Our News, Your News
By Eric Abrahamsen, January 29, '16
I'd always assumed that one of the Chinese words for avocado – 鳄梨, or "alligator pear" – was something made up by Chinese wordsmiths who were coming into contact with the funny fruit for the first time. Now, after reading an article on the Washington Post about restaurant menus in the US from a hundred years ago, I learn that "alligator pear" was something made up by… US wordsmiths who were coming into contact with the funny fruit for the first time. Who knew!?
Now can someone tell me the origins of 牛油果?
Edit: And I spelled 鳄 wrong...
Short items re: the Kyrgyz epic, Manas (玛纳斯史诗); a new "Tibetan" font; Zhao Liang's documentary Behemoth about mining in Inner Mongolia; and Tujia folklorist Sun Jiaxiang (孙家香).
Passages intends to [explore] the literary and narrative trends of some of the world’s least translated territories. Each issue will be co-edited by local editors with knowledge of the most current and relevant arts movements to publish exciting new fiction, poetry, essays, graphic narratives, and new literary forms being developed. We hope that the series will eventually turn into a positive way to bring compelling new projects to English-reading audiences and publishers.
If we meet our modest target of $5500, we’ll be able to cover some of the production costs for future issues and convince our anonymous seed funder that there’s a place in the literary community for a project like this.
By Eric Abrahamsen, January 25, '16
While the rest of us are sleeping, the Paper Republic Science Elves are hard at work updating our database of Chinese authors, books, translations, and publications. We've made a few bits of visible progress recently, to which the Science Elves would like to call to your attention.
The first change is that we've consolidated some of the database pages: it used to be that original Chinese works, their translations, and respective publications of the two, all had their own separate pages in the database. That led to a sort of round-and-round-the-mulberry-bush situation as you clicked from one page to another, and though this amused the Science Elves very much, it was largely unhelpful for the rest of us. This various information is now gathered into more comprehensive pages, where you can see more, while clicking less (for instance see Feng Tang's Beijing Beijing. We've tried to provide redirects for old URLs, so none of your links go broken.
The second change is the introduction of the publications search page, where you can search through publications listed in the database. You can reach this page from the link top and center. For the past few years, we've been compiling lists of "Chinese literature translated and published in 20XX", which has meant quite a bit of manual labor for the people involved. The whole point of having a database, of course, is that you can spit out information automatically, so why not let you do the searching yourself? You can now find publications by year, language, zone, format…
There will be more coming in the future – the database is already quite extensive, and we'll be adding more entry points and search features over the coming months. The Science Elves are dedicated to bringing us into the 1990s, at least, and the 2000s are within reach!
In the meantime, I'll see if I can rouse the Design Elves…
By Nicky Harman, January 24, '16
“That Damned Thing She Said”: four short stories from China to celebrate International Women's Day, in the series "Wanderlust: Great Literature from Around the World".
Read Paper Republic are partnering with Free Word Centre, London, to run a speed-bookclubbing evening on Monday 14 March 2016, 6:45pm. The discussion groups will be led by Nicky Harman, Helen Wang, Emily Jones and Roddy Flagg. Further information and booking on the Free Word events page: https://www.freewordcentre.com/events/detail/tdtss-china.
By Bruce Humes, January 24, '16
Tsai Ing-wen’s post-election response on her Facebook page to a barrage of postings criticizing her stand in favor of Taiwan’s independence:
这个国家伟大的地方就在于，每一个人都有做自己的权利.
Various media have translated as follows:
The greatness of this country lies in that everyone has the right to be oneself.
The greatness of this country lies in how every single person can exercise their rights.
How would you render?
Ten questions (and answers) for those who believe themselves slang-savvy. Here's an example:
- What is a rare but welcome hue for the often-smoggy Beijing skies?
A) Chai Jing blue
B) Daddy Xi sapphire
C) APEC blue
D) Olympic azure
The Hans Christian Andersen Award is the highest international distinction given to authors and illustrators of children's books. Given every other year by IBBY, the Hans Christian Andersen Awards recognize lifelong achievement and are given to an author and an illustrator whose complete works have made an important, lasting contribution to children's literature.
By Nicky Harman, January 19, '16
FIRST: the translation summer school at City University London will run again this year and there will be a Chinese-to-English option: Translate in the City, Literary Translation in Practice, 11th - 15th July 2016. As the blurb says: "An immersion course in literary translation into English across genres, taught by leading literary translators and senior academics, with plenty of opportunities for networking with publishers, teachers and each other."
Save the date if you're interested. More details to follow.
SECOND: Don't forget the Leeds University Writing Chinese translation competition. The post with all the details follows this one.
By Nicky Harman, January 19, '16
Writing Chinese (Leeds University White Rose Centre) and READ PAPER REPUBLIC are jointly running the 2016 Bai Meigui Translation Competition. Launched on 7th November 2015, the competition free to enter, and is open to anyone, from any country, with an interest in Chinese-English translation. The winning translation will be published as one of the READ PAPER REPUBLIC short story series. Click here for further details, and here, for the text. The deadline is 29th February 2016 and the judges are Dave Haysom, Nicky Harman and Helen Wang.
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Asian Books Blog runs its own literary award: The Asian Books Blog Book of the Lunar Year. The winner, for the Year of the Ram / Goat, now drawing to a close, will be announced on February 7, Chinese New Year’s Eve for the upcoming Year of the Monkey.
Books are eligible if they are both reasonably new, and if they featured in Asian Books Blog during the given lunar year – this because news of new books sometimes takes a while to trickle through to Asia. Anthologies are eligible. Reissues are not eligible. Books by regular contributors to Asian Books Blog are not eligible.
The three books by Lei Mi - Profiler, Skinner's Box and The Blade of Silence - have been translated into English by Gabriel Ascher, Gaines Post and Holger Nahm, respectively.
Anna's review' is in Swedish (try google translate or similar to get an idea of what she thinks of them!). This series is getting 4 to 5 stars on amazon, goodreads, etc.
Hong Ke’s novel, Urho (乌尔禾, 红柯著), is set during the 1960s in the Zungharian Basin at the edge of the Gurbantünggüt Desert. This remote and rugged area of Xinjiang was once a favored hunting ground for the Mongol Khans when they ruled Cathay. A Han soldier back from the Korean front — dubbed “Hailibu” by the locals after the legendary Mongolian hero graced with the gift of understanding animal speech — runs a sheep ranch for the Xinjiang Construction Corps.
By Bruce Humes, December 25, '15
Once again, we are reminded that poetry matters in China. And, equally interesting, that translation of poetry matters.
Feng Tang, author of Beijing, Beijing (北京北京 冯唐著), has apparently crossed the lines of decency with his new translation of verse by China's favorite foreign poet, Rabindranath Tagore. Just in case the world didn't know about this travesty, the Party's English mouthpiece, China Daily, has published an essay, Lust in Translation, about the “testosterone-driven” translator's very personal take on the work of this Bengali poet.
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Letter from Charles A Laughlin, vis MCLC
Dear Colleagues:
I have a visiting scholar named Hua Meng here from Tongji University in Shanghai, who is doing survey work on the impact of modern and contemporary Chinese literature in the US (in translation, mostly). He has been surveying groups around UVA but needs more respondents, so if you could pass these three short surveys along to your students or others who might be interested and willing to complete them, we would greatly appreciate it. He will likely be publishing his results within the year (in Chinese), and I will let you know when he does. I have looked over and helped him revise these surveys, and I can see they will only take a few minutes to fill out. Thank you for your support!
https://zh.surveymonkey.com/r/XWS55PW
https://zh.surveymonkey.com/r/XSC259B
https://zh.surveymonkey.com/r/XS62D8L
Asymptote Journal editor-in-chief, Lee Yew Leong, conducted a Skype interview with Nicky Harman, one of the founders of this new initiative, Read Paper Republic, to find out more.
Great piece by Dave Haysom in China Dialogue - read it in English or Chinese (隐士与蝴蝶：自然写作在中国的回潮)
By Helen Wang, December 4, '15
Programme below. Contact elisabeth DOT forster AT history.ox.ac.uk for further details.
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By Helen Wang, December 1, '15
For the last three years we have produced a list of Chinese to English translations (books only) published over the year. Here is our list for 2015. As always, if we’ve missed any, please add them below. (Previous lists are here: 2012, 2013, 2014). We have also added most of these titles to our list on Goodreads.
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By David Haysom, November 30, '15
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