This article is the speech delivered by Ulrich Kautz at the conference“Mirror in Mirror: Contemporary Chinese novels and their translation”organized by the Foreign Languages School of East China Normal University in April 2014． Based on his own experiences and observations，Kautz discusses how to do a better job in introducing contemporary Chinese literature to Germany and the role that translation can play in the effort． Specifically he tries to answer the following questions: Why would a German reader want to read a Chinese novel? Whose novels’German translations are available in the German market? What factors come into a German publishing house's consideration when it chooses a Chinese novel to translate? What criteria help a German translator to choose a Chinese novel? What are the common difficulties that German sinologists often find themselves in when they translate? What major translation strategies and skills does Kautz often employ?