Interview with the translators of Wang Gang's “English" (王刚写的 《英格力士》)
The Transparent China Translator (II)
By Bruce Humes (徐穆实)
“Among the Emperor Qianlong’s trophies from his conquest of Xinjiang was a girl called Iparhan. She was a beautiful Kashgari whose body was said to give off an intoxicating scent without any help from ointments…the abduction of Iparhan became for the Chinese a symbol of the annexation of the western lands which they had twice before conquered—under the Han and Tang dynasties—but never really controlled.”
(“Wild West China”) (1)
Much has ensued since the 18th century Qing emperor snatched this enchantress from Kashgar, located near today’s Kyrgyzstan, and transplanted the "Fragrant Concubine" (香妃) to his far-flung harem in Beijing.
The ethnic make-up of Xinjiang, for instance. Once home to an overwhelmingly Muslim, Turkic-speaking population—94 percent of the residents when the PRC was founded in 1949—the “Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region” has been mightily diluted by Han Chinese who, by 2007, reportedly accounted for four of ten inhabitants.(2)
But the legendary fascination of Chinese for Things Xinjiang—the music and dancing of the Uyghurs, the cuisine and particularly the women—endures. In its own unique way, the upcoming publication of “English,” a novel by Wang Gang, a Han who grew up in Xinjiang during the Cultural Revolution, brings those fantasies firmly into our era, and embellishes them a bit.
More…
By Bruce Humes (徐穆实), January 2, 8p.m.
Want insight into how to sell those translations of yours? Attend "Connections through Culture: China-UK Forum on Marketing Literature in Translation" in Shanghai Jan 12-14.
Speakers/topics: Random House's Roger Brachell, on how to market lit to UK publishers, with a look at case studies such as Haruki Murakami's work; Jo Lusby, revealing how Wolf Totem was handled by Penguin; and Yi Xiao-Qiang, a spokesperson for China Youth Publishing Group, explaining how it markets itself in the UK.
Representatives from People's Literature Publishing House, Yilin Publishing House and China Book Publishing Report -- and several other publishers -- will also be there.
For info on how to register (no charge to attend, as I understand it), contact Li Ji-Hong, China Literary Consultant (and translator of "The Kite Runner" into Chinese): lijihong@hotmail.com
By Bruce Humes (徐穆实), December 24, 2:40a.m.
Poorly Managed, Occasional Bright Spots
I could swear those long-legged seraphs were headhunted from the professional model community in Shanghai and Dalian, but what do I know?
The “18th World Congress of the International Federation of Translators” (Shanghai August 4-6) featured dozens of seminars with over 200 speakers from all over the world—and an opening banquet starring those women, performing what was billed as a Tibetan folk dance.
My neighbors, two immaculately coiffed, fluent English-speaking Iraqi women in China for the first time, were blown away by the spectacle. They couldn’t have cared less where those “Tibetans” came from!
But I wasn’t in town for the dancing. I paid RMB4,000 for entry to the conferences + RMB1,660 for a round-trip air ticket between Shenzhen-Shanghai + RMB800 for 3 nights in a hotel, in the hopes of hearing a host of speakers deliver their (hopefully unique!) presentations.
In the event, most of the seminars were rather disappointing, because:
- Each speaker was strictly limited to 15 minutes, and most Q&A were put off for 30-45 minutes, i.e., until all speakers had first presented;
- Many speakers chose to read out their research papers word-for-word, projecting text-heavy PowerPoint slides virtually identical with their scripts;
- Ironically, only a handful of seminars—this was an international translation conference!—offered simultaneous interpretation;
- There were often 10 or so seminars on at one time on two different floors of the meeting center, each featuring 3-6 speakers, but no obvious way of learning when a given speaker would appear. No list outside the door of each seminar venue, for instance, stating the names of the speakers, their topic, and the order of their appearance.
Nor was much attention given to informing us which scheduled speakers would be absent. I learned only belatedly that Turkish scholar Bengu Ergin would not be presenting “What do we observe in the Chinese translation of Orhan Pamuk’s novel, ‘My Name is Red’?” What a pity!
Ah, well. Here’s a quick list of topics/speakers/e-mail addresses for those topics that might be of interest to Chinese-English translators: “法国对中国现代作家选择之思考” (高方, gaofangparis8@126.com); “Creating the Self-image of New China: ‘Outward’ Literary Translation in the First 17 Years of Socialist China (Ma Shi-Kui, mashikui01@sina.com); “The Chinese-English Parallel Corpus of ‘Hong Lou Meng’: A Working Report” (Liu Ze-Quan, zqliu@ysu.edu.cn); “A Dialectical view of ‘Chinese’ and ‘Non-Chinese’ Features in Chinese Translation Theory” (Tan Zai-Xi, than@hkbu.edu.hk); “A Translation Anthologist’s Reflections on the Ideological Complexities of Translating China” (Martha Cheung, marthach@hkbu.edu.hk).
By Bruce Humes (徐穆实), August 10, 12:37a.m.
These kinds of topics turn you on?
- Workable standards for translating Chinese classics into English
- How to showcase literary translations at international book fairs
- Foreignization in Chinese-English translation and its role in cross-cultural communications
- 新疆民族语言工作和翻译概况
- 法国对中国现代作家翻译选择思考
- Translating menus from a sociolinguistic and cross-cultural perspective
- Role of the literary translator: Case-study from Japan’s Meiji period
- 中日翻译：诗歌的重写与文化越境
If so, you might want to be in Shanghai at the XVIII Congress of the Federation of International Translators during August 4-6.
See the full agenda of seminars.
By Bruce Humes (徐穆实), July 29, 2:24a.m.
The Transparent China Translator (I)
Li Ji-Hong: Mainland Chinese translator of “The Kite Runner”
By Bruce Humes (徐穆实)
xumushi@yahoo.com
“The Kite Runner” /《追风筝的人》:
An Afgan Childhood Re-Packaged for the Middle Kingdom
It was an intriguing sentence alluding to censorship in the translator’s post-script that initially piqued my curiosity:
原书个别不合国情的地方，译者酌情在措词上加以改动，意思仍一概如旧 (1)
"There are certain places in the original text [of The Kite Runner] which are incompatible with Chinese sensitivities. Measuring his words ever so carefully, the translator has polished the copy while maintaining the original meaning." (My translation)
Now what could there possibly be in a childhood story of friendship, betrayal and a belated but moving coming-of-age, set in Afghanistan – a country hardly figuring on China’s world map – that would ruffle “Chinese sensitivities,” I wondered?
I inquired by e-mail, and the very courteous, frank and highly efficient translator, Mr. Li Ji-Hong (李继宏), kindly told me the answers and much more (see QA in full, below).
Indeed, official Chinese censorship has altered “The Kite Runner” (追风筝的人) (2) in some rather odd ways, and I detail them here. But much more significant in shaping the reading experience for the Chinese audience is the translator’s strong preference for what translation scholars dub “domestication.”
Ever wonder what happens to a best-seller in the West when it crosses into Chinese territory? Read on.
More…
By Bruce Humes (徐穆实), May 13, 9a.m.
China will be “Guest of Honour” at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2009 (Oct 14-18).
Read all about it.
By Bruce Humes (徐穆实), April 21, 1:43a.m.
A series of books widely available in China – in English – has opened my eyes to new ways of looking at literary translation.
Published by Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press (上海外语教育出版社), the cover of each of the 30+ tomes carries a 国外翻译研究丛书 etiquette on the cover. I bought some of these volumes at 王府井的外文书店, but I have seen the series in places as diverse as Xi’an, Shanghai and Shenzhen.
Authors include scholars known for their role in what many call “translation studies.” They include Susan Bassnet, Andre Lefevere, Eugene Nida, Maria Tymoczko and Lawrence Venuti.
I personally recommend:
“Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame” by Andre Lefevere (翻译、改写以及对文学名声的制控)
“Translation Studies” by Susan Bassnet (翻译研究)
“The Translator’s Invisibility: The History of Translation” by Lawrence Venuti (译者的隐身)
“Translation and Gender: Translating in the Era of Feminism” by Luise von Flotow (翻译与性别：女性主义时代的翻译)
I have read several of the books and have been pleasantly surprised that some—certainly not all—of these authors are bloody good writers whose writing is highly critical, witty and spot on when it comes to identifying and analyzing thorny issues that I have confronted as a translator of Chinese fiction into English.
If you only read one, make sure you read “The Translator’s Invisibility”!
By Bruce Humes (徐穆实), April 16, 2:22p.m.
