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New York Times Book Review 5/4/2008: four Chinese novels
By Cindy Carter, published May 6, 10a.m.
The May 4, 2008 edition of the New York Times Book Review features reviews of four new translations of Chinese novels:
- Mo Yan’s Life and Death are Wearing Me Out, translated by Howard Goldblatt
- Jiang Rong’s Wolf Totem, translated by Howard Goldblatt
- Wang Anyi’s The Song of Everlasting Sorrow, translated by Michael Berry and Susan Chan Egan (includes chapter excerpt)
- Yan Lianke’s Serve the People, translated by Julia Lovell (includes chapter excerpt)
One interesting, and rather humbling, note: the two books translated by Howard Goldblatt total 1067 English language pages. 1067 pages, people. As someone who counts herself lucky, very lucky, to get through 1000 characters of literary translation per day, I can’t imagine how he does it and still manages to find time to sleep. Damn, I could have/should have/would have asked him that at the Moganshan translation seminar…
(Thanks to fellow-translator Bruce Humes for giving us the heads-up on these reviews.)
Comments
Hah, to your 1000 characters. I'm sneakily reading paper republic when I should be translating philosophy, and there are paragraphs of not much more than 100 characters here that can take me a day. Doesn't help that I cut every classical Chinese lecture I could when I was at university...
Phil, May 11, 6:15a.m.
Yes, it does depend on what you're translating, doesn't it? 100 or so characters of classical Chinese philosophy or poetry is a full day's work, while 3000-4000 characters per day for a crappy television scripthardly entails breaking a sweat.
The reason I'm sweating is that I've committed to a (fiction) deadline that requires about 1500 characters per day, but I'm averaging 1000 or less. Honestly can't do more. Poo on me, I suppose, for succumbing to irrational exuberance, but setting realistic deadlines has never been my strong suit. Hopefully, the publisher will be understanding.
Thanks for sneaking peeks at PR. We aim to provide more frequent updates, better content and bigger, better distractions for busy colleagues such as yourself...in other words, we'd like to be your best bad influence. As always, guest contributions from fellow translators are warmly welcomed (she says, distractingly).
Cindy Carter, May 12, 1:52a.m.