Our News, Your News
By Nicky Harman, February 14, '16
Frances Weightman, of Writing Chinese, Leeds University, UK, has sent this UPDATE: "Our 2nd Bai Meigui Chinese-English Translation Competition (run this year in collaboration with the ever so fabulous Read Paper Republic) is open for entries and we are delighted to announce that we once again can offer the winner a full bursary to this summer's Translate in the City literary translation workshop at City University, London. We are grateful to the White Rose East Asia Centre for their generosity in facilitating this. The winning entry will also be published (details to follow). The deadline for entries is Wednesday 9th March, so plenty of time if you've not yet started.
The text this time is a short piece of reportage by Li Jingrui with all sorts of interesting bits to challenge even seasoned translators! So – do take up the challenge and click this link for more details on the text and how to enter.
Although comics and cartoons (known in Mandarin as manhua) have existed as form of popular entertainment in Taiwan for at least a century, in comparison to Japanese manga they are almost completely unknown to your everyday English-speaking comics fan.
By Eric Abrahamsen, February 8, '16
So, following custom in many places on the internet, we thought it
would be nice to do an end-of-the-year what-we’ve-been-up-to
retrospective, now that 2015 is nearly over and 2016 is right… What’s
that? 2015 already over? Not in our neighborhood! As far as we’re
concerned, these are the last days of Yi Wei (乙未), and come Monday
we’ll be entering Bing Shen (丙申), the Year of the Fire Monkey (hence
the excerpt from Journey to the West, aka “Monkey”, that we just
published on Read Paper Republic). None of this newfangled Gregorian
tomfoolery around here. We might consider the Julian calendar… but no.
What have we been up to over the past lunar year? Here’s a brief
rundown:
More…
By Bruce Humes, February 4, '16
I've just updated my guide.
This 民族题材文学 category includes writing — regardless of the author’s ethnicity — in which non-Han culture, motifs or characters play an important role. But the great majority of the works listed were penned by a member of one of China’s minority ethnic groups. There are entries for fiction (and a bit of poetry) touching on the Bai, Evenki, Hui, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Manchu, Miao, Mongolian, Lahu, Lisu, Oirat, Seediq, Tibetan, Uyghur, Xiongnu and Yi peoples. Taiwan fiction is included, and the Tibetan section now features 25 entries. Unless noted, the original is in Chinese and the translation is in English. But I’ve also included a handful of renditions into French, Spanish and Japanese.
By Eric Abrahamsen, February 2, '16
Below is the announcement of the Australian Association for Literary Translation (AALITRA) translation prize for 2016, featuring prose and poetry selections from the Chinese. I'll be acting as judge of entries for the A Yi prose bit.
See below for details (keep in mind this is open to Australian citizens only…):
The Australian Association for Literary Translation (AALITRA) now invites entries for the AALITRA Translation Prize.
The AALITRA Translation Prize aims to acknowledge the wealth of
literary translation skills present in the Australian community.
Prizes are awarded for a translation of a selected prose text and for
a translation of a selected poem, with the focus on a different
language each time the prize is offered.
In 2016, the focus language is Chinese. The prose text for translation
is by A Yi (阿乙). The poetry text is by Rong Rong (荣荣). Each text
is available from our
website.
More…
Their publication is quite an undertaking – several entries on the list consist of 10 volumes or more – and shows that the authorities are spending serious money on related projects. The list includes books in Bai, Dai, Dong, Hani, Jingpo, Kazakh, Korean, Kyrgyz, Miao, Mongolian, Naxi, Lahu, Lisu, Tibetan, Uyghur, Wa, Yi, Zaiwa and Zhuang, as well as bilingual texts and those wholly in Mandarin.
Today, the government is not only encouraging young people to read but also trying to get non-Koreans to read Korean books. Across the street from Gwanghwamun Square, the Literature Translation Institute of Korea recently held its fourteenth annual workshop for the translation and publication of Korean literature. With a budget of ten million dollars and eighty employees, L.T.I. Korea—a subsidiary of Korea’s Ministry of Tourism, Culture, and Sport—is dedicated to increasing the circulation of Korean literature in translation around the world. For 2015’s conference, on the “Global Promotion of K-Books” (think K-pop, but for books), the L.T.I. flew in publishers, translators, editors, and lawyers from the United States, Japan, Russia, Singapore, and the U.K.
By now, it has been nearly forty years since the Cultural Revolution officially ended, yet in China, considering the magnitude and significance of the event, it has remained a poorly examined, under-documented subject. Official archives are off-limits. Serious books on the period, whether comprehensive histories, in-depth analyses, or detailed personal memoirs, are remarkably few. Ji Xianlin’s The Cowshed: Memories of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, which has just been released in English for the first time, is something of an anomaly.
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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