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 ...
The Chinese writer Mo Yan has kindly agreed to answer questions by Oriental Hemisphere (Vostochnoye Polushariye), Russia's biggest website on the day-to-day life, history and culture of the Far East and South East Asia, in connection with forthcoming publication of Mo Yan's 酒国 (The Republic of Wine) translated into Russian by Igor Yegorov (aka yeguofu). English translation courtesy of Igor Yegorov.
Question: Has your recent visit to Russia left you with new impressions? Has your notion of the country changed, compared to that of the past?
Answer: I visited Russia for the first time in summer of 1996. It was a two-day tour in a small town next to the Chinese frontier city of Manzhouli. My impressions of that day fitted badly with the notion of Russia that I had formed while reading books by Russian authors. It was not until 2007 when I went to Moscow to take part in the Year of China Book Exhibition that I fully appreciated the space and grandeur of the country. The vast Russian expanses which seem to have no boundaries, conceal the boldness and a big way of the country combined with its delicacy and soft beauty.
Q: What do you feel about Russian literature and who is your favorite Russian author?
A: Russian literature was first of all foreign literatures that I got acquainted with. When still a child I read The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish by Pushkin in my elder brother's school textbook, then I went through The Childhood (My Universities) by Gorky. Of course, like any Chinese youth of those times, I read How the Steel Was Tempered by Nikolai Ostrovsky. My favorite Russian author, Mikhail Sholokhov, and his novel Quiet Flows the Don have added a lot to my formation as a writer.
Following up on the announcement a few weeks ago of the re-opening of the Banyan Tree, China's first influential literary website, this is a short Q&A with Wang Xiaoshan and Yang Yong, Editor in Chief and Managing Editor, respectively, of the new Banyan Tree, the most recent acquisition of Shanda Literature Limited, which is in turn a part of Shanda Interactive Entertainment Limited, an online gaming, literature and music empire that has an eye on most of the prime digital real estate in China. The Banyan Tree, which first opened in 1997, has languished over the past four or five years, but Shanda is intent on breathing new life into the old brand.
Why did Shanda buy the Banyan Tree, instead of just starting a new literary website?
Wang Xiaoshan: I think they were looking at the Banyan Tree's brand. That site started 12… 13 years ago now, Christmas of 1997. Back then it was a personal website, but as it grew it fostered a lot of great authors and scriptwriters. So even though it's traded hands several times in the past few years, it's brand and its image is still there. This way, it's big news from the very beginning.
Yang Yong: A lot of literary youth still have an emotional attachment to the site, as well.
An excellent podcast features Bill Marx of Public Radio International/PRI World Books interviewing John Donatich, director of Yale University Press. Topics include the Margellos World Republic of Letters, a newly-endowed fund to support the translation of foreign literature into English (C-E translators, take note!), the dearth of book coverage in mainstream western media and the role of university presses in publishing and promoting translated literature.
“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.
A year or two ago I went to a exhibition on Wang Xiaobo’s life at the Lu Xun Museum. Along with the entrance ticket they gave you a DVD with a half hour or an hour of footage of Wang Xiaobo, including an interview he once did for CCTV. I just recently found this interview on Youtube, and am linking to it here, along with a translation of the conversation. This is from 1995, remember, an era caught between the hit-him-with-a-stick Cultural Revolution, and the can’t-be-arsed-to-wag-a-finger 2000s. CCTV, we should note, had not yet achieved the high standards it boasts today.
The interviewer, Liu Wei (刘为), starts off civilly, but by the end he’s nearly given himself a hernia trying to paint Wang as a salacious destroyer of other people’s morals. Observe, particularly, his craftiness as he traps Wang into admitting his books are all autobiographical, and his beautiful parting shot.
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 Q&A 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.
Xu Xing originally gained fame as a writer during the 1980s, when he was a prominent member of the literary revival that followed the end of the Cultural Revolution. He emigrated for Germany in 1989, and didn't return for four years. He currently lives in Beijing and is working on a book about his experiences during the Cultural Revolution. He will spend most of 2008 as a writer-in-residence at the UCLA.
In the beginning...
"I'd heard of computers before I left China, but I'd never actually seen one. In Germany they had those 286s, running DOS – I got to be pretty good at DOS in Germany.
"When I went back to China 1993 I brought a computer with me; it had a black and white monitor; I thought it was such a prize… But I discovered that in the few years I'd been gone, computers had already become commonplace in China."
In September of 2006 the South China Morning Post ran a profile I wrote of Jiang Rong, the author of Wolf Totem. Given Wolf Totem's recent win (and the fact that the profile is getting quoted in recent news stories) I wanted to reprint that article here.
Wolf at the Door
HOW DOES A book about Mongolian wolves - a book weighted down with complex historical theories, written by an unknown university researcher with a history of trouble with the government - sell a million copies in China? The mainland's best-seller lists are crammed with business manuals and martial arts fantasies. Why is the reading public devouring an old man's recollections of the Cultural Revolution, and his muted call for reform of China's political system?
Wolf Totem - part memoir, part socio-historical treatise - is one of the most popular books in recent memory. Since its publication in April 2004, it's sold more than one million copies legally, and perhaps six times that number in pirated editions. It's spawned a children's version called Little Wolf, Little Wolf, a film adaptation is to be produced by the Forbidden City Film Company, and an English translation is due next year, Penguin having paid a record fee for the rights.
For all Wolf Totem's popularity, next to nothing is known about its author. Jiang Rong is the pseudonym of an economics researcher at a Beijing university, a man who doesn't show up to his own press conferences, who's kept his identities so separate that his university colleagues had no idea he'd written a book.
His anonymity is not entirely voluntary - in conversation Jiang hints at past political troubles that resulted in his being barred from teaching, and from much of public life, for the past two decades. But surely that would also exclude him from publishing books? "At the time they didn't know it was me," says Jiang, a 59-year-old man with piercing eyes and a sly grin. Did that cause him problems once they found out? "Yes", is his only answer.
Bruce, do you have any background on this? For example, were you involved in the sale? Was the publisher's decision based on your English excerpt, on another language translation, or did they have someone who'd read the Chinese ...
I bought the book when in came out in Taiwan in late 2006 but didn't get to read it until this year. I've heard lots of good things about Chi Zijian and Bruce's translation of ...
"The only thing [Party leaders] have in common with young people is that like us, they too have girlfriends in their 20s, although theirs are on the side.” Hilarious.
Han Han's magazine pays much higher rates than other Chinese literary magazines, so it's possible they'll attract better contributors. The key will be the magazine's editorial policy. With higher rates for writers and a strong editorial ...
New Comments
on Google Translator: Making the World a More Baffling Place?
Friends don't let friends make single line breaks.
But if friend did let friends make single line breaks, they would tell them do it by leaving two blank spaces at the end the line.
I have taken the liberty ...
posted by Eric Abrahamsen
on Sold: Dutch-Language Rights to "Right Bank of the Argun"
Bruce, do you have any background on this? For example, were you involved in the sale? Was the publisher's decision based on your English excerpt, on another language translation, or did they have someone who'd read the Chinese ...
posted by Cindy Carter
Hi Cindy,
I bought the book when in came out in Taiwan in late 2006 but didn't get to read it until this year. I've heard lots of good things about Chi Zijian and Bruce's translation of ...
posted by Gray Tan
on Han Han's speech at Xiamen University
The Contemporary Chinese Writers Project at MIT has just launched a website devoted to Can Xue that you can find at--
http://web.mit.edu/cbbs/ccw/can-xue/
Regards,
Jon Griffith Contemporary Chinese Writers Project, MIT
posted by Jon Griffith
on NYT gives a big wet one to Han Han
"The only thing [Party leaders] have in common with young people is that like us, they too have girlfriends in their 20s, although theirs are on the side.” Hilarious.
posted by Cindy Carter
Han Han's magazine pays much higher rates than other Chinese literary magazines, so it's possible they'll attract better contributors. The key will be the magazine's editorial policy. With higher rates for writers and a strong editorial ...
posted by Cindy Carter