Book translations generally happen because a local publisher decides it would be worth it, so they buy the local-language sales rights (either from the original publisher or the original author, depending on whether the author kept those rights or sold them to the publisher) and hire a translator.
In this case, Human Compatible was published by Viking Press, who are a part of Penguin Group. According to Wikipedia, Penguin has its own division in China. They might or might not already be working on a translation of their own, or possibly negotiating with some other Chinese publisher for the sale of the rights.
If someone wanted to work with this, I would expect that the first step would be to get in contact with Viking Press and try to find out whether there’s any translation effort or rights negotiation already in the works. If there isn’t, getting a Chinese publisher (either Penguin’s Chinese division or someone else) interested might be a good bet. That would probably require convincing them that Chinese people are interested in buying the book; I don’t know what would persuade them of that.
Maybe there’s a way of saying “I’m willing to buy 1000 books and gift them to people” that would persuade them that it makes sense to do the translation?
Book translations generally happen because a local publisher decides it would be worth it, so they buy the local-language sales rights (either from the original publisher or the original author, depending on whether the author kept those rights or sold them to the publisher) and hire a translator.
In this case, Human Compatible was published by Viking Press, who are a part of Penguin Group. According to Wikipedia, Penguin has its own division in China. They might or might not already be working on a translation of their own, or possibly negotiating with some other Chinese publisher for the sale of the rights.
If someone wanted to work with this, I would expect that the first step would be to get in contact with Viking Press and try to find out whether there’s any translation effort or rights negotiation already in the works. If there isn’t, getting a Chinese publisher (either Penguin’s Chinese division or someone else) interested might be a good bet. That would probably require convincing them that Chinese people are interested in buying the book; I don’t know what would persuade them of that.
Maybe there’s a way of saying “I’m willing to buy 1000 books and gift them to people” that would persuade them that it makes sense to do the translation?