Czech writer Karel Čapek first introduced the word Robot to the world in his 1920 sci-fi play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots). Hunan Literature and Art Publishing House has now published a new Chinese edition of this groundbreaking work, which was translated directly from the original Czech text by the young Czech language expert Sun Tinglin. This translation is complete, unabridged and preserves the literary and philosophical depth of the original. The foreword was written by the Czech Ambassador to China, Martin Tomčo, who reminds us: “Robots can do our work, but we must think for ourselves.”
In an era of rapid development of artificial intelligence, we can thus return to timeless questions about the relationship between humans and technology.