During a meeting with fans last Tuesday in Shanghai, Lucifer Chu (Chu Hsueh-Heng) frequently uses the word "adventure" to describe his 36 years of life. Well-known to lovers of fantasy literature, this Taiwanese electronic engineering graduate made his name with a successful Chinese translation of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, completed in 2001. He has also translated more than 20 fantasy novels, including Dragonlance Chronicle and The Hobbit. However, he claims to have spent all of his NT$21 million ($694,155) royalty earnings traveling around Taiwan to deliver speeches, and encourage and motivate students in high schools and on university campuses. Later he also warranted mentions in The New York Times and Wall Street Journal when he volunteered to translate MIT's open courses into Chinese.

His revised edition of The Lord of the Rings series was launched in Shanghai on Tuesday, a year before the film The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is expected to come out in December 2012. He spoke to local audiences about his experiences over the past 10 years, and shared his passion for fantasy literature with his fans.

GT: You have become an almost legendary figure because of your translation and promotion of The Lord of the Rings novels. What was the experience like?

LC: At that time, it was something almost no one was willing to do. Remember this was 10 years ago, and few people in the East had even heard of The Lord of the Rings. Previous Chinese translated versions of the book had only sold about 3,000 copies in three years. So when I had my translation submitted to the publishing house, they even asked me to sign a contract agreeing that I wouldn't receive any copyright royalties until the sales volume has passed 10,000.

GT: Were you confident of reaching this figure?

LC: Absolutely not. But I still wanted to do it, even if it meant I would end up earning nothing. I thought that even if I couldn't get any money from the translation, I would still be able to tell my grandson in future: 'Your grandpa did a great job. He translated the whole trilogy of The Lord of the Rings.' So I quit my job and spent nine months dedicated to this task.

GT: Any particular challenges you faced during the translation?

LC: After a long period of translating from English to Chinese, I became so absorbed and influenced by the author's grammar and style, that it affected the way I was translating it into Chinese. It no longer worked in Chinese, because I had almost forgotten how comprehensible Chinese should be written. I found I couldn't escape from the English-language context of the author. So I had to take a break and go back to reading Chinese classical literature, to reacquaint myself with my own language. It may sound funny, but I was reading A Selection of Chinese Classical Essays in the middle of the translation work.

GT: What is different about the newly launched revised version of The Lord of the Rings?

LC: The team in charge of the revised version has checked every detail of the original version, word by word. I think it was even harder than translating a new book, as they were doing a job to "upgrade" a product that already exists. Actually, the revised version was finished in 2005. It was not launched until now because the publishing house thought that there was no need to republish a series of already-top-selling books.

GT: How do you judge the author of The Lord of the Rings, the English philologist and University of Oxford professor J. R. R. Tolkien?

LC: He was a great writer who opened up the possibilities of fantasy literature to readers. Beginning with Tolkien, the works of fantasy literature have enjoyed a prosperous age. He was the writer who broadened our vision and enlightened our imagination. He has inspired countless fantasy works in other writers, but none have surpassed his achievements.