Freelance Translator
Beijing, China
Eric has lived in Beijing since late 2001, when he studied Chinese at the Central University for Nationalities. He began struggling through Wang Xiaobo at an early date, and kept at it through the intervening years while working as a teacher, editor, and freelance journalist. He would like nothing more than to spend his days with a dictionary and a laptop, and his nights out drinking with authors.
Eric is currently translating Wang Xiaofang's Notes of a Civil Servant.
Next Tuesday (June 29) Chun Shu will be giving a talk at the Trends Lounge in Beijing about her new book, Light Year American Dream, as part of the Trends Lounge's Cosmo Women's Reading Salon series.
Time: June 29 (Tuesday), 7-9pm
Venue: Trends Lounge, 2F The Place (世贸天地), Beijing
Phone: 010 6587 1999
By Eric Abrahamsen, June 23, 10:14p.m.
The winners of PEN's annual translation prize have been announced. Among many worthy winners in many worthy languages, our own particular bias has been satisfied in the form of David Hull's translation of Waverings (presumably 动摇), a novel by Mao Dun. See their official announcement. Congrats to David Hull, a grad student at UCLA.
Nice to see attention paid to the old worthies!
By Eric Abrahamsen, June 2, 7:54p.m.
A little Monday-morning horn-tootling: Our very own Nicky Harman has been chosen to translate Jin Shan, aka Gold Mountain Blues, by Zhang Ling.
Nicky's situation is a little unusual in that her translation is being commissioned and published by multiple publishing houses in various regions simultaneously, rather than the usual practice of a single commissioning publisher who then sells the rights on. Hopefully this will result in slightly better terms for Nicky.
Gold Mountain Blues will come out with Atlantic in the UK/Commonwealth and Penguin in Canada, and is scheduled to appear in late 2011/early 2012. It has also sold into eight other languages/territories.
Congratulations, Nicky, and we look forward to reading it!
By Eric Abrahamsen, June 1, 12:19a.m.