Literary translator.
London, UK
Nicky Harman lives in the UK and works as a literary translator as well as giving occasional talks and running workshops on translation. She has just (December 2011) completed a three-month stint as the London Free Word Centre’s Translator-in-Residence.
Upcoming Work:
two short stories for Comma Press "Tales from Ten Cities" series, by Han Dong and Ding Liying, 2012
Novel by Yan Geling, Flowers of Nanjing as filmed by Zhang Yimou, to be published by Chatto and Windus, January 2012
Anthology of poems by Han Dong, to be published by Zephyr Press, January 2012
Published Translations:
Prize-winning novel Gold Mountain Blues/Jin Shan by Zhang Ling, published by Penguin Canada and Atlantic Books (UK).
Short stories for Ou Ning's Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture, 2009, and literary magazine Chutzpah, 2010 and 2011.
Message from Unknown Chinese Mothers (Author: Xinran), Chatto & Windus, 2010.
China Witness (author: Xinran), oral history Co-translator with Esther Tyldesley and Julia Lovell. Chatto & Windus , 2008.
Banished! (author: Han Dong) (《扎根》 韩东), novel. University of Hawai’i Press, 2009. Won a PEN Translation Fund Award (2006) for this work. Longlisted for Man Asian Literary Prize, 2008.
‘Long Corridor, Short Song’ (author: Zi Ren, in To Pierce the Material Screen: An Anthology of 20th Century HK Literature, to be pub. Renditions, Hong Kong 2008); (《长廊的短调》 梓人) short story.
China Along the Yellow River (author: Prof. Cao Jinqing, pub. Routledge Curzon, December 2004); (《黄河边的中国》 曹锦清) sociology of rural China.
K – The Art of Love (author: Hong Ying, pub. Marion Boyars, 2002); (《K》 虹影) novel.
Research publications:
What's that got to do with anything? Coherence and the translation of relative clauses from Chinese. In Journal of Specialised Translation (www.jostrans.org) issue 13, January 2010
Foreign Culture, Foreign Style: a Translator’s View of Modern Chinese Fiction. In Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 14(1): 13-31. (2006).
Beyond Paper Dictionaries: Mining the Web for Technical Terminology in Chinese (available from http://isg.urv.es/cttt/cttt/research.html, or on request from NH).
Visiting Fellow at the Research Centre for Translation at Chinese University Hong Kong, April 2006. Visiting Scholar, Fudan University and Beijing University, China, 2008.
Danny Hahn from the UK Translators Association would like to organise an informal get-together for practising Chinese-to-English translators in or around the bookfair. Please contact him direct: d.hahn@uea.ac.uk.
By Nicky Harman, January 18, 10:14a.m.
Following the great success of last year’s Summer School, we are delighted to announce the expanded Summer School 2012. This five-day event will take place at Birkbeck University of London (43 Gordon Square WC1H 0PD) on 9-13 July 2012. It comprises courses in translation into English from Arabic, Chinese, French, German, Italian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish – each language subject to a minimum group-size of five students – and an editing skills course for all. There will also be games, a competition, meet-the-publishers, and guest lectures and workshops.
By Nicky Harman, January 18, 10:10a.m.
At the Free Word Translator Residency we ran a BookclubFest where I was approached by Steve Wasserman of the Short Story Bookclub asking for a Han Dong story. The long and the short of it is that I provided The Deer Park and he recorded it. I was over the moon when I listened, and I love the picture he provided too. The story seems to acquire a whole new life of its own as it’s being read alive. This particular website provides all sorts of podcast stories for free (NB he doesn’t pay the writer/translator). There’s at least one other UK–based site I know of that does something similar. I very much like the idea, as a great alternative to printed short story collections.
By Nicky Harman, January 16, 8:40a.m.
The New International? Literature in an age of ‘globish’, talk on Thursday 20 October 2011, 7.00pm until 9.00pm, Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3GA. For details see here. Not strictly Chinese-focussed and nothing to do with me, but I promised I'd pass the news on. It sounds very interesting.
By Nicky Harman, October 15, 6:01a.m.
So I’ve had to dream up a series of Free Word Centre talks for a non-specialist, non-translator audience, which are China/translation-focussed. Why not ask myself? It seemed like a great idea at first. I could hardly refuse…. So I did: “Nicky, will you give a talk on ‘3,000 years of Chinese translation’? “Yes Nicky, I will, no problem.”
By Nicky Harman, October 14, 10:58a.m.
Book Club Fest
Love reading? Enjoy talking about books with other people? Interested in other countries? Come and join us for an evening of reading foreign stories in translation from countries including China, Mexico and Sweden. VENUE: Free Word Centre, Wednesday 21 September 2011 6.30 – 8.30pm. How it works: Register online and we’ll email you all the texts as PDFs. Read the stories, then when you arrive at Free Word on the night you’ll receive a printout of them all, plus a free glass of wine. There’s 1 room, lots of book clubs, lots of short stories, and lots of book-lovers. Join a group, take part in the discussion, move around when the bell rings, then all come together at the end and share your thoughts!
Free, but registration essential
By Nicky Harman, September 9, 10:33a.m.
At the London FREE WORD CENTRE.
I will be one of the London Free Word Centre’s Translators-in-Residence this autumn and have organised a series of events for adults and chidren loosely focussed on China/Chinese and translation. You don’t have to be a translator or to speak Chinese to join in and all are welcome.
By Nicky Harman, August 29, 10:30p.m.
Chinese Fables
Bi Feiyu and Chan Koonchung
23rd August at 6:30pm
Free Word Centre, 60 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3GA
We’re delighted to bring two of China’s most respected and controversial authors together in this unique event at the Free Word Centre. Bi Feiyu won this year’s Man Asian Literary Prize for his masterful novel Three Sisters. The author was due to visit the UK last year to promote his book – an epic portrayal of contemporary Chinese culture – but was caught in visa bureaucracy. Chan Koonchung’s political fable The Fat Years, banned in China, will be available in English in July 2011.
Join these two fascinating writers as they discuss fables, families – and fat years – with critic Lucy Popescu (author of The Good Tourist). In association with Telegram Books and Transworld Publishers.
Booking details: www.freewordonline.com or call 0207 3242 570
Tickets: £5 (£3 PEN members/concessions)
By Nicky Harman, July 25, 1:50p.m.
The Guardian Online Arts section runs a World literature tour on the site, and it's heading to China ... go online and add your ideas...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/may/09/world-literature-tour-china/
By Nicky Harman, May 9, 6:57a.m.
By Yu Yan Chen
China Fiction Book Club is a gathering of kindred spirits bonded together by the love for Chinese language and literature. Over tea and snacks, members meet about once every two months to translate a piece of contemporary Chinese literature into English. Our first meeting in autumn 2010 took place at an elegant café near SOAS, but our next meeting on 16 March from 6:00 to 8:00 will be held at RADA.
By Nicky Harman, February 25, 4:41a.m.
Fish out of water? Lone voice crying in the wilderness? (well, alright, in the Quality Non–Fiction in the Digital Age conference). At the start, I was a little unsure about what role I, as the sole translator–speaker, was going to play at a conference largely attended by international publishers. Though I wasn’t the only one of a kind. There was a philosopher, Jos de Mul, reminding us that the invention of writing in the New Stone Age was just a way of outsourcing memory! And computers in the New New Stone Age (that’s now) are a way of outsourcing thinking…
By Nicky Harman, February 1, 8:41a.m.
Shi Tiesheng dies of a brain hemorrage at 59. Wikipedia entry here
By Nicky Harman, January 4, 2:34p.m.
Manchester (UK) Literary Festival 2010 invited Shanghai short story writer and poet Ding Liying to their Translation Evening last week.
By Nicky Harman, October 28, 5:23p.m.
Jonathan Franzen's book Freedom suffers UK recall: More than 8,000 copies of the American author's latest opus have been recalled due to hundreds of typesetting errors. This has been headline news in the UK for the past two days. That's unheard-of for any novel except perhaps Harry Potter. Now how about this for a great way to launch one of those translations some of us are busy working on: ooops, it comes out only half-translated, or with an eye-catching English cover and all in Chinese inside?! OK, I was just joking. But then again........
By Nicky Harman, October 4, 7:47a.m.
New Statesman, the British socialist weekly magazine, includes Han Han, writer, racing–driver and blogger, at number 48 in its list this week of 50 People who matter 2010. The rest are an eclectic group of the world’s great, the good and the not so good…About a quarter of them are women, only one of whom, Angela Merkel, is in the top ten. There’s one other Chinese, Xi Jinping, at number 4 (up from 10 last year).
By Nicky Harman, September 28, 4:12a.m.