Nicky Harman

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.

Nicky's sample translations:

Common Sense, translated from Changshi
Happy, translated from Gaoxing
Screwed

Works by Nicky Harman: Banished!, published by University of Hawai'i Press in January, 2009; China Witness (co-translated with Julia Lovell), published by Chatto & Windus in January, 2008; China Along the Yellow River, published by Routledge Curzon in December, 2004; K: The Art of Love, published by Marion Boyars Publishers in June, 2004; Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother: Stories of Loss and Love , published by Chatto & Windus; Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother: Stories of Loss and Love , published by Chatto & Windus; Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother: Stories of Loss and Love , published by Chatto & Windus

May 2009

all posts

University of East Anglia, UK, celebrates Chinese literature this summer

From Sunday 19 - Saturday 25 July 2009, the British Centre for literary Translation (BCLT) at the university holds its tenth annual International Literary Translation Summer School, which will for the first time offer an intensive workshop in translation from Chinese to English. This hands-on networking and training opportunity takes place at UEA from July 19-25 and will involve author Xinran (China Witness: Voices from a Silent Generation, Miss Chopsticks, The Good Women of China) and her translator Nicky Harman.

Also, as part of the Worlds Literary Festival, to be held at various venues in Norfolk from June 20-25, BCLT is also hosting author and filmmaker Zhu Wen (I Love Dollars, released by Penguin in 2008) and his translator Julia Lovell. The festival, entitled Worlds in Translation, is a celebration of international writing and includes various readings, workshops and panel discussions that will be open to the public.

More…

By Nicky Harman, May 27, 11:04a.m.

The Drawbridge: call for submissions

The Drawbridge welcomes submissions, translated from Chinese, for its upcoming issues, Silence and First Love.

The Drawbridge is an independent literary and cultural quarterly based in London, with a worldwide outlook. You can get a sense of its scope at its website. Each issue casts a broad net around a specific theme. The Silence issue publishes in August, with a text deadline of 26 June. The deadline for FirstLove (November) is 11 September. Short fiction and non-fiction equally welcome. Target length 1,200-2,000 words.

The Drawbridge is unable to offer a fee for contributions,but any published work reaches up to 15,000 intellectually curious and internationally aware readers, including many UK and international publishers and agents.

Contact the commissioning editor, Mark Reynolds: mark@thedrawbridge.org.uk

By Nicky Harman, May 15, 9:49a.m.

Paper Republic and Han Dong in the UK-3

The last literary event we organised took place in Edinburgh, Scotland on 27 April 2009. Tommy McClellan invited Han Dong to give a lecture on contemporary Chinese literature at Edinburgh University. (Nicky Harman translated it, and we read it in tandem, a paragraph in Chinese and a paragraph in English.) After questions, there was a translators' discussion, including Esther Tyldesley and Eric Abrahamsen. Click here for the lecture in Chinese and here for the English translation.

By Nicky Harman, May 2, 11:10a.m.