Our News, Your News
By Lucas Klein, April 13, '15
Or they get translated better, if not more—at least in 2014. Now that prize season is upon us, we get a chance to see which, if any, Chinese writers in translation are making an impression on the judges. This year, with Best Translated Book Award fiction longlist nominations for Can Xue 残雪, Qiu Miaojin 邱妙津, and Dorothy Tse 謝曉虹, a Best Translated Book Award longlisting in poetry for Hsia Yü 夏宇, a Griffin Prize shortlisting for Wang Xiaoni 王小妮, and a Newman Prize for Chinese Literature for Chu T’ien-wen朱天文, two points pop out: all nominees are women, and of the six a stark majority are from outside the PRC—which means some would call them “sinophone,” a potentially broader category than just “Chinese.”*
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CEFC China Perspectives 2015/1 Special Feature:
Editorial - by Wang Chaohua and Song Mingwei
After 1989: The New Wave of Chinese Science Fiction by Song Mingwei
Blanks to be Filled: Public-Making and the Censorship of Jia Pingwa’s Decadent Capital by Thomas Chen
Dreamers and Nightmares: Political novels by Wang Lixiong and Chan Koonchung by Wang Chaohua
Society and Utopia in Liu Cixin by Adrian Thieret
Review of Jeffrey C. Kinkley's Visions of Dystopia in China’s New Historical Novels by Yinde Zhang
Essay by Ken Liu, in i09, 10 April 2015
When early science fiction novels were first translated into Chinese, the translators took a lot of liberties with the material, reinventing Jules Verne for Chinese readers. Author Ken Liu (The Grace of Kings) explains how this helped inspire him, in turn, to reinvent Chinese traditions for Western fantasy readers.
"This raises the question of what translation is. I’m afraid it is something quite different from what the person on the street takes it to be. It is not code-switching. Let’s take a tiny example, chosen at random, from David Roy’s translation of the immense sixteenth-century Chinese novel Chin P’ing Mei, or The Plum in the Golden Vase, written during the Ming dynasty, the final volume of which has recently appeared. Here the doughty female protagonist, Golden Lotus, is waiting in a garden for her latest lover, who is also her son-in-law. To tease her, the son-in-law hides under a raspberry trellis, then jumps out as she passes by and throws his arms around her..."
Yu Hua shares his thoughts on China’s wealth gap.
Asia House, London, 11 May
PEN-supported novelist A Yi joins Adam Brookes, author of Night Heron, and Paul French, author of Midnight in Peking, to discuss whether Asia is the perfect setting for the modern day thriller. A highly entertaining and adrenalin filled night, where the lines between fact and fiction will blur – not to be missed!
A Yi’s novel A Perfect Crime (translated by Anna Holmwood) is out with Oneworld on 7th May 2015.
Congratulations to Dorothy Tse and translator Nicky Harman (Snow and Shadow),
and to Can Xue and translator Annelise Finegan Wasmoen (The Last Lover).
Every two years, the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) chooses outstanding books for and about children and young people with disabilities. This biennial selection draws attention to books published around the world, in an extensive variety of languages and formats, that address special needs and situations and which encourage inclusion at every level.
Books selected as 2015 outstanding titles are featured in a print catalogue that will be launched at this year’s Bologna Children's Book Fair in Italy on March 30th. The 2015 catalogue will also be digitized and available online.
On March 20th in the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts in Skopje, the Managing Board of the Struga Poetry Evenings officially announced that the Chinese poet Bei Dao is the laureate of the “Golden Wreath” of the Struga Poetry Evenings of 2015. With this award, he joins the list of the greatest poetic names of the second half of the twentieth and the twenty-first century: Wystan Hugh Auden, Eugenio Montale, Léopold Sédar Senghor, Rafael Alberti, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Ted Hughes, Joseph Brodsky, Allen Ginsberg, Tomas Tranströmer, Ko Un, and has become the 50th laureate of this most prestigious world achievement of poetic work.
The word frog in Chinese is 蛙 (wā), while the word for child is 娃 (wá). Frogs are omnipresent in the text and haunt Gugu, a village obstetrician who rabidly enacts China’s infamous family planning policy and is thus responsible for thousands of abortions. The beauty of the metaphor lies in the ambiguity between these two similar sounding words. If we substitute the word frog for child, then the constant references to frogs throughout becomes haunting.
At one point in the novel, Gugu, returning after a night of drinking with friends, is chased by frogs. In the English translation, she is initially unsettled by the sound of croaking reverberating “as if the cries of infants” before eventually being chased by “an incalculable number of frogs.” But in Chinese, both the cries of frogs and children are also 哇 (wā). So in the Chinese original, this paragraph hangs on the inflections of these three wa sounds. If we see Gugu as chased by the ghostly wails of the children she has aborted, as opposed to the mere croaks of frogs, then the scene takes on the gravity and weight appropriate for a Nobel Prize winner. The way the meanings interweave due to their similar pronunciation is ethereal and translucent — and entirely lost in the English translation.
By David Haysom, March 26, '15
On Monday the translation aficionados of Beijing descended on iQiYi to hear author Sun Yisheng discuss his story《猴者》("Apery" née "Monkey Business") with translator Nicky Harman and Pathlight editors Eric Abrahamsen and Dave Haysom. Raw first drafts were exposed, ancient linguistic enmities unearthed, and the democratic process defiantly spurned. A big thank you to everyone who came, to all the people at the Bookworm and iQiYi for hosting us (and resolving our inevitable technical crises), to Lacey for the seamless interpretation, and to Karmia for the photos!
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Upon seeing the beast, Wukong was dumbfounded, so he replied, “Old Sun doesn’t know you, but I reckon that you’re a monster that’s here to make trouble, so I want to ask you, do you know who your daddy is?” The dragon replied, “Let’s not mince words, and I won’t ask what your name is. Everyone who comes here has to follow the rules: I get to test their intelligence. I give them all a riddle to solve, and if they guess correctly they get to go past. If not then I get to finish them off!” So saying, he opened his mouth and stretched out his tongue, spitting out several white bones to show the sincerity of his threat.
The app is a digital reading platform, where readers can download full texts of literary works published by People's Literature, and the app serves as a social network platform for writers and readers, where registered users can leave comments below an article and discuss their reading experiences.
The novel, as with Yan’s other works, has been characterized as a satire. In truth, however, though there are satirical exaggerations in the novel, not least an extended metaphoric side-narrative in which a character attempts to grow wheat by feeding the grain with his own blood, the facts of the Great Leap Forward are so absurd that they require little overstatement by the politically motivated novelist.
By Eric Abrahamsen, March 19, '15
Those of you who are in Beijing: come to the iQiyi cafe next Monday night (March 23rd) at 8pm, for an event with Sun Yisheng, Nicky Harman, Dave Haysom and myself, talking a bit about Pathlight magazine, but mostly about Sun Yisheng's story 《猴者》, and Nicky's translation of it: "Apery". Expect the usual keen textual autopsy, mixed with general literary commentary and snarky asides.
The event is part of the Bookworm Literary Festival, and is 60 RMB. It's taking place at iQiyi, the cafe sort of kitty-corner to the Bookworm that sticks up all by itself, you know the one.
By Eric Abrahamsen, March 19, '15
Each year the London Book Fair hands out awards in a number of categories as part of its International Excellence Awards program. We're pleased to announce that Paper Republic has made the shortlist for this year's International Literary Translation Initiative Award. This is a wonderful bit of recognition, and many thanks to all who made it happen.
The short list is short: besides us it's Asymptote and the Dutch Foundation for Literature, so we're in excellent company.
Feature and interview by Anelise Finegan Wasmoen in BOMB Magazine.
"For intrigued readers, Can Xue's body of work in English is substantial, including several story collections and two novels from among the hundreds of short stories, novellas, novels, essays, and criticism published in Chinese over her thirty-year career."
Translated by Anelise Finegan Wasmoen, published by Yale University Press, 2014.
The 27th Annual Lambda Literary Awards–or the “Lammys,” as they are affectionately known–kick off another record-breaking year with today’s announcement of the finalists. They were chosen from a record 818 submissions (up from 746 last year) from 407 publishers (up from 352 last year). Submissions came from major mainstream publishers and from academic presses, from both long-established and new LGBT publishers, as well as from emerging publish-on-demand technologies. Pioneer and Trustee Award honorees, the master of ceremonies, and presenters will be announced in April. The winners will be announced at a gala ceremony on Monday evening, June 1, 2015 in New York City.
Upon arriving at the Kingdom of the False Qin, Sun Wukong looked down and saw that the assembled monsters wanted to use artillery to attack the fleet. The monkey Sun couldn’t let this happen and so he firmed up his resolve and plucked 72 hairs from his body. Blowing them into the wind, he shouted, “Change!” And with that they changed into a multitude of air balloons, filling the sky. With that, he shouted, “Change!” again, and the air balloons all let loose bombs, and crashing thunder fell all around like the falling rain, exploding and sending off thick plumes of smoke, until the whole sky was filled with flames, until walls collapsed, ramparts fell in on themselves, and cries of distress could be heard, causing Tripitaka to shout loudly, “You brutish monkey, making a mess of things like this! You’ve committed a great sin by taking life, this is unacceptable, unacceptable!”
"One of the reasons Fiberead is able to get book ready for the Chinese market more quickly than traditional publishers is because it works with about 300 qualified translators... Fiberead’s revenue-sharing model gives 30 percent of money earned by a book to authors and 40 percent to its translators and editors. The company, which does not require a down payment from authors, keeps the rest..."
By Eric Abrahamsen, March 8, '15
So I saw Wolf Totem last night, and I think stayed awake for enough
of it to be able to write a short review.
A bit ago Bruce posted some thoughts and questions about the film,
focusing as he does on the ethnic minority angle, and asking about its
depiction of Mongolia and Mongolians.
Having seen the film, I can say with some confidence: it’s not really
about Mongolia at all.
By which I mean, this is a storyline that has been cooked down to its
essentials until it looks more like a film-school exercise in
story-boarding than it does a real story. It ended up being a
prototype for any and all films that follow the “civilized man visits
wise natives and learns their wisdom but doesn’t get the girl” arc.
Sure it’s set in Mongolia, and sure its got wolves, but all the plot
particulars are so rudimentary they feel like placeholders that the
filmmakers later forgot to replace with actual content. The Mongolians
could just be blank blobs tagged INSERT NOBLE SAVAGES HERE. Chen Zhen
might have a sign on his chest reading INSERT NAIVE IDEALIST HERE.
Mongolian is spoken, in exactly the same quantities as Lakota was
spoken in Dances With Wolves, or Na’vi in Avatar. In the same
quantities, and to the same purpose. Those movies – and a barrel more
like them – fleshed out the civilization-meets-savagery theme into
something that (even if you objected to it) had specificity, and the
emotional weight that comes with that. Wolf Totem remains an
insubstantial Platonic ideal.
Even the wolf scenes, sad to say. I did enjoy the night storm scene
with the wolf-pack chasing the horses. The shot of the horses the next
morning was the film’s most arresting visual image. And yet… the
“thrilling” wolf scenes were filmed in an entirely generic way. The
cinematography and the score were more appropriate to Avatar’s
scenes of dragon-riding or attack helicopters than wild animals.
Wolves have their own pace, their own tension, their own menace, and
the camera failed to find that.
Try reading this Q&A with Jiang Rong and you’ll see what I’m talking
about: his comments on the differences between the film and his book
immediately restore a sense of depth and reality to the story. And no
wonder:
- Discussion of ethnic conflict removed.
- Doomed cross-cultural romance added.
- Death of wolf-cub removed.
This last is probably most revealing. Jiang Rong’s first explanation
is “Westerners would not be able to bear this. They would think this
was too cruel, and the animal rights people might protest.” Passing
over that non-sequitur, we come to what feels like the real reason:
…the parts of the film that include the cub are pretty superficial.
People were very moved by the wolf cub in the book because I wrote
about it in great detail. So when the wolf cub dies in the book, many
readers cried. Even I cried while I was writing it. The wolf cub’s
personality is very strong in the book up until its death, so it is a
very complete chain of events.
But since the cub wasn’t very prominent in the early parts of the
film, to have this shocking thing happen to it wouldn’t be very
logical.
In essence: “We took out the most emotionally affecting part of the
film, because the film doesn’t really have any emotion in it.”
I left the theater with the weird feeling that I hadn’t seen a film at
all, merely a description of one.
By Joshua Rothman, in The New Yorker, 6 March 2015
The Chinese Political Novel
Migration of a World Genre by Catherine Vance Yeh
Harvard East Asian Monographs 380, 2015
ISBN 9780674504356
Featured at Creative Asia: one of the six poems by Yao Hui translated by Eleanor Goodman for the Autumn 2014 'Myth & History' issue of Pathlight.
It’s a humbling choice for Amazon. Though Amazon’s been selling goods online in China for about a decade under Amazon.cn, it never managed to ride the Chinese e-commerce craze. Meanwhile, Tmall and JD.com, Alibaba’s prime competitor, continue to dominate. As Tech in Asia notes, the move means that Amazon is essentially paying Alibaba a commission to sell its goods.
Like Mo Yan, for instance.
Time Out Beijing present the ultimate guide to the best Chinese books since 1900. Discover the top 20 Chinese fiction and 20 Chinese non-fiction books as voted for by 25 of China’s top literary experts including Penguin Asia's Jo Lusby, author Lynn Pan and Newsweek's Duncan Hewitt.
Find out more about the rich history of China’s authors in Beijing in our guide to the city’s literary landmarks and where to find them, including Cat Country author Lao She's former residence and former Qing Dynasty literati hangout Taoranting Park.
Also discover Beijing’s best bookshops, and all the information you need to make the most of the Bookworm Literary Festival in March 2015.
Now, greater plans are in the works. General manager Peter Goff says The Bookworm is going to become a publisher, something he sees as a natural step forward.
Its newly established China Bookworm Press will focus primarily on contemporary Chinese fiction, translating books into English to make them more accessible to readers outside the mainland.
Just when Sun Wukong thought he had nowhere to go, suddenly Princess Iron Fan stepped up onto the stage to ask the monkey Sun to dance with her. Sun Wukong said, “How come a monster like you is being so nice?” Princess Iron Fan said, “That’s all in the past, there’s no need remember such things! Come on! Come on!” Not wanting to seem impolite, the monkey Sun agreed to dance with her. He was surprised to discover she was an excellent dancing partner, with a slender and supple waist, like a poplar or willow, and soft, vulpine steps.
My Chinese censor is Zhang Jiren, an editor at the Shanghai Translation Publishing House, and last September he accompanied me on a publicity tour. It was the first time I’d gone on a book tour with my censor.
Su Wei, 62, is a novelist who teaches Chinese language and literature at Yale. He left China in 1989. This story was told in Mandarin to Austin Woerner, who is Su’s translator.
Q&A with the author, feature by Amy Qin, New York Times.
Photographs and audio are now available from the February 24, 2015 event “Sound and Image: Chinese Poets in Conversation with Artist Xu Bing.” The standing-room only event featured a stimulating discussion between internationally acclaimed artist Xu Bing and five renowned Chinese poets: Bei Dao, Ouyang Jianghe, Xi Chuan, Zhai Yongming, and Zhou Zan. Their conversation was moderated by Lydia H. Liu, Wun Tsun Tam Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, and John Rajchman, Adjunct Professor of Art History at Columbia University. Eugenia Lean, Director of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and Associate Professor of Chinese History at Columbia University, introduced the discussion.
TODAY (24 Feb) at the London School of Economics, a discussion with
- Chan Koonchung (The Fat Years,The Unbearable Dreamworld of Champa the Driver
- William A Callahan (China Dreams: 20 Visions of the Future)
- Isabel Hilton (founding editor of Chinadialogue)
- Hans Steinmüller (Communities of Complicity. Everyday Ethics in Rural China)
by Wen-chin Ouyang, in Journal of Qur'anic Studies 16.3 (2014): 62–83.
你們一齊抓住真主的繩索
Hold fast to God’s rope all together
(Q. 3:103)
I begin my exploration of the relationship between the Qur’an and identity in contemporary Chinese fiction with this quotation from the Qur’an because it encapsulates the communitarian impulse underpinning the writings of the two Chinese Muslims I have chosen to look at: Zhang Chengzhi (張承志, b. 1948) and Huo Da (霍達, b. 1945). It informs their identity politics. The verse itself appears in Zhang’s novel, A History of the Soul, Xing-ling-shi (心靈史, 1991), and, to the best of my knowledge, it may be the only quotation from the Qur’an found in the works of fiction
written by Chinese Muslims.
Part 3 of 6 of a translation of Zhang Guangyu's 張光宇 (1900-1965) overlooked masterpiece, Manhua Journey to the West 西漫遊記.
Conducting the first comprehensive survey in English of this phenomenon, Michel Hockx describes in detail the types of Chinese literature taking shape right now online and their novel aesthetic, political, and ideological challenges. Offering a unique portal into postsocialist Chinese culture, he presents a complex portrait of internet culture and control in China that avoids one-dimensional representations of oppression. The Chinese government still strictly regulates the publishing world, yet it is growing increasingly tolerant of internet literature and its publishing practices while still drawing a clear yet ever-shifting ideological bottom line. Hockx interviews online authors, publishers, and censors, capturing the convergence of mass media, creativity, censorship, and free speech that is upending traditional hierarchies and conventions within China--and across Asia
By Helen Wang, February 10, '15
Style in Translation: A Corpus-Based Perspective by Libo Huang (New Frontiers in Translation Studies, 2015), ISBN 978-3-662-45565-4
Publisher's page here
Front Matter, incl Contents available as pdf
Back Matter, incl Appendices available as pdf
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By Helen Wang, February 10, '15
Paola Iovene, Tales of Futures Past: Anticipation and the Ends of Literature in Contemporary China (Stanford University Press, 2014)
Carla Nappi reviews the book and interviews the author here:
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With sales of some 2.5 million copies, Funeral of a Muslim (穆斯林的葬礼，霍达著), Huo Da’s tale about three generations of a Hui family in Beijing, is quite possibly the most popular ethnic-themed novel ever published in China. It spans the turbulent years of the Japanese invasion, World War II and part of the Cultural Revolution . . .
By Bruce Humes, February 9, '15
Speaking recently at the China Development Forum in London, Goran Malmqvist (马悦然), a sinologist and Emeritus Professor at Stockholm University, said that "poor translations and little attention Chinese literature received from Western publishers are the major obstacles for Chinese culture to go global."
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By Nicky Harman, February 9, '15
Francis Beechinor (from SOAS) has asked me to post this event for anyone in London next week: "Having lived in both Hong Kong and the UK, Jennifer Wong, the author of Goldfish and winner of the Hong Kong Young Artist Award, will share her insights on Hong Kong as both an inherently Chinese and international city. Through readings of some of her own poems about Hong Kong, she will share her views on the city's unique culture and identity. Come along to hear about the life of a poet and what it means to be a citizen of Hong Kong today. Feel free to join the Facebook event.
Venue: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, Rm 116
Date/time: Tue 17 Feb 2015 - 18:30 - 20:00.
More specifically, the rise of creative writing courses in China - both Chinese and English creative language writing courses.
French edition of Chi Zijian's tragic novel about the reindeer-herding Evenki of China's northeast, Last Quarter of the Moon, will eventually join English, Dutch, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and Turkish versions . . .
By Helen Wang, February 6, '15
Ann Morgan’s recent publication Reading the World: Confessions of a Literary Explorer devotes no fewer than five pages (pp.208-212) to the first translations of Sherlock Holmes into Chinese, the spoiler-titles (eg The Case of the Sapphire in the Belly of the Goose and The Case of the Jealous Woman Murdering Her Husband), and the Chinese gong’an (court case) tradition.
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