After a few months away, we’re back with a bulky news update to roll you into summer! It’s been a busy spring in the translation world, as the submission deadlines for various translation mentorships, competitions, and other opportunities have come and gone. One of these, the open call for samples for the upcoming READ PAPER REPUBLIC: SPOTLIGHT series, is still going on! Emerging translators (those who have published no more than one book-length translation) can simply send a sample of any of their translated work to info AT paper-republic DOT org before midnight on May 10 to be entered into the running. More details here: https://paper-republic.org/pers/andrew-rule/call-for-participants-read-paper-republic-spotlight/

One of our biggest goals for 2026 is to make sure that our translation database is sustainably up-to-date. It’s a venerable and beloved resource, but maintaining it is a community effort. We’re asking translators to keep their own profiles updated with their recent translations. If you are a published Chinese-to-English translator but do not yet have a profile, email us at info AT paper-republic DOT org and we’ll help you make one. If you have a profile but don’t know how to update it, contact us, and we’ll help you access your account. And if you want to volunteer to update the database, email us! Your help is essential to make sure that accurate, comprehensive information about translated publications is available for all.

Below, you can find a round-up of recent translation news and free-to-read publications from across the web. Thank you for your continued support of Paper Republic!

Free to Read Online

• A rich quintet of post-2019 stories from Hong Kong at Words Without Borders, featuring translations by Jennifer Feeley, Michelle Chan Schmidt, Catherine Xinxin Yu, Chenxin Jiang, and Fion Tse.
• Two new sci-fi stories translated from Chinese, recently published in Clarkesworld Magazine: “The Scent of Memory” by Zhao Haihong 赵海虹, translated by S. Qiouyi Lu; and “Those Who Left History” by Wanxiang Fengnian 万象峰年, translated by Stella Jiayue Zhu.
• An assortment of poems by Yan An scattered around the internet, translated by Chen Du and Xisheng Chen for The Dead Mule School of Southern Literature and International Poetry Review, and by Chen Du, Xisheng Chen and Yuyang Xie for Denver Quarterly
• “Low Flight,” a poem by Wang Jibing translated by Chen Du and Xisheng Chen for The Baffler
• Hal Y. Zhang’s translation of “Heavens Fall” by Lu Qiucha 陆秋槎 at Samovar
• Two poems by Lu Jiateng 陆佳腾, translated by Zhiyuan Mark Ma for The Bombay Literary Magazine
• Two poems by Mai Mang 麦芒, translated by the author, in Asymptote
• Also in Asymptote, the short story “Various Endings to a Story” by Feng Jiqi 冯积岐, translated by George Dudley
• “A Short Stay in the Woods,” a story by Fei Siren 废斯人, translated by Dylan Levi King for The World of Chinese
• A set of poems by Geng Yao 更杳, translated by Ban Yan, in ANMLY
• Poems by A Hua, translated by Xuelan Su, in the Ilanot Review

Book Reviews and Articles

• Jack Hargreaves rounds up five recent translated books in his column at the China Books Review: “They tell us how we respond in crises; how we value our freedoms; how little we really know about our universe; what it’s like to feel regret and disappointment; and what it takes to live true to ourselves.”
• Reviewing Jennifer Feeley’s translation of Everyday Movement, the new novel by Gigi L. Leung 梁莉姿, Publishers Weekly calls it “an intimate portrait of bravery in the face of repression.” Read that review here, and more reviews at Cha Journal.
• Reviews are pouring in for City Like Water by Dorothy Tse 謝曉虹, translated by Natascha Bruce, including from Publishers Weekly, the Asian Review of Books, Words Without Borders, The Oxford Review of Books, and The Spectator.
• Yale University Press has published a conversation with Can Xue 残雪, translated by Annelise Finegan, about her newly translated novel The Enchanting Lives of Others (also reviewed in The Spectator and the Three Percent Substack)

• Adrift in the South, the excellent new memoir by Xiao Hai 小海 translated by Tony Hao, has been reviewed in the Financial Times and excerpted in the Wall Street Journal.
• Check out World Literature Today’s review of Spent Bullets by Terao Tetsua 寺尾哲也, translated by Kevin Wang.
• After reading Howard Goldblatt’s essay in Cha Journal about translating My Destiny by Liang Xiaosheng 梁晓声, you can read a review of the novel itself in Asian Review of Books
• Cha Journal also has reviews of Flower Ash, a poetry collection by Huang Fan 黄梵 translated by Josh Stenberg—
• —and of Zheng Liu’s Cultural Mavericks: The Business and Politics of Independent Bookselling in China.
• Read about Rongbin Han’s Make China Great Again: Online Alt-History Fiction and Popular Authoritarianism at the China Books Review, and also in Wired.
• Xuela Zhang’s translation-themed poetry collection To Compare is reviewed in the Hong Kong Review of Books.
• And finally, Jennifer Wong’s new poetry collection Light Year has a review in the Asian Review of Books, alongside a feature at the Leeds Center for New Chinese Writing Book Club.

News and Articles

• Stephen Owen, an influential China scholar and translator of classical poetry, died earlier this month at 1979. It’s a recent loss, so obituaries are still being written, but you can read a brief appreciation of his work in Chinese here.
• The Bookseller reports that international publishing interest in Taiwan is rising, and specifically spotlights the recent buzz around A Perfect Day to Put Your Head in the Oven by Lee Chia-ying 李佳穎, upcoming next year in Lin King’s translation
• In Sixth Tone, Xueting C. Ni argues for the continued vitality of the wuxia genre, thanks largely to a new generation of female authors
• China was in the spotlight in one of Asymptote’s recent “Dispatches from the Frontiers of World Literature,” this one written by Hongyu Jasmine Zhu

Grants, Awards, Prizes

• Lots of good books spotlighted in this year’s Baifang Schell Book Prize, with the top prize for literature going to The Running Flame: A Novel by Fang Fang 方方, translated by Michael Berry.
• Congratulations to author Yáng Shuāng-zǐ 楊雙子 and translator Lin King on being longlisted for the International Booker Prize for their magnificent novel Taiwan Travelogue!

Events

• Enjoy this recording of the Translation Roundtable that happened at Lancaster University in February, featuring translators Jack Hargreaves, Nicky Harman and Simone Schroth
• And here’s a roundup of last week’s Modern Chinese Literature Book Club, a collaboration between Open University and the Confucius Institute hosted by Paper Republic’s own Nicky Harman and Emily Jones. The conversation featured Jack Hargreaves speaking about his latest translation, I Deliver Parcels in Beijing by Hu Anyan 胡安焉.

All the best from us at Paper Republic. Wishing you a peaceful transition into summer!

Cover photo © Marva Jiaqi Shi, 2026.