Taiwan's Lucifer Chu Hsueh-heng earned US$1 million translating JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy into traditional Chinese at age 27 - and ended up nearly broke five years later.
The self-proclaimed computer geek could have used the money to buy the sports car of his dreams or a flat filled with hi-tech gadgets, but instead he spent it helping to give Chinese-speaking students access to foreign academic courses.
Addressing educators and businessmen from the internet industry at City University last week, Chu, 32, explained how he spent most of his fortune setting up a foundation to encourage youngsters to create Chinese fantasy literature and recruiting 2,400 online volunteers to translate more than 1,800 academic courses offered by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
'I can only do something I'm very good at,' said the Taipei-based author of three books and translator of more than 32 fantasy novels, including the Star Wars Thrawn trilogy. 'I'm good at translation and I know a lot about the internet. So I combined the two things with my own money to come up with a new idea.'
After struggling to complete an electrical engineering degree at Taiwan's National Central University in 1998 and two years of national service, Chu joined an international public relations firm. But he quit after only seven months because he realised it was important for him to follow his passion - fantasy novels.
With 23 translated fantasy novels then under his belt, Chu came across the first Chinese version of The Lord of the Rings trilogy, which had sold only about 3,000 copies in Taiwan. He offered to retranslate the trilogy and The Hobbit without charging the publisher unless more than 10,000 copies were sold.
