The first ever Writers' and Literary Translators' International Congress or WALTIC concluded in Stockholm on Wednesday with a resolution calling for improving literacy, freedom of expression and authors' rights.
The WALTIC is organized by the Swedish Writers' Union with the theme of Intercultural dialogue. During the four-day congress, writers and translators from more than 60 countries shared the bilingual or trilingual experiences and discussed standards of translations opening the door for future debate and thinking.
Call for literacy, freedom of expression and authors' rights
Mats Söderlund, a poet and also President of the Swedish Writers' Union has said that today there are still 860 million illiterate people in the world, two thirds of them are women. Literacy is an important step towards democracy, individual empowerment and social development.
"Therefore, there is a need to talk about what we as writers and translators, in cooperation with others, can do to change this situation."
According to the WALTIC resolution, literature is a source of knowledge with the strength to empower entire populations and human rights are profoundly associated with the growth of literacy and to the creation and dissemination of literature of all kinds.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations' General Assembly stated that everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory.
The WALTIC resolution calls for increasing literacy, safeguarding freedom of expression and strengthening authors' rights.
Get rid of the old colonial or cold war terms and words
Professor Hans Rosling from Sweden has used a modern digital power-point presentation to show how the world has been changing.
"Our traditional mindset is still the colonial mindset which thinks we as the western and they as the third world or we are the developed countries and they are the developing countries," said Professor Rosling.
"However, Asia especially China and India have been extremely successful in economic development and China especially in family planning. The words North and South are also out of date. It is not very accurate any more."
Professor Rosling said if you use the method of purchasing power to compare between countries, then Shanghai people's living standards is similar to that of Finland or Denmark. While the development in China as a whole is not well balanced.
Therefore he suggests people use high, middle and low-income countries or regions to categorize in the current world. That is not the only way to describe, but one at least should use more words to describe the complicated world which reflect more truth in them. For example, newly emerged economic entities are kind of proper expression.
By Xuefei Chen People's Daily Online correspondent in Stockholm.
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