Cindy and I are currently working together on a subtitle translation project, for the short documentary films coming out of Ai Weiwei’s Fairytale project. Among the 1,001 Chinese people that Ai Weiwei shipped to Kassel, Germany, fifteen or sixteen filmmakers were included, and they’ve produced a series of small films about certain of the ‘artists’.
My first short film centered around Gouzi and Zhang Chi, which was a pleasant surprise as I’ve only known them, Gouzi in particular, by their writing. Gouzi is mostly famous for being drunk, it seems, and in fact the whole hour-long spot is sodden (the first shot is Zhang Chi blarging in someone’s bathroom). Most of it takes place at group dinners in various restaurants and living rooms around Beijing. The subjects represent a certain slice of Beijing’s literary community – 35 to 50, once hot young bloods, all devastated in one way or the other by the events of June 4th, 1989.
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By Eric Abrahamsen, August 23, 6:01a.m.
I'm re-reading George Steiner's After Babel, one of the great theoretical texts on translation, and this passage made me laugh:
Thus any light I may be able to throw on the nature and poetics of translation between tongues has concomitant bearing on the study of language as a whole. The subject is difficult and ill-defined. Regarding the possible transfer into English of Chinese philosophic concepts, I. A. Richards remarks: 'We have here indeed what may very probably be the most complex type of event yet produced in the evolution of the cosmos.'
By Eric Abrahamsen, August 21, 7:54a.m.
I'm blowing off deadlines left and right, so don't have time to do a full translation of this chapter. Even though I'm not really in the game, just wanted to toss in a few low-denomination chips and support the translation of this tremendously influential and unfairly neglected Chinese author....long live Wang Xiaobo! And wansui to Brendan, Eric and Feng37 for bringing his words to life.
Her reasoning went like this: although everyone said that she was a slut, Chen Qingyang felt that she was not, because to be a slut you had to sleep around, and she had never slept around. Although her husband had been in jail for over a year, she had never slept around in his absence, nor had she slept around prior to his imprisonment. For this reason, Chen Qingyang simply couldn't understand why people insisted on calling her a slut.
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By Cindy M. Carter, August 9, 10:05a.m.
Yesterday Bookslut ran an interview with Didi Felman, editor of Words Without Borders, on the joys and travails of running an indie webzine. In the midst of it she dropped a hint that WWB had an upcoming feature entitled 'Olympic Voices from China', so if any writers are currently reading this, hurry up and write something… Olympic? (via Three Percent)
By Eric Abrahamsen, August 1, 1:07a.m.
New Comments
on Open letter by Liao Yiwu (in Chinese and English)
Thanks for reposting this. ;) Wish that I could get our site to stop displaying the revision ID, as if I make any changes to the translation, they wouldn't show if others were to click this link.
posted by Lina
Just to mention that a collection of his poems "Poetry in jail" has been translated in French by Sun Shanshan and Anne-Marie Jeanjean and published by Editions l'Harmattan in february 2008; included is the famous "Great Massacre".
posted by Bertrand Mialaret
on Man Asia Literary Prize: 2008 Long List
I went to the Murong book talk tonight in Beijing and enjoyed him speaking.
I can see you now know his name but his translator and publisher was there on stage to facilitate the bi-lingual conversation. He formed the publishing ...
posted by Helen
on Quotes: Highlighting "local color" or "Chinglish"?
Eric wins it.
posted by Brendan
Avoiding a literal translation and opting for something along the lines of "Wuhan is not acting like a good partner" would preserve the meaning and sound more natural.
posted by Tommy Saxondale
Going to second Brendan in this one -- Eric is definitely the winner.
posted by Lina