Cindy Carter
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Cindy Carter is a Beijing-based translator of Chinese fiction, film, essay and poetry. She studied Japanese at U.C. San Diego and lived in Osaka for three years before coming to China as a language student in 1996. Since beginning her translation career in 1999, she has translated over forty independent Chinese films and documentaries and dozens of scripts, short stories, essays and poems. Her translation of Xiaolu Guo's novel Village of Stone (2004, Chatto & Windus, Random House, U.K.) was short-listed for the 2005 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and long-listed for the IMPAC Prize.
Her recent translation projects include:
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Yan Lianke's Dream of Ding Village, a novel about blood-selling and the AIDS epidemic in Henan Province (scheduled for publication in 2009 by Constable and Robinson, U.K.)
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Yu Guangyi's Survival Song, a documentary about a family of hunter-trappers living in the wilds of Heilongjiang Province
(Grand Prize winner, 5th China Independent Documentary Film Festival, Songzhuang, 2008; Grand Prize winner, Cinema Digital Seoul Festival, 2008; Selection, Vancouver Int'l Film Festival, 2008)
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Huang Wenhai's Creatures of Politics, Voices of Conscience, a documentary about human rights and democracy activists in China
(Worldwide premiere at the 2008 Venice Int'l Film Festival - under the Chinese title "Women"/我们)
Claire Li's post on the Make Do Studios website analyzes some of the reasons Bertelsmann AG's business model failed in China:
"Why did Bertelsmann's China business fail? Some people say it has to do with the prevalence of pirated books here. But obviously, people who hold this view have not caught on to the state of the book market in China nowadays [...]
"Bertelsmann continued opening bookstores around the country without realizing how greatly the internet would influence people's shopping habits. People buy books on Dangdang and Joyo for its wide selection, low discounts, fast delivery, its payment-upon-receipt system, and freedom from any membership requirements like having to buy a book each month. Bertelsmann, by contrast, not only had a limited choice of books and poorer discounts, but it added another requirement last year that its platinum members had to spend RMB 299 per year or else be bumped down to a lower level. An understandable amendment, since the book club's overhead is high, but nobody wants to be forced to spend money."
read the complete article
Update: Another take on Bertelsmann's China venture (from Chen Gang, a journalist at China Publishing Today)
By Cindy Carter, July 28, 8:51p.m.
Yes, Li Er is an undeniably talented writer. Just this shade of forty, his literary inventions are unrivaled in China, and have drawn favorable comparisons to Pynchon and Gaddis... but if the man ever invites you to dinner, you'd better run like hell.
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By Cindy Carter, July 20, 4:12p.m.
With the publication of his first novella I Love Dollars in 1994, Zhu Wen gained a reputation as the nihilistic, post-1989, post-Tiananmen voice of Chinese youth. His frank depictions of sexuality, anxiety, hedonism, materialism and corruption struck a chord with readers and critics alike. His literary debut was followed by several successful short story collections (Little Brother’s Big Performance, Because We Were Lonely, Sweating Like A…, Do the People Really Need Saunas?) and a novel, What is Love and What is Garbage.
In the following excerpt, from the first chapter of What is Love and What is Garbage, we meet protagonist Xiao Ding on what well may be the worst day of his life: the weather outside is sweltering, he is drinking alone in a darkened bar at noon, the knife scar on his belly is starting to itch, and he desperately needs to take a shit.
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By Cindy Carter, July 9, 1:04p.m.
