Mother Tongues and Other Tongues - Creating and Translating Sinophone Poetry, edited by Simona Gallo and Martina Codeluppi (Brill - China Studies vol. 53, 2025)
-- Analyzes contemporary translingual Sinophone poetry and discusses its creative processes and translational implications, along with their intersections.
By Helen Wang, September 17, '24
For this year's #WorldKidLitMonth, Global Literature in Libraries (GLLI) is focussing on Taiwan, using the hashtag #TaiwanKidLitMonth.
We're halfway through September, and thanks to Eleanor Duggan, there are already 15 blog posts that are packed with information.
See a list of all 31 posts on Chinese Books for Young Readers click here and on the GLLI website click here
By Nicky Harman, September 16, '24
World Kid Lit month takes place every September. It was started by the dynamic team at World Kid Lit - who have a beautiful new website packed with news about books from around the world, ready-made lists of books, activities and lots more. Help spread the word. Look for and use the hashtag #WorldKidLitMonth!
(this post has been edited)
"On East and Southeast Asian Heritage Month, let's talk about diaspora, and all the people and places we call home. Come join our celebration of new, exciting ESEA novels in the UK, from children’s and YA fiction, to adult fiction — literary, fantasy, speculative, and crime. Panel chats, book signings, and meet ESEA authors.
Venue and support provided by Dr Cristina Martinez-Juan, School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics, SOAS."
The finalists of the Seventh Blancpain-Imaginist Literary Prize 宝珀理想国文学奖will be announced on 13 Sept 2024. This year's theme is Where lies the Originality in Chinese Literature?
-- List of previous winners
Translated into English and published here for the first time, this historical novel tells of the exploits of Ma Yongzhen, a martial artist and gangster who was ruthlessly murdered by rival gangs in 1879. The story takes the reader into the world of the Shanghai gangster and the opium dens, courtesan houses, and teashops they frequented. ... In addition to translating the novel, Paul Bevan has written an illuminating introduction and an essay that vividly describes the city of Shanghai as Ma Yongzhen would have known it.
A New Collection of Writing from China’s Mainland - Granta‘s special issue on the writing of contemporary China collects the mainland’s most thrilling voices. The issue features memoir from Xiao Hai on moving to Shenzhen at fifteen to work in its factories, reportage from Han Zhang, who visits the working-class writers carving out a living in Picun, an essay from Yun Sheng on the rapid rise of virtual relationships, and new fiction from Mo Yan, Yu Hua, Shuang Xuetao, Zhang Yueran, Ban Yu, Jianan Qian, Zou Jingzhi and many more.
By Nicky Harman, September 1, '24
August is Women in Translation Month!
But rather than just bandy depressing numbers around here, we thought we’d start with a reminder of interviews of Chinese women writers, put together by Nicky Harman and Natascha Bruce, in which we explore how Chinese women authors from mainland China see themselves and their status. Our aim in translating and publishing these interviews was to bring the opinions of Chinese women writers on this topic, in all their rich variety and complexity, to English-language readers. Our survey was conducted in 2019-2020, but is still well worth looking at again. Here it is
By Nicky Harman, August 12, '24
Translators Aloud new episode.
Shenyang says: "The Home of a Spare Child” is a Chinese article I wrote for Paper Republic on the topic of home, translated in English by the amazing Julius Kochan. In this video, Julius reads an excerpt in English and I read the same one from the original Chinese text 😊
Ling Shuhua (1900-1990) was a talented Chinese woman modernist writer, much admired by Chinese luminaries such as the poet Xu Zhimo and the writer and activist Lu Xun. She was also a well-regarded painter. Most of her writing was produced during the 1920s and 1930s, with almost nothing being published thereafter, with the exception of her (English-language) autobiography Ancient Melodies (Hogarth Press, 1953). After the war, she left China and lived in Singapore and the UK and, possibly for that reason, her reputation faded in her home country. Recently, however, her work has been republished there.
Two Sino-Anglo translators – one an established and long-serving figure in the scene, the other a fledgling tyro – on piloting Chinese books into English and why it helps to be fans of the language first.
This round of PEN Translates marks – and is marked by – powerful regional and transnational interconnections. We have five Spanish titles speaking compellingly for the linguistic, cultural and social diversity surging from Central and Latin America; new queer writing in French from Algerian and Cameroonian novelists; two highly mobile Vietnamese feminist mysteries; Arabic fiction from an Egyptian writer living in East London and a Black Sudanese writer living in Austria; the intricacies of language from a d/Deaf perspective; the sensory world of food as experienced by Malayan Communists at war; and two stunning celebrations of the art of the short story in Farsi and Kannada. They showcase the continued invention and ambition of independent publishers and translators, and how the most vivacious and essential current writing is both formally inventive and expansively committed to solidarity.
At London's Charing Cross Library on Friday 26th July: an exclusive pre-launch event with Dong Xi, author of the upcoming novel 'Fate Rewritten'. Hosted by Sinoist editor Susan Trapp, a unique opportunity to meet the author and get a sneak peek into his latest work.
By Nicky Harman, June 24, '24
Friday 12th July, 1-2pm UK time (8-9pm Beijing time).
In this session, facilitated by Nicky Harman and Emily Jones from Paper Republic, we'll be discussing the story 'Notes from a Consulting Room' by Sophie Zuo Fei (昨非) and translated by Dylan Levi King and Yun Qin Wang (王韵沁).
You can read the translation of the story in English here: Read Paper Republic: Notes from the Consulting Room and the Chinese version is available here.
We are delighted that the author Sophie Zuo Fei (昨非) and translator Dylan Levi King will be joining us for the session.
The book club takes place online using MS teams and is held in English. You do not need to be able to speak Chinese to attend. All are welcome to attend.
For more information and to register to attend, please register here on Eventbrite to attend. The meeting link will be sent to you about a week before the event (note: the confirmation email after your registration does not contain the meeting link).
We look forward to seeing you there!
The Online Confucius Institute team at The Open University
Email: online-ci@open.ac.uk
By Nicky Harman, June 11, '24
A group of us held an impromptu online translation workshop on 5th June 2024. It came about because there were a fair number of people who submitted fully-translated pieces for the new Read Paper Republic "Home" series. We couldn't choose all of the pieces and decided to offer any whose work had not been chosen the chance to join Nicky Harman and Chen Du for an hour-and-a-half session. It was very informative, with everyone contributing. We discussed specific challenges we had while translating, the business of translation, and where to find additional resources. Jessica Morris's detailed notes follow:
Event at the Brunei Gallery, SOAS, University of London.
Speakers: Cosima Bruno, Lucas Klein and Chris Song. Discussants: Paul Bevan, Wen-chi Li, Mary Mazzilli, Dylan K. Wang.
Free to all, but must register.
"Offering the first systematic overview of modern and contemporary Chinese literature from a translation studies perspective, this handbook provides students, researchers and teachers with a context in which to read and appreciate the effects of linguistic and cultural transfer in Chinese literary works."
Aimed at practising translators at any stage of their career and at language enthusiasts who want to explore the world of literary translation, Bristol Translates offers the opportunity to work with leading professional translators to translate texts across different literary genres.
This year's Chinese-English strand will be tutored by Nicky Harman. The English-Chinese strand will be tutored by Yan Ying.
Multi-award-winning Chinese novelist Lu Min talks with Angus Phillips about her newly translated novel Dinner for Six and about her life and writing career.
Contemporary China Through Literature: Characters and Translation
This event, jointly hosted by the Leeds Business Confucius Institute and the Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing will combine a presentation by multi-award-winning Chinese novelist Lu Min 鲁敏, with an interactive two-way translation workshop, facilitated by world-leading translators from Chinese into English and English into Chinese, alongside the author herself.
By Eric Abrahamsen, December 22, '23
A refuge, a recollection, a promised land, a prison; the arms of family, or four concrete walls in the sky... Home means something different to each of us, but it means something to all of us. For our next Read Paper Republic series, we're looking for stories of home: of the quest to find one; the struggle to escape one; the battle to defend one. Fiction, non-fiction or poetry: it's all welcome.
If you are a Chinese>English translator and know of a home-related short story, essay or poems which you really like, we want to hear from you! This publication aims to support emerging translators (translators who haven't published more than one book) and we particularly welcome entries from those new to the profession.
By Eric Abrahamsen, December 15, '23
Here it is, the 2023 Roll Call of Chinese literature published in English translation!
First the good news: this is an interesting and varied collection of titles, including classics, left-fielders, big names, and small(er) names. The non-fiction in particular is a wonderful spread of current events, political topics, and essays.
The slightly less wonderful news is that there's simply less of it! After several years of steadily-increasing numbers, the shelf shrank a bit this year. Of course it's impossible to know precisely why, but we will note that so much direct cultural contact between China and English-speaking countries has dried up since the pandemic: book fairs canceled, funding dried up, plane tickets expensive.
There also continues to be a marked gender imbalance: only two female poets in the poetry section; in fiction only 6 women to 16 men.
Regardless, these are great offerings. Special shout-outs to Owlish, which seems to be attracting the genuine love and enthusiasm that we all wish for our books; Jeremy Tiang, who is showing up on so many literary prize lists; and the Sinoist publishing house, which accounts for more than a quarter of the books on the fiction list.
And you're still in time for Christmas shopping!
China’s crackdown on fantasy literature and video games poses a critical obstacle to readers, authors, and those who seek to make these works accessible. Why restrict these apparently innocuous stories? Eric R Stone interviews censored writers who describe how censorship and outright banning of certain concepts, words, and allusions render works of fiction unintelligible.
While the Paper Republic newsletter is on hiatus, why not check out this first of my columns for the China Books Review, on my recommendations for the latest fiction translated from the Chinese language (whatever that is).
My Cat Hates Me by Bai Cha, translated by Jemma Stafford (Brown Books Publishing Group, 2022, ISBN 978-1-61254-584-4) won the Gold Prize in the Graphic Novel section of the 2023 Benjamin Franklin IPBA Awards!
Translated by Jeremy Tiang and Eric Abrahamsen, Xu Zechen’s Beijing Sprawl introduces us to a ragtag quartet of would-be social climbers. The high cost of urban living, accompanied by thundering tedium and punctuated with shocking violence, proves to be a devilishly swirling drain from which there can be no escape in Xu’s interconnected fictions.
As an author, I write certain things that likewise seep into my heart, and there’s no way to get them out. I need to live with them. This is how I see the connection between people and their work: as wood shavings that find a place in your heart without your realizing it, and which affect not only you but also those who come after you.
There are two weeks left before the deadline for early-bird applications for Bristol Translates, a virtual summer school aimed at practising translators at any stage of their career and at language enthusiasts who want to explore the world of literary translation. Bristol Translates offers the opportunity to work with leading professional translators to translate texts across the literary genres into English.
The overall deadline is in June.
For Chinese, Nicky Harman and Jack Hargreaves will be leading the workshops, which will be supplemented with a rich programme of talks and activities.
See you there!
“The uniqueness of Chang’s writing lies in its fusion of literary aesthetics and narrative styles from the East and the West: his portrayal of the plantations in Borneo reads like a transplant of Faulkner’s American South to the Indonesia Archipelago, and his stream of consciousness style narrative traversing between the character’s psychic and the tropical rainforest terrain inject Chinese literature with a unique sensorial experience similar to that of Gabriel García Márquez’s magical realism. In a sense, it is not at all far-fetched to claim that Chang’s writing can be read as a unique branch of Chinese literature as world literature.”
– E.K. Tan (Stony Brook University), Chang Kuei-hsing's nominator
Hospital starts off with a fairly straightforward, plot-driven narrative: Yang Wei goes on a business trip to C City, drinks a bottle of complementary mineral water in his hotel room, is almost immediately struck down with unbearable stomach pain, and after passing out for three days, is taken to a local hospital by several members of the hotel staff. And then things gradually start to get strange…flourishes of the uncanny begin to appear and the reader is quickly transported further and further away from the book’s early realist setting into a strange, dark, and increasingly unsettling universe.
By Jack Hargreaves, December 20, '22
Paper Republic is planning a new READ PAPER REPUBLIC, our online publication featuring short fiction (to see previous editions, click here). This edition is focused on the delicious theme of food.
Very sad news.
Illustrated in a composite style of simple comics and classic Chinese art, My Cat Hates Me follows the daily exploits of a petulant "purr-sonality", his canine sidekick, and their long-suffering artist owner. Bestselling author Bai Cha has drawn millions of fans to his comic series "Cat and Dog." Now, the first installment of My Cat Hates Me makes its long-anticipated U.S. debut. Translated by Jemma Stafford. 白茶:《就喜欢你看不惯我又干不掉我的样子》
By Nicky Harman, December 18, '22
Welcome to the 2022 list of literary works translated from Chinese into English. There is the usual eclectic mix listed below – from scifi to crime, to all other types of good and readable fiction. We have included poetry too, and children’s and young adult fiction. If anyone has any entries to add, please let us know at info@paper-republic.org and we’ll add them. Similarly with star reviews and other newsy items. Enjoy browsing!
Let us also take the chance to remind you that Paper Republic is a UK-registered charity (non-profit). We are run by volunteers and depend on your donations. Everything you give us goes towards our mission, to promote Chinese literature in translation. Please consider donating here: Paper Republic donations link See also the Benevity.org charitable portal. If your employer gives matching funds for donations, Benevity is a great chance to amplify your generosity.
