By Bruce Humes, August 14, '17
Each year there are dozens of literary events timed to coincide with the Beijing International Book Fair (Aug 23-27, 2017). They take place both on the fair grounds and throughout the capital, and sponsors include Paper Republic.
As lists of these events-- in Chinese or English -- become available, please list here so that we can all benefit . . .
When asked where I’m from, I say “Weihai,” even though nobody knows where it is, even though I’ve never been to the place.
Chinese events at Edinburgh Int'l Book Festival - incl Liu Zhenyun on 12 Aug, Xiaolu Guo on 20 Aug
At Guanghwa Bookshop, in London, 5 Sept. Read the 4 short stories (or the cheatsheet) before you come, and discuss them with the translators: Nicky Harman, Natascha Bruce, Emily Jones and Helen Wang. Details, and all 4 stories are online now:
Autumn Harvest Chronicle by Liu Ting, tr. Emily Jones
Back-flow River by Jia Pingwa, tr. Nicky Harman
Ying Yang Alley by Fan Xiaoqing, tr. Helen Wang
The Wall by Ho Sok Fong, tr. Natascha Bruce
How Translation Wages Affect the Popularity of Foreign Classics: China’s translators are severely underpaid, and the proof is in the print.
News media and websites are strictly banned from using 38 vulgar phrases, including Chinese for terms such as "country of floating corpses," "green pool," "exploded penis" and "shitizen"
Stunning review, a Bookblast Book of the Week:
Crystal Wedding is an extraordinary and unusual story, (for a Western reader anyhow), and it is told very well. This novel is perfect for readers who relished Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible, Kathryn Stockett’s The Help or Kate Chopin’s The Awakening.
Organised by the Writing Chinese team at Leeds University, this is an opportunity for members of the Writing Chinese Book Review Network to meet a featured author - Sheng Keyi - and translator and discuss their work. Over the course of the two days there will be informal sessions devoted to discussion of featured books, as well as to different aspects of fiction and translation, and the craft of reviewing.
The winners of the 10th National Outstanding Children’s Literature Awards 全国优秀儿童文学奖 have just been announced.
From Open Book, June 2017
In a 2015 issue of the New England Review, I published two translations of poems by the excellent Sichuan poet Ya Shi. Like much brilliant poetry, Ya Shi’s work is impossible to paraphrase. My efforts feel incomplete, all my translations filled with infelicities, misinterpretations, and confusions. Still, though, in the translation of “Full Moon Night,” I made what feels to me like a mistake, a moment when my work as a translator loosened and a ghost slipped in.
The TA First Translation Prize is an annual £2,000 prize for a debut literary translation into English published in the UK. The Prize was established in 2017 and generously endowed by Daniel Hahn, with support from the British Council.
Entry to the 2018 Competition is now open.
Deadline to apply is 15 September.
Thanks to a generous seed grant from the Henry Luce Foundation as well as support from the Los Angeles Review of Books, the “China Blog” will be morphing into a freestanding magazine within the magazine. The LARB China Channel will join a set of pre-existing LARB Channels (these vary widely as you can see by clicking here), so we will be in good company.
For weeks, Wang’s fellow Beijingers spoke of the New Year. How in just a few days they’d board the crowded eastbound trains to the capital. How they’d trade Gansu’s dry winds for the Gobi’s sandstorms. But not him. No, he sat every morning on his cliff, looking east, wondering where he could possibly go for the holidays this year. The possibilities were numbered:
By Minjie Chen, Cotsen Library, Princeton:
"One question I repeatedly hear from Chinese immigrant parents and Chinese language teachers in America is, where can they find books that children would enjoy reading at the same time as improving their Chinese...."
(from Writing Chinese, University of Leeds): --- Welcome to the Reading Chinese Book Review Network, a collaboration between Writing Chinese and our partners at Penguin China and Balestier Press. Reviewers who join the network receive a copy of selected titles, and you can read their reviews by clicking on the images on the webpage. If you are interested in applying to join this network as a reviewer, or if you are a publisher interested in partnering us in this part of the project, please contact us at writingchinese@leeds.ac.uk for more details!
Xinhua News Agency has updated its list of unPC and PC phrases. No-nos include "former Soviet Union" (前苏联) (it's still Soviet Union, Comrade); using "strategy" (战略 zhànlüè) to describe One Belt, One Road (use initiative 倡议 instead), and vulgar terms such as “green tea bitch” (绿茶婊) . . .
I wanted to find what author and critic John Berger called the “quivering wordless thing” beneath the text. I read Western Heaven four times, trying to glimpse Chen’s pre-verbal story and spark a true Berger-esque translation. All I did—besides learn the story inside and out—was wind myself up. I was too new to the game to be attempting the mystic ecstasy Berger called for. I ended up producing a very hi-fi first draft, a wordy monstrosity. I was appalled.
By Bruce Humes, July 20, '17
Sad to learn that the last Jifeng Bookstore (季风), located at the Shanghai Library metro station, will close its doors in January 2018, according to the South China Morning Post. The original opened at Shanghai’s South Shaanxi Road metro station in 1997, and a string of other branches followed over the next decade.
It was during a break from my busy China speaking tour in 2000 about how importers abroad were using the Internet to source China-made goods, that right there in the South Shaanxi station I happened upon a copy of the very naughty 上海宝贝, the first Chinese novel I was to translate (Shanghai Baby). If it hadn’t been banned by then, it was certainly banned quickly thereafter.
The SCMP makes it clear that Jifeng is closing because the Shanghai authorities continually interfere with its efforts to host seminars and the like, events often referred to as 文化沙龙. This puts the few remaining independent booksellers in a bind: Book sales are increasingly monopolized by online vendors and massive Xinhua Bookstores, yet when independents try to branch out into other types of products and services — à la Eslite in Taiwan (诚品书店) — they are thwarted by the local culture department.
The interactive experience of China Literature is another main differentiator – most of its content is serialized, which means writers will often publish work chapter by chapter, sometimes altering plot lines based on suggestions from users. And it’s the discussion forum, which sits alongside the main story, that Pan enjoys most. She remembers a time when many fellow readers wanted two main characters in a novel to become romantically involved. Eventually the author wrote this into the plot. "Serialized works banish the sense of loneliness," Pan said. "When reading on Kindle, you are facing a single terminal; when reading Chinese online novels, you are engaging with a community."
I’ve been mourning Liu Xiaobo for a quarter of a century.
For five intense and eventful years in the late 1980s and early 1990s Xiaobo and I shared what I believe was a real friendship, something special to both of us. We weren’t pengyou 朋友 in that vacuous, Sino-American ‘everyone’s my friend’ kind of way; nor were we gemen’r 哥們兒, that smart ass Beijing version of buddy-buddiness. Much less, thank heavens, did we ever become lao pengyou 老朋友, an accursed expression that, in reality, indicates a long-term association reaffirmed by bonds of mutual benefit, imposing thereby an exploitative emotional burden on both parties. Nonetheless, we were, to use the Beijing argot, tie 鐵, iron-clad.
Starfish Bay Children’s Books is an independent publishing house based in Adelaide, Australia and Auckland, New Zealand, and has published several children’s books translated from Chinese since 2015.
Where shall we meet: At Big Tile Pit, Mud Depression or Puddle of Accumulated Water?
(You'll have to scroll down a bit into the news item)
While Chinese literature has experienced an uphill battle getting published in the English-speaking world, the situation in Spanish- and Arabic-speaking countries has been completely different.
The proliferation of taboo-breaking advertisements is hardly surprising given the leading demographics of online shoppers: young, white-collar professionals with mid-range incomes, as well as high school and university students. In everyday communication, these groups tend to look down on linguistic conventions and seek to subvert them by creating new and surprising turns of phrase.
Online literary platforms will conduct a self-assessment based on a detailed score chart and their evaluation will be submitted to the SAPPRFT for verification.
Those with scores below 60 will be publicly criticized and be banned from applying for any literary awards for a year. The executives of such websites will also be invited for a talk with regulators.
On the night she finished the defense of her doctoral thesis, she dreamed of the ocean. She didn’t fall into the water; she purposefully walked in one step at a time. There was a strange smell to it, like the bodies of old men. She stayed on the surface, feeling the small waves break against her.
Gray light spread in all directions. As she swam forward, she saw something floating in the water. A row of human heads was bobbing there with their eyes shut tight. They were swaying before her, pushed by the currents. She recognized the dead historians at once. Sima Qian, Ban Gu, Sima Guang, Chen Yuan, Chen Yinke, Guo Moruo, Fan Wenlan, Bai Shouyi… Heavy with history, the heads began to sink into the ocean. When she reached out for them, all she got was a mess of seaweed.
The stench of the seaweed dragged her out of the dream. Sitting in the darkness, she thought to herself, You’ve completed a PhD in ancient history, but what have you really learned? What new insight have you gained?
She didn’t want to think about it.
Liu Xiaobo is in hospital in Shenyang
Features English, Chinese and Tibetan terminology to describe surveillance policies and techniques. For example:
Three-dimensional [Social Stability] Preventive Control System
Tibetan: langs gzugs can gyi sngon ’gog tshod ’dzin ma lag ལངས་གཟུགས་ཅན་གྱི་སྔོན་འགོག་ཚོད་འཛིན་མ་ལག
Chinese: lìtǐ huà shèhuì zhì’ān fáng kòng tǐxì 立体化社会治安防控体系
Definition: Refers to a policing system or monitoring network that includes digital surveillance; monitoring at the grassroots level carried out by cadres based in monasteries, villages, and local neighborhoods; and policing done by officials in grid management offices and by appointed representatives in “double-linked household” units. The term emphasizes the integration of multiple information systems.
DON'T MISS THIS! --- London, 24 June --- WU QI（吴琦）: Chief Editor of Dandu 《单读》, and DAVID HAYSOM: Managing Editor of Pathlight. -- The two editors of the two magazines will meet for the first time to exchange ideas on how to obtain a globalized view through reading and translation, without obstructing one’s own uniqueness, or forming a stereotype impression of the other side.
Then, at some point, I found I couldn’t stand books about the Cultural Revolution any more. It probably had something to do with coming overseas and realising that almost all the books that had been translated into English were about that period. Or meeting people who were interested in China, but always from the same limited perspectives — they were surprised that I didn’t wear a military uniform, were thrilled to meet An Only Child, and insisted on discussing The Private Life of You Know Who.
Soft Burial, originally published in 2016, won the 2016 Luyao Literature Award, a tribute to its historical realism. Fang Fang explained the title of the novel in her postscript: When people die and their bodies are buried under the earth without the protection of coffins, this burial is called a “soft bury”; as for the living, when they seal off their past, cut off their roots, reject their memories, either consciously or subconsciously, their lives are soft buried in time. Once they are in a soft burial, their lives will be disconnected in amnesia. Ahead of the announcement of the Luyao award on April 23 2017, a literature criticism seminar organized by the Worker, Peasant and Soldier reading group in the city of Wuhan concluded that the novel is a “poisonous plant”:
Xiaohua [Can Xue], who is sixty-four, now lives with her husband in Beijing and writes every day. She has published dozens of short stories and novellas, several novels, and books of commentary on Kafka, Borges, Calvino, Dante, Shakespeare, and Goethe. So far, only eight of her books have been translated into English. Though written, or at least translated, using concrete, often simple language, they rarely rely on conventional storytelling or character studies.
With the upcoming launch of Ett brokigt band om renens horn, we have a rare instance of a member of China’s dwindling reindeer-herding Evenki telling her people’s story in a European language. Given the historic marginalization of Scandinavia’s own semi-nomadic reindeer-herders, the Sami, it is particularly significant to see that the first translation of the novel from the Chinese (驯鹿角上的彩带) will appear in Swedish.
Translator and co-publisher Anna Gustaffsson Chen tells me that the book is being printed right now . .
"I was attracted to the claustrophobic intensity of the worlds he created, where violence is common but often curiously weightless, and cause and effect are seldom smoothly aligned. And to his densely clotted language, with its overworked precision and its strange, incantatory rhythms. One particular stylistic tendency I noticed in his writing was a quirk I’m going to call “embodied sound”: the metaphorical description of noises as though they were plastic, tangible presences, hovering in the air."
Work, according to Zhang, began last June on a Guide to Famous Works of Contemporary Chinese Literature.
During the selection process, CCTSS is reported to have worked with 29 editors of Chinese literary magazines, along with 40 university-based literary critics to select 192 novels from among the 651 candidates for introduction to international readers. Twenty translators were hired to translate the works into English.
Each introduction in the guide will include an author profile, synopsis, and review.
By Bruce Humes, May 30, '17
It can take several years for a piece of Chinese fiction to reach the English-speaking world. But thanks to publication in Chinese on the Internet — and translators working from it rather than the printed book — it looks like this time-to-foreign-reader can be radically reduced. Hopefully, this will help outsiders more quickly grasp what is going on in the “black box” that is China.
Reports Manya Koetse: “I Am Fan Yusu” went viral on Chinese social media in late April 2017. The author has since gone into hiding and her essay has been removed.
In some ways, the popularity of the essay in China is comparable to the recent hype over Alex Tizon’s essay “My Family’s Slave” on Western social media; this non-fiction story about ‘Lola’ Eudocia Tomas Pulido from the Philippines, who lived as a modern slave with an American family for 56 years, went viral on Twitter and Facebook in May. It gripped its many readers for exposing poignant problems in modern-day society that usually stay behind closed doors.
Fan Yusu’s account, in its own way, also revealed the harsh realities of an ever-changing society. China has an estimated 282 million rural migrant workers. The autobiographical tale focuses on the difficult childhood and adult life of one person . . .
The publisher holds world rights to all formats (in English) to the titles and will publish Mountain Stories by bestselling Chinese writer Ye Guangqin, in July, followed by six more translated titles in 2018 and 2019, all by authors from the Shaanxi province of north-west China.
The publisher's founder Jamie McGarry said: "Readers might not have heard of Shaanxi before, or be particularly familiar with the bestselling Chinese-language authors who call that province their home, but they soon will be. We've signed an agreement to publish a whole series of titles from the region's finest authors, translated with great care by a team at Northwest University in the city of Xi'an, then edited and proof-read by native English scholars."
By Nicky Harman, May 24, '17
I'm running a translation workshop at Baptist University in Hong Kong on Tuesday 20th June 2017. We'll be working on a short piece of text from Jia Pingwa's novel 《高兴》. The event is free but please register by Monday 5th June to receive the text. Contact: cpw@hkbu.edu.hk and put Translation Workshop in the subject line.
Chinese Journeys: a special issue on new Chinese writing featuring poetry, prose, translations and commentary Cover image by Ruihua Zhang
"如何成为一只闪闪发光的猪” 的王小波主题沙龙 （摘选）：
“ 在王小波作品当中看到的性，并没有任何饥渴，他的性是潇洒、温柔的性，他没有把这个事当作禁忌、当作偷窥的乐趣、让读者有感官的刺激，而是把性当做吃饭、谈恋爱、调情一样的正常的事情去写。所以他作品里的性不猥琐，甚至被唤起的感官反应很少，因为他把性日常化。这是在中国作家，尤其上世纪九十年代的中国作家中非常少有的。”
By Bruce Humes, May 20, '17
Buruma knows Chinese and often writes about topics related to China and Japan. See news of the announcement here.
By Bruce Humes, May 19, '17
France’s Macron has named a woman, Françoise Nyssen, to fill the position of Minister of Culture. She has served as CEO of Éditions Actes Sud, which has published French translations of works by writers such as Bi Feiyu, Chi Li, Ma Jian, Mo Yan, Li Ang, Wang Xiaobo, Wuhe, Yu Hua, Zhang Xinxin and Zhaxi Dawa.
The expansion of Qidian International will provide China Reading and its writers with a platform to reach readers globally and the potential to become one of the largest platforms globally in online reading. Qidian International's key target markets include North America, Western Europe and Southeast Asia with future potential expansion into Eastern Europe. The content on Qidian International will primarily be in English with future potential editions in Thai, Korean, Japanese, and Vietnamese provided through cooperation with local-language internet platforms. In addition to the Qidian International website, the Qidian App, available on both Android and iOS are expected to be frequently updated for content and functionality.
As 一带一路 takes off, there will be opportunities for translation of Chinese writing into several languages, including English, and those of Central Asia and East Africa.
If you don't know about "Belt & Road," just watch . . .
The plan points out that the CWA should stick to cultural self-confidence. It calls for writers to closely unite around the CPC Central Committee in a bid to enrich and develop the literature cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics.
For nearly six decades, Mr. Watson was a one-man translation factory, producing indispensable English versions of Chinese and Japanese literary, historical and philosophical texts, dozens of them still in print. Generations of students and teachers relied on collections like “Early Chinese Literature” (1962), “Chinese Lyricism: Shih Poetry From the Second to the Twelfth Century” (1971), “From the Country of Eight Islands: An Anthology of Japanese Poetry” (1981) and “The Columbia Book of Chinese Poetry: From Early Times to the 13th Century” (1984).
Author Yan Lianke on the death of translator Sylvie Gentil:
她是翻译家；是极好极好的翻译家。她对中国文学的爱，胜过许多中国作家对中国文学的爱；对中国作家的爱，也胜过我们自己对自己的爱。法国人，却有近20年的时光都住在北京工体的周边上，就像一个中国人，半生都在国外默默地蛰居和生活，读书、写作和翻译。把阅读、翻译中国当代作家的作品当成自己的吃饭和穿衣。
莫言、徐星、李洱、冯唐、杨继绳和我等，许多中国作家走进法国是通过她才打开了巴黎文学场上的那扇门。《红高粱》、《无主题变奏》、《花腔》、《万物生长》和《墓碑》，那些在中国或响亮、或沉寂的虚构或者非虚构，由她的心血浸润、翻译后，才在世界文学在法国那最为巨大、热情的卖场上，有了中国作家的响动和一丝丝的光。
“You’re making a living as a writer now, so put everything you have into it. When it comes time to winnow, the farmer takes advantage of every gust of wind. Take advantage of the time alone to work as hard as you can. But I have heard that you have been drinking a lot. When you were young I didn’t provide a positive example for you to follow. I’ve now stopped drinking completely.” When I read the letter, I was deeply ashamed and swore off liquor altogether. I finally sent a letter back to my father, entreating him again to live with me in the city, along with my daughter.
Candied Plums is a US-registered publisher, selecting Chinese picture books of high quality and publishing them in English in the US - some books are published solely in English, some are bilingual editions. The first season of books is available now - through the usual online bookshops - and there's a pdf catalogue on their website. The website is great - and includes info about the books, the authors and translators. There's also a section called Chinese Corner, complete with audio (listen online or download) so you can read along too.
Le début des années 2010 marque sa maturité d’écrivain. Il revient vers l’écriture en chinois, mais, comme l’a dit Ou Ning (欧宁) qui l’a découvert à ce moment-là, lors d’un voyage à Hotan dans le cadre du projet du peintre Liu Xiaodong (刘小东) sur les mineurs de jade locaux: « Le chinois n’est pas sa langue maternelle, ses récits en chinois n’auront donc jamais une texture raffinée, mais c’est justement ce qui les rend si attrayants… Il intègre dans son chinois la manière de penser ouïgoure, si bien que son écriture a une fraîcheur unique ; sa narration pleine d’humour et de poésie donne au lecteur une nouvelle expérience de lecture, différente des récits chinois …».
"Given the sobering history of representing disabilities in Chinese children’s materials, The King of Hide-and-Seek, a picture book published in 2008, is a refreshing take on the topic." - review by Minjie Chen
Alat Asem's fiction is a Uyghur world set in Xinjiang where Han just don’t figure; his hallmarks are womanizers, insulting monikers and a hybrid Chinese with an odd but appealing Turkic flavor . . .
The novel is an indictment of ‘mythorealism’ — strikingly similar to today’s concept of ‘fake news’
Is a translator effectively the co-author of a text and if so should he or she be paid a royalty as authors are?
Candied Plums draws on a stable of esteemed translators—many affiliated with Paper Republic, the network for Chinese translators—including Helen Wang, who recently translated Cao Wenxuan’s Bronze and Sunflower (Candlewick, Mar. 2017). “We definitely have talented editors who know how to translate just the right way: to preserve the integrity of the original text but also to reach out to people who are not necessarily familiar with Chinese politics or culture,” Feldman said. She pushed for Candied Plums to feature translators’ names prominently on all book covers, saying: “They are co-authors.”
By Nicky Harman, March 27, '17
Literary Translation in Practice 26th - 30th June 2017, City University London
Are you a practising professional or a newcomer to the art of translation?
Develop your translation skills under the guidance of top professionals at a central London campus.
An immersion course in literary translation into English across genres - including selections from fiction. poetry, history, essays, journalism, travel and academic writing - taught by leading literary translators and senior academics, with plenty of opportunities for networking.
• Arabic - Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp
• Chinese - Nicky Harman
• French - Trista Selous and Frank Wynne
• German - Shaun Whiteside
• Italian - Howard Curtis
•Japanese-Angus Turvill
• Polish - Antonia Lloyd-Jones
• Portuguese - Daniel Hahn
• Russian - Robert Chandler
• Spanish - Peter Bush
• Swedish - Kevin Halliwell
Evening programme (attendance free): French Translation Slam with Frank Wynne and Ros Schwartz; Keynote Lecture Who Dares Wins by Professor Gabriel Josipovici; Author/translator Daniel Hahn on Translation and Children's Books and a buffet supper at local gastro pub sponsored by Europe House with a talk by Paul Kaye, Europe House Languages Officer.
Full fee: £520. Bursaries available.
Directors Amanda Hopkinson (Visiting Professor in Literary Translation. City, University of London) and French literary translator Ros Schwartz
Please note: All translation is into English and English needs to be your language of habitual use. All evening and lunchtime events are free and attendance is voluntary.
The organisers reserve the right to cancel a workshop that does not recruit to the required minimum number of participants. Any applicants for these groups will be notified with a minimum six weeks' notice.
在今年年初一篇回顾自己耗时十七年翻译《西游记》过程的自述中，林小发写道，她在翻译过程中尽量读了一些构成明代文人常识的经典，包括四书五经、佛经，还有与《西游记》相关的一些道教经典，如此一边阅读一边调查研究，“翻译过程也就成为了一个独特的‘取真经’的过程。”
RRobert Silvers died on Monday, March 20, after serving as The New York Review of Books Editor since 1963. Over almost six decades, Silvers cultivated one of the most interesting, reflective, and lustrous stables of China writers in the world, some of whom offer their remembrances below.
British students may soon study mathematics with Chinese textbooks after a “historic” deal between HarperCollins and a Shanghai publishing house in which books will be translated for use in UK schools.
China’s wealthy cities, including Shanghai and Beijing, produce some of the world’s top-performing maths pupils, while British students rank far behind their counterparts in Asia.
"We have the parallel running of the two stories of Mulan and the modern girl; and the surprise ending which highlights the different perception of gender between Mulan and the modern girl. Qin Wenjun asked me to say that she has written more than 10 picture books, and that this book is the most courageous, challenging, demanding and, in a sense, the happiest one."
. . . and The Dream of the Red Chamber proves it!
Anna Gustafsson Chen reviews Peng Xuejun’s 彭学军 award-winning novel Sister 《你是我的妹》 ... "a beautiful and dramatic story for older children that takes place in Yunnan, sometime in the early 1970s"
"One feature the GLLI site offers now is a Blog page which has a monthly focus on a language and its literature issues in translation. February just focused on Chinese, for example. This month will focus on French literature." Thanks again to everyone who contributed to the Chinese month!
By Helen Wang, February 28, '17
This is the last day in February, and our last post in the Global Literature in Libraries - Paper Republic series on Chinese literature. Thank you for following us! We're very grateful to all our contributors - we couldn't have managed a post a day without you! So far, all our contributors have a strong Chinese connection. But Chinese literature is not just for Chinese readers - so we asked Marinella Mezzanotte, a London-based writer (in English) and a translator (from Italian to English), who is a newbie to Chinese literature to tell us about one of our events and whether it worked for her. In December 2016 she came along to our second speed bookclub event organised by Paper Republic and the Free Word Centre in London. Here's Marinella's response:
By Helen Wang, February 27, '17
Our penultimate post is about popular Chinese fiction of the ghostly, grave-robbing kind. We are thrilled to post this piece by writer and translator Xueting Christine Ni, who is currently working with the fantasy and science fiction author Tang Fei, and writing a book on Chinese deities. Having studied English literature in London, and Chinese literature in Beijing, she is now based mainly in the UK.
By Helen Wang, February 26, '17
Chun Zhang is the translator of a beautiful children’s book The Story of Ink and Water by Liang Peilong and Li Qingye. We are always on the look-out for great children’s books created by Chinese writers and illustrators, and this one is due for publication in March 2017. We invited Chun to tell us more about it...
