Chuo

Paper
Republic

Chinese Literature in Translation

Resources for:

Industry News

RSS Feed
 
About Links Contact RSS Feed

Recent Posts

Eric Abrahamsen to translate Gongwuyuan Biji/Notes of a civil servant

It's been a good year for Chinese to English translation, and it's getting better. Eric Abrahamsen is to translate Wang Xiaofang's well-known novel on official corruption in China, working title Notes of a civil servant. The publisher is Penguin and the book is due out in 2011. Eric needs no introduction, since he is the founder and driving force behind Paper Republic. Great news, Eric!

By Nicky Harman, July 28, 4:13a.m.

3 comments

Cha: Call for Submissions

Cha: An Asian Literary Journal (http://asiancha.com/) iis now accepting submissions for "The China Issue", an edition of the journal devoted exclusively to work from and about contemporary China. The issue, which will be published in June 2011, will feature poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, scholarly works and visual art exploring the modern Middle Kingdom. We are looking for submissions from a wide range of Chinese and international voices on the social, political and cultural forces which are shaping the country. If you have something interesting, opinionated or fresh to say about China today, we would like to hear from you. Please note that we can only accept submissions in English. More information here: http://asiancha.blogspot.com/2010/07/call-for-submissions-china-issue.html

By Eric Abrahamsen, July 17, 2:08p.m.

leave a comment

University of Iowa: Life of Discovery

The University of Iowa's "Life of Discovery" program concluded recently: this was the second annual installation of a joint program between Iowa's International Writing Program and the China Writers Association, bringing American and Chinese writers together for a little road-trip bonding. Besides the official webpage above, you can peruse their blog, where the writers (Americans only?) posted photos and blogged their bewilderment. The event consisted of two parts: a week in Iowa last May, and a couple of weeks in China, mostly Kunming, which ended July 9.

This year's participants, on the Chinese side:

  1. Liu Zhenyun 刘震云
  2. Peng Xueming 彭学明
  3. Fan Jizu 范继祖
  4. He Xiaomei 和晓梅
  5. Lu Qin 禄琴
  6. Yang Guoqing 杨国庆
  7. Zhang Gencui 张根粹

Interestingly, nearly all the Chinese participants were ethnic minorities, mostly poets. The Americans:

  1. Christopher Merrill
  2. Vu Tran
  3. Matt Hart
  4. Kiki Petrosino
  5. Amanda Nadelberg
  6. Kyle Dargan

Great to see these kinds of events going on!

By Eric Abrahamsen, July 16, 4:23p.m.

leave a comment

On two recently released novels by Chinese American authors

I was really excited when I saw the title Girl in Translation (published by Penguin), but I didn't know it was going to be a book of literal translation.

The author of Girl in Translation is Jean Kwok. The description on *Girl in Translation is as follows: "When Kimberly Chang and her mother emigrate from Hong Kong to Brooklyn squalor, she quickly begins a secret double life: exceptional schoolgirl during the day, Chinatown sweatshop worker in the evenings."

But what becomes nagging after a while is then obvious - the author translates literally:

"The white disease" for leukemia," “small-hearted" for be careful and "release your heart" for don't worry. Asked about this in the Danwei interview, she said that the reason was this: “It took me ten years to write this novel and one of my goals was to develop a technique that would show English-speaking readers what it was like to be a native speaker of Chinese. I wanted to put the reader into the head and heart of a Chinese immigrant. English comes in garbled and incomprehensible, while the beauty of the Chinese language is easily understood.”

I wonder if when Chinese people say 小心, they really think of small hearts, or when they say 放心, they think of release. With no disrespect for the Kwok, these are just general questions that are interesting.

More…

By Alice Liu, July 14, 1:19a.m.

7 comments

Event: Chun Shu talks about her new book

Next Tuesday (June 29) Chun Shu will be giving a talk at the Trends Lounge in Beijing about her new book, Light Year American Dream, as part of the Trends Lounge's Cosmo Women's Reading Salon series.

Time: June 29 (Tuesday), 7-9pm Venue: Trends Lounge, 2F The Place (世贸天地), Beijing
Phone: 010 6587 1999

By Eric Abrahamsen, June 23, 10:14p.m.

5 comments

Julia Lovell on Lu Xun

"With the PRC now in its swaggering 60s, I would prescribe – to counter the excesses of Beijing bombast – a stiff dose of Lu Xun", Julia concludes in this June 12th 2010 article on the relevance of Lu Xun to contemporary China, in the (UK) Guardian newspaper.

By Nicky Harman, June 13, 7:32a.m.

leave a comment

Thinking Chinese translation - useful new reference/teaching book

Thinking Chinese Translation is a practical and comprehensive course-book, intended for translation students and of interest to practising translators too.

More…

By Nicky Harman, June 10, 9:21a.m.

leave a comment

2010 PEN Translation Prize Winners

The winners of PEN's annual translation prize have been announced. Among many worthy winners in many worthy languages, our own particular bias has been satisfied in the form of David Hull's translation of Waverings (presumably 动摇), a novel by Mao Dun. See their official announcement. Congrats to David Hull, a grad student at UCLA.

Nice to see attention paid to the old worthies!

By Eric Abrahamsen, June 2, 7:54p.m.

1 comment

Scatological humour in Zhu Wen and Han Dong

Pamela Hunt writes: Why are there so many modern Chinese novels in which, as Cindy Carter put it so nicely in an earlier post, ‘faeces play a starring role’? Any reader of contemporary Chinese fiction will tell you that you don’t have to look very far to find a joke about bodily functions. But at the same time humour is rarely discussed in academic writing on Chinese literature, let alone humour that centres around the toilet. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed a shame, which is why I decided to tackle the subject myself in a recent essay for the MA in Modern Chinese Literature at SOAS, University of London, focusing on the work of two authors much discussed on the pages of Paper Republic, Han Dong and Zhu Wen.

More…

By Nicky Harman, June 2, 10:31a.m.

1 comment

"Going Postal": In Chinese, please

From the June 1 New York Times:

BEIJING — A security guard apparently angered by a court-imposed divorce settlement shot and killed three people and wounded three others at a courthouse in Hunan Province before turning the weapon on himself, the state media reported.

...the assailant, Zhu Jun, 46, was the head of security at a local Postal Savings Bank branch and had access to a small arsenal.

Thus my question: How does one say, "He went postal" in Chinese?

By Bruce Humes, June 1, 8:17p.m.

5 comments

Nicky Harman to translate Jin Shan/Gold Mountain Blues

A little Monday-morning horn-tootling: Our very own Nicky Harman has been chosen to translate Jin Shan, aka Gold Mountain Blues, by Zhang Ling.

Nicky's situation is a little unusual in that her translation is being commissioned and published by multiple publishing houses in various regions simultaneously, rather than the usual practice of a single commissioning publisher who then sells the rights on. Hopefully this will result in slightly better terms for Nicky.

Gold Mountain Blues will come out with Atlantic in the UK/Commonwealth and Penguin in Canada, and is scheduled to appear in late 2011/early 2012. It has also sold into eight other languages/territories.

Congratulations, Nicky, and we look forward to reading it!

By Eric Abrahamsen, June 1, 12:19a.m.

leave a comment

6/5 Event: Jiang Yitan, Ge Fei, Li Er, Bei Cun, Qiu Huadong

What looks like a great event at the One Way Bookstore this Saturday, 3-5pm. Jiang Yitan discussing his new book Lu Xun's Beard (鲁迅的胡子), in an event themed "Reading Quiet Fiction in an Unquiet Age". Also speaking are Li Er, one of our favorites, Ge Fei, often considered Li Er's mentor, Bei Cun, and Qiu Huadong, a writer of urban fiction to watch.

The One Way Street Bookstore's website appears to be down, here are the details:

Date/Time: June 5 (Saturday), 3-5pm
Address: Beijing, Solana (蓝色港湾), building 11, number 16
Phone: 010-59056973

By Eric Abrahamsen, May 31, 11:49p.m.

1 comment

Those who can't do…

For the past couple months I've spent my Thursdays teaching literary translation classes to translation-studies majors at the Beijing Foreign Languages University. When they first came calling about this program, I suspected that it was of a piece with the government's plan to train an army of domestic Chinese-English translators, thereby liberating Chinese literature from the hands of fickle foreign translators with their imperfect comprehension and questionable loyalties (the final step of this plan is to train an even larger army of domestic readers to consume these domestically-produced English translations, whereupon the whole of Chinese culture will fold up and disappear with a "Foop!", leaving a blank space that can be filled with 喜羊羊 re-runs), and I was leery. They assured me that it was simply a cunning plan to use literary translation to improve the students' English, banking on the old chestnut that there is no more careful reader of a text than its translator, and I agreed.

More…

By Eric Abrahamsen, May 24, 10:25a.m.

11 comments

Chinese Literature Today Magazine Website Up and Running

The website for Oklahoma University's virgin publication Chinese Literature Today is up here, and it looks like they're working on it daily. It (the website) is appearing two steps ahead of CLT's inaugural issue, due to be published this July.

More…

By Canaan Morse, May 23, 2:34a.m.

4 comments