He is also president of the European Association of Chinese Studies (EACS) and is the only sinologist out of the eighteen members of the Swedish Academy, which gives him the responsibility of voting for the Nobel Prize for literature.
他同時也是瑞典學院十八位院士中唯一的漢學家，擁有諾貝爾文學獎的投票權。約訪馬教授時，他正在瑞典南部鄉居專心譯作。