I don't think that has anything to do with the continent. People like Haruki Murakami and Liu Cixin have achieved immense reader-bases with their English translations.
It probably has to do with linguistic distance though. It is safe to assume that Dutch to English translation loses much less in nuance than Korean to English.
It's not just linguistic distance. A good literary translator needs to really understand of the source material, with all of its cultural context and multiple possible interpretations, and somehow recreate the same effect in the target language.
This requires not only linguistic fluency but also a deep understanding of both cultures, as well as the literary traditions of both. If an English author makes a subtle allusion to a passage from Shakespeare, for example, how do you translate that nuance to a language that hasn't had Shakespeare?
I suppose it's much easier to achieve this between Dutch and English, than between Korean and English. The pool of people who move about freely between the latter is much smaller, for both geographical and historical reasons.
You've hit the nail on the head and I wish I could give you ten upvotes.
A different example I sometimes use is the task of translating a children's book that has "busy bees" in it. The illustrations show bees being busy. The story might even resolve around that to some extent. But another reason the bees are busy is that "busy" sounds like the buzzing sound they make. So what does one do when translating this into a language where the word for the regular meaning of "busy" does not sound like "buzz"? Whatever one does, something must be lost in the translation.
I have tried and failed to translate into my ancestral language the books I read to my children for exactly this reason. Another issue is that the specific choices of foods, animals and so forth are awkward to translate smoothly, but they are pictured so I cannot change them.
Have to agree, 3 body problem is fascinating from technological future fantasy perspective, but high quality reading overall in English it was not. Shallow characters, very pro-china and anti-whole-western-world black&white mindset that modern free world grew away long time ago.
Had to force myself reading to the end of trilogy, above goes into overdrive.
You read a pop sci fi book and are surprised when you get pop sci fi? Chinese culture tends to place much more emphasis on prose in general in pop books in my experience but you picked one of the worst examples of that. That series is very strongly influenced by western sci fi culture so I find it really funny that you use it as an example of chinese culture being worse.
Whoa I never said Chinese culture is worse and I certainly dont think that, why the needless fabulated attack?
I just didnt like the books apart from technological aspects that much, is it that hard to understand and accept that some folks look for more than just wow-what-a-cool-description-of-4D-in-3D?
It was pushed from all directions as something spectacular and well, that bar lies much higher for some, thats all.
I feel like someone who wasn't familar with Chinese history or culture would miss a lot of what was happening in that book. A lot happens that isn't directly explained.
Also depends if you read the version with the cultural revolution scenes in the beginning or in the middle.