Translated versions of my work always surprise me. I have seen copies of my various books in Chinese, Portuguese, German, and Indonesian. One of my publishers sold translation rights in Rumanian, but I never saw it in print.

The image on the left shows the first page of a four-page excerpt of my book, The Art of Winning Commitment. The excerpt is in Chinese and was published last September by Chief Executive China Magazine. It arrived here today and stirred up thoughts and feelings that became this post.

Seeing my work in a language I can’t read also makes me uneasy about whether the translator got it right or not. My first book, Artful Work, appears in Chinese. I took a copy to a lunch with two Chinese acquaintances. They told me that the Chinese title seemed right, but they had a good laugh about the subtitle. My subtitle was, “Awakening Joy, Meaning and Commitment in the Workplace.” My companions put their heads together to translate the Chinese subtitle, which came out, “If You Don’t Like Your Work, It Isn’t Worth Doing.” I had to admit that the Chinese subtitle made a lot of sense even though it wasn’t what I intended.

My unease is encouraged by the different ways in which book covers appear in different language versions. Look at the three images below. The first is the original English version of Artful Work. The middle one is the Chinese version. The last is the Indonesian version.

They don’t look much like the same book, do they? I puzzled about the Chinese cover when I first saw it, but it made sense to my lunch partners. They explained that in Chinese tradition wisdom enters through the top of the head. The Indonesian cover doesn’t look like any “business/personal growth” book I have ever seen, but then I am not Indonesian.

A friend who has been in the book business far longer than I have told me that books are like kids. You send them out into the world and they take on a life of their own. I think she is right. Also with books, as with kids, you can be uneasy about how they are interpreted by others, you can be surprised by what they become, and sometimes you can’t read them at all.