Nicky Harman is interested in translating any good contemporary Chinese fiction. She lives in the UK and works as a literary translator as well as giving occasional talks and running workshops on translation. In December 2011, she completed a three-month stint as the London Free Word Centre’s Translator-in-Residence (see below).
New work:
Xu Zechen short story, Throwing out the Baby, in Words Without Border, April 2012.
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, published by Chatto and Windus, January 2012
Anthology of poems by Han Dong, to be published by Zephyr Press, April 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.
BEYOND TRANSLATING – MY OTHER ACTIVITIES
Translator-in-Residence I have been Translator-in-Residence at London’s Free Word Centre. In the autumn of 2011, I organized a programme of talks and workshops which focused on Chinese and on translation but were intended for a general (non-Chinese-speaking) audience. For example, Isabel Hilton spoke on ‘Translating the Environment’ and her website China Dialogue; Fuschia Dunlop talked about translating Chinese food and brought us samples to taste; Brian Holton ran a workshop on translating Chinese classical poetry; and, with Rosalind Harvey, I ran a Bookclub Fest (sort of ‘speed-dating’ for Bookclub enthusiasts: four translated short stories to discuss in two hours).
Working with young people I use a clip from the Chinese cartoon film, Monkey, to work with young people (about 11 years up) who either know a little Chinese or none at all. I tell them that by the end of the session (about an hour), they will be able to translate the dialogue. I then tell them that translators have to do a bit of inspired guessing too. As we watch the clip, I also get them to repeat a few of the more entertaining bits of the dialogue. I’ll be doing this at the Islington Chinese Association on May 19th 2012, as part of the Islington Word Festival, where the students will know some Chinese, and at my local secondary school, where they will know none at all.
Podcasts I have collaborated with Steve Wasserman to provide podcasts for his Short Story Bookclub and Read Me Something You Love. He podcast a Han Dong short story, The Deer Park and I read some of Han Dong’s poems for Read Me Something You Love.
Guardian newspaper
I have co-edited a series of five short stories translated from Chinese for the Guardian Online book pages, and wrote an accompanying article, in the week leading up to the London Bookfair, April 2012.
Mentoring new translators I have mentored a new translator, Anna Holmwood for the first British Centre for Literary Translation mentorship scheme, 2010, and will continue to mentor translators under the same scheme in 2012.
China Inside Out day at English PEN, March 2012. I helped plan this event and was instrumental in bringing over from China writers, a translator and a director for a fascinating day-long programme of debates, readings, film screenings and music.
Harvill Secker Young Translator Prize I am a judge for this prize
for the year 2012, when the languages are Chinese into English and the author whose work entrants will translate is Han Dong.
I also run the **China Fiction Bookclub", an informal group of Chinese speakers who meet every couple of months in London to discuss and practise translating a variety of short stories or novel excerpts. All welcome. Contact me for details.
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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.
