The Ditan Book Fair
I think there were some books there, but it was pretty hard to tell.
By Eric Abrahamsen, November 30, 6:38a.m.
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BCLT Translation Summer School with Yan Geling
The British Centre for Literary Translation is holding its Summer School 18-24 July 2010 and registration is now open. Bursaries are available for students translating from Chinese to English. Our resident author this year is Yan Geling, and I'll ...
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Archives: November 2008 most recent posts
More on GAPP financial support for translation
The newest edition of the Frankfurt Book Fair newsletter is out (via Three Percent), and includes an interview with Jing Bartz, director of the Frankfurt Book Fair's Beijing Book Information Centre. The most eye-catching of the topics discussed was this:
The minister from the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) approved the first list of translation funding shortly before the Frankfurt Book Fair. The amounts range from 2,000 to 7,000 euros per title.
Before anyone gets excited, the deadline for applying for GAPP funding was November 15, and funds were only applicable to books going into German. The interview touches on several other topics of interest (including the privatization of China's publishing houses) so do take a look…
By Eric Abrahamsen, November 27, 10:12a.m.
Call for contributions to the JoSTrans journal
JoSTrans, The Journal of Specialised Translation, will publish a special issue on translation and Chinese issues in 2010. While the blurb says it focusses on non-literary translation, past issues have ranged very broadly, and no doubt this one will too, given the special nature of Chinese to English translation. I'm always struck by the thoughtful and inspiring (sometimes amusing!) discussions on translation issues on Paper Republic. So if some of you contributors feel inspired to turn your thoughts into an article, click more below, for information.
By Nicky Harman, November 27, 1:33a.m.
Memories of Old Shanghai – translation of oral history
I have just completed Memories of Old Shanghai, a collection of oral histories which involved translating from Shanghainese, to Mandarin, and again into English.
Sometimes it strikes me just how much the older generation has seen. Their experiences are so extraordinarily different from my own; luckily I’ve so far escaped the war, famine, poverty which were ubiquitous during the first half of the twentieth century. Shanghai, in particular, changed enormously through the course of the last century – from the days of the Concessions and its reputation as the ‘Whore of the Orient’, to the brutal Japanese invasion; the Communist victory and ‘Liberation’ in 1949, then acting as the headquarters of the Gang of Four. I was curious to know what the people I passed every day had seen: what they had been through. This was why, in May 2008, I decided to write a book about the older generation living in Shanghai.
By Elizabeth Watson, November 25, 9:35a.m.
Some problems with the Man Asian Literary Prize
I was interested in a recent article by Richard Lea of the UK's Guardian newspaper, on the 2008 Man Asia Literary Prize, won this year by a Philipino writer, Miguel Syjuco, and last year by Jiang Rong with Wolf Totem. I've pasted in the article below, but first, my own comment:
In all the discussions on the prize, I think two key points have been missed. One is practical and the other 'conceptual': to get an English language version which has not been published (for the books which originate in languages other than English), you need a translator to spend a year of their time translating a book for nothing, in the hopes that a publisher will pop up later - or you need the publisher of the translation and the translator to do a deal whereby the book is submitted for the prize after the translation deal has been done, but before the book is actually published. That immediately disadvantages the non-English language books in the competition for this prize. On a broader level, the prize is awarded on the basis of the translation to the original author. The problem is that the original and the translation are two separate versions, albeit of the same book. We all know that a good translation can 'improve' a book, and a bad translation can ruin a good book. What about Paper Republic readers' views?
By Nicky Harman, November 20, 6:15a.m.
In the Beginning…
Howard Goldblatt has graciously allowed us to publish this essay of his on the openings of Chinese novels.
In the Beginning
"Every summer Lin Kong returned to Goose Village to divorce his wife."
How could anyone not want to keep reading, at least for a while, with an opening line like that?
Or:
"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, and then again, as a teenage boy."
Or, finally:
"'Sons of bitches.' Lituma felt the vomit rising in his throat. 'Kid, they really did a job on you.'"
From Melville to Tolstoy and beyond, all the way to Ha Jin, Jeffrey Eugenides, and Mario Vargas Llosa, novelists in the West have assumed that, like a flashy cover, an arresting opening line can go a long way toward starting those pages turning.
When he wrote…
"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta."
…Nabakov knew he'd get our attention.
We don't, however, see many opening sentences of that nature in novels written in Chinese. After more than thirty years of translating Chinese novels into English, I cannot readily call to mind any I've worked on that provide a riveting, provocative, even outlandish opening. That's not to say they don't exist, or that the rules aren't changing, as cultural globalization gains momentum; it's just that a different, and equally valid, narrative strategy, a more tradition-bound beginning has been the norm in recent decades. I've often wondered what that says about the contemporary Chinese novel. Beyond that, how do expectations and standards of enjoyment or acceptance between Chinese and Western readers of fiction differ?
By Eric Abrahamsen, November 10, 2:32p.m.
30 Years of… Literature?
The Olympics Games and multiple national disasters aside, 2008 is an historic year for another reason: it marks the 30th anniversary of the end of the Cultural Revolution and the beginning of Deng Xiaoping's 'reform and opening up' (改革开放) economic recovery plan. Inevitably, this year has seen a pile of retrospectives and "where-are-we-now" type articles and TV programs, most illustrating just how far China has come in 30 years, while simultaneously reviving rhetoric and imagery from a more Socialist past.
The publishing world is no exception: this article (Chinese only) is an announcement of the impending publication of a series of the 300 "most influential books" of the past 30 years. Here's the second paragraph of the report:
According to the introduction provided by Nie Zhenning [聂震宁], president of the China Publishing Group [中国出版集团], the group has planned out 115 major themes and 16 major activities having to do with the 30 years of reform and opening up [henceforth "30RO"], and the publication and promotion of the "300 Most Influential Books of the 30RO" series, led by the China Book Business Report is one of the most important of those activities. "These 300 books provide a broad, deep, and true record of the magnificent surge of history over the 30RO. They are an earnest summary of the practical experience of 30RO. They explore 30 years of Sino-Marxist historical progress and fully reflect the deep changes that Chinese society and the Chinese people have gone through over the past 30 years under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. They proclaim the achievements of 30RO and the contributions which China has made to the development and progress of human society, thereby providing readers with rich resources regarding the history of the 30RO, and adding one more priceless jewel to the cultural treasure-stores of the Chinese nationality," said Nie Zhenning.
Update: The greater list is now online and you, citizen of the interwebs, have the chance to vote for your favorite authors! The 30-year criteria turns out to have meant, 'published within the past 30 years', which includes recent reprints of old books, which makes the criteria mostly meaningless. You can vote for as many books as you like, as many times as you like (we've voted four times so far), so get clicking! It's digital democracy; it only works if you believe!
The books will first be nominated by a committee of experts and the list will be publicized in the media. Readers will have a chance to vote on them, and then the experts will settle on the final 300. No mention is made of genre or type of book, but the books will: "provide healthy guidance to thought and morality, have positive, uplifting content, be conducive to the creation and promotion of advanced culture" etc etc etc.
On the one hand it's unfair to single this article out, as this kind of language is entirely obligatory and in some sense can be simply ignored. On the other hand, major publishing resources and publicity are being put into this series, resources that could have been spent elsewhere. And people wonder why Chinese literature can't quite pull itself together…
By Eric Abrahamsen, November 3, 4:38a.m.
New Comments
on Google Translator: Making the World a More Baffling Place?
To be fair, Google has gotten noticeably better for Chinese over the past few years. The big problems seem to be that their parallel text corpus is just nowhere near the size of corpi for European languages, and that since ...
posted by Brendan
Just so I don't forget this anecdote: On the ten-hour train ride from Wuhan back to Beijing two days ago, I passed a gas station with the following sign:
加油站 onlinetranslation 加油站 onlinetranslation
posted by Canaan Morse
Several things about Google Translate.
I didn't know about until 6 months ago. For someone who often depends on translation for a living, that is pathetic.
Now that I do, I must say that like those examples cited above ...
posted by Bruce
...That being the case, I would expect that something like Google Translate, which seems rather Euro-centric and handles translation between European languages fairly well, will soon be much better equipped to handle modern Chinese than it is right now. I ...
posted by Bruce
Google translate will soon spell the end of translation memory such as Trados, which is great because it's a horrible, cumbersome piece of software that is artificially made difficult so that translators can claim Trados expertise.
I don't ...
posted by ff
on Quotes: Highlighting "local color" or "Chinglish"?
@ #12 Martin
That article is interesting, but I feel like it doesn't apply the same way to translations. Usually, you would want the translation to sound as idiomatic as the original.
posted by GAC