is provided by the two publishers in the books, the Chinese newspaper Mirror reports.

"In the West, publishers will provide concrete information about the paintings they use as decorative elements in books," says Zhao Wuping, vice-president of Nanjing-based Yilin Press.

Zhang Gaoli, chief editor of China Translation Press, says before they published A Tale of Two Cities in Chinese, the cover was outsourced to a design company.

"It's a shame that we have the oil painting as cover for A Tale of Two Cities. It has nothing to do with the book's content," Zhang tells China Daily. "We will change the cover next time we revise the book."