Three Body Problem Wins the Hugo Award
By Eric Abrahamsen, August 24, '15
Congrats to Liu Cixin and Ken Liu, whose joint product volume one of The Three Body Problem just won the 2015 Hugo Award in the novel category. This book just won't stop!
Our News, Your News
Links to China's Ethnic-themed Literature in Translation bruce-humes.com
Includes links to excerpts and/or introductions to short stories, novels and a bit of poetry whose themes touch on cultures of the Evenki, Hui, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Manchu, Mongolian, Lisu, Miao, Oirat, Seediq, Tibetan, Uyghur, Xiongnu and Yi peoples. Many of the pieces, but not all, were penned by writers of these non-Han ethnicities. For the most part, 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.
On Political Dissent and the Remarkable Similarities Between Mark Twain and Yu Hua lareviewofbooks.org
By Jeffrey Wasserstrom. "What if Yu Hua had become the first Chinese author, still based in China, to win a Nobel Prize for Literature? And, secondly, was Mark Twain a dissident?
I’ve been pondering this pair of questions about two of my favorite authors since November 2012..."
Ha Jin and the double life of a Chinese spy in the United States mychinesebooks.com
Ha Jin is much more an immigrant who has found his place in the United States than an exile or a dissident. He has written a novel of very high standard but he warns us for the future: "To be a professional writer, it’s like becoming an athlete. You have to perform constantly, you have to jump higher and higher although you know that’s impossible."
5 Reasons Indian Publishers Should Not Ignore China publishingperspectives.com
Three state-level visits in last twelve months have created an atmosphere of positive enterprise. ... But is the Indian publishing industry paying heed? If the participation in national book fairs an indication, no: the sole Chinese presence at the 2015 New Delhi book fair was one Bob Song, president of Royal Collins, China. Meanwhile, the Beijing International Book Fair saw an average of only 3-5 Indian publishers in each of the last five years. Where is the trade happening, if at all?
Beijing International Book Fair: Literary Salons
By Eric Abrahamsen, August 20, '15
As Bruce has already noted, Paper Republic is helping the Beijing International Book Fair plan a series of literary events during the book fair in Beijing next week. It's a relatively small affair, but we've had fun with it, and I think have some very nice events on the way.
Do note: These events are aimed at a Chinese-speaking audience, and most will not cater to English-speakers!
You can see the full event schedule, plus our awesome posters (designed by Sun Xiaoxi, about whom more later), at this link.
Events we're particularly excited about include a few with Alan Lee, illustrator of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, a conversation between Enrique Vila-Matas and Ge Fei, a writing workshop with Simon Van Booy, and a discussion about the future of publishing in China with folks from Guoren and Douban. But there's a lot going on in there, check out the link!
Lastly, one event that didn't make it into the official schedule, but which I'm very enthusiastic about, is a talk with author and poet Wang Xiaoni and editor Li Jing, about Wang's short story collection 1966. That's happening Sunday, August 30th, at 3pm, at the One Way Street Aiqinhai location, and shouldn't be missed.
Inspired at the Asian Festival of Children's Content, Singapore, 2015 ihatov.wordpress.com
By Avery Fischer Udagawa, Bangkok Last month I attended Asian Festival of Children’s Content (AFCC) 2015 as a delegate. I enjoyed exploring Chinese literature for children, as China was the country of focus.
Translators Lab at Norwich www.selectcentre.org
Organised by The Select Centre in partnership with Writers' Centre Norwich, the Translators Lab provides excellent tutelage in a supportive environment. Whether you are tackling literary translation for the first time, or you have already started but want extra guidance, this 8-week course is for you. It will run from 12 Sep – 2 Nov, 2015.
Apartheid online at Beijing’s Int’l Book Fair?
By Bruce Humes, August 19, '15
Nice to see that the BIBF (Aug 26-29) has fairly attractive Chinese and English sections to its new-look web site, both of which – congrats! – are already up and functioning here.
But as I glanced through it, it reminded me of my first trip to the New China in 1981. When my father and I went for breakfast with our tour group at Shanghai’s Old Jinjiang Hotel, we were immediately forced to choose: Chinese cuisine at this table, Western at the other. Naturally, I dragged him along with me to the Chinese table — after all, it was my first meal in China! But when I tried to order a cup of coffee for my father, the waiter snapped: “If you want coffee, sit at the Western table!”
The Dao of China Publishing
By Bruce Humes, August 14, '15
I have noticed that many of the promising new books about China's ethnic minorities -- their history, culture, and even award-winning short stories and novels by ethnic authors -- to which I call attention in my blog are just about impossible to track down and purchase. They are publicized in a press release duly carried word-for-word on certain politically correct web sites, and then fall off the radar.
A Manchu grad student in Beijing explained it to me thus:
在中国，有些书出版就不是为了阅读，或者说不是为了买给市场为大家提供阅读的。
Diao Dou and Adam Marek, at Manchester Literature Festival, 17 Oct www.manchesterliteraturefestival.co.uk
Two modern masters of the surreal discuss the power of literary absurdism in this one-off event. Diao Dou is arguably China’s most daring contemporary satirist, writing poetry, short stories and novels. His first collection in English, Point of Origin, is a stunning display of high wire literary acrobatics.
Mongolian Shaman Songs of Praise Rendered in Chinese bruce-humes.com
Entitled 萨满神歌 (lit., sacred songs of the shaman), they offer praise mainly to mothers, and the spirits of mountains and rivers. Such songs are passed on orally and rarely written down.
Shaman and their lyrics do occasionally appear in 21st-century Chinese fiction, however. For example, here are three novels . . .
Isaacson reviews Kinkley's "Visions of Dystopia in China's New Historical Novels" networks.h-net.org
Author: Jeffrey C. Kinkley
Reviewer: Nathaniel Isaacson
Jeffrey C. Kinkley, Visions of Dystopia in China's New Historical Novels, New York: Columbia University Press, 2014. ISBN 978-0-231-16768-0.
Issue 28 of Asia Literary Review Released www.asialiteraryreview.com
We are thrilled to announce that our Summer 2015 issue (Asia and Australia, a Shared Hemisphere) has been released! Free preview articles (including a peek inside the hearts and minds of agents at a Philippine call center, and an essay that struggles with Indonesia's tumultuous political history) and our editorial are here.
Quintessential Beijing Books www.cityweekend.com.cn
List of 21 titles from 2012. Time for an update?
Interview with translator Annelous Stiggelbout europe.chinadaily.com.cn
In this ongoing series about the translation of Chinese literature, we invited some Sinologists to share with us their observations about how Chinese literature is received in their countries, their opinions on the promotion of Chinese literature and their stories during their translation. In this article, we invited Annelous Stiggelbout to talk over these issues.
JOB: Teacher of Chinese Literature - Independent Girls' School, London www.reed.co.uk
Reeson Education is looking for a Chinese Teacher for one of our client schools in South-West London. This is a part-time, permanent position of Chinese A (Literature) to teach in the IB Diploma and IB MYP programmes. As an international school, there are a number of native Mandarin speakers who wish to study Chinese literature as part of their IB Diploma.
Jeremy Tiang awarded NEA Literary Translation Fellowship arts.gov
Jeremy Tiang awarded NEA Literary Translation Fellowship to translate Taiwanese writer Lo Yi-Chin's novel Far Away.
Beijing International Book Fair: Literary Salons
By Eric Abrahamsen, August 5, '15
The Beijing International Book Fair, which takes place annually at the end of August, has always been primarily a publishing event – domestic and international publishing houses trading their wares. This year, with the help of Paper Republic, the BIBF is growing an additional limb: the Literary Salons, a small, reader-focused literary festival taking place alongside the publishing event.
Between August 22nd and 30th, Chinese and international writers will appear in more than a dozen literary events within Beijing, most taking place at the One Way Street Space.
We'll be announcing a full schedule in the next week or so, but expect to see Enrique Vila-Matas in conversation with Ge Fei, Alan Lee discussing his illustrations for The Lord of the Rings, Feng Tang reading poetry, and much more. Stay tuned!
Xi Dada’s Anti-corruption Campaign Targets the Mao Dun Literature Prize news.xinhuanet.com
Xinhua: The organizers of one of China's top literary awards have set up a team to supervise the judging process and make sure it is fair and free of corruption . . .
Chinese farmer writes Unit 731 novel news.xinhuanet.com
A farmer in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province has written a novel based on oral accounts by forced laborers in the notorious Japanese army Unit 731 in Harbin, the provincial capital. Ju Bingnan, 64, spent six years writing the 800,000-word work named "Heibao," the name of Unit 731 before 1942. It was a top-secret biological and chemical warfare research base at the center of Japan's biological warfare in China and Southeast Asia during WWII. Ju donated his books to the district government of Pingfang, where the remains of Unit 731 are located, last week, as a gift ahead of the upcoming anniversary of the end of WWII.
Hong Kong literature inside and outside of the Umbrella Movement www.englishpen.org
New essay by Dorothy Tse, translated by Michael Day
One of Jack Livings' interesting techniques (in his stories set in contemporary China)
By Helen Wang, July 31, '15
"One of Livings’ interesting techniques is switching point of view at multiple junctures within his stories, often just for a sentence or two, so that the reader slips out of a protagonist’s thoughts for an instant and sees him or her from the outside, as others might. The habit is at first disorienting, but, slowly, the disorientation gains a strength. By the end of the collection, it feels like an artistic credo of sorts: a belief in seeing things from all angles." -- Review by Jonathan Lee in The Guardian, 16 July 2015
Should Ethnicity Limit What a Fiction Writer Can Write? lareviewofbooks.org
Novelist Susan Barker ("British, mixed-race English and Chinese, but linguistically and culturally British") responds to Chinese man in audience who comments that her book (which he hasn't read) "is an interesting perspective on China […] but just a Western perspective. You can never understand the Chinese.”
Found: Lin Yutang's translation of Dream of the Red Chamber news.asiaone.com
An unpublished English translation of the Chinese classic novel Dream of the Red Chamber by the writer and translator Lin Yutang (1895-1976) has been uncovered in Japan, Nankai University in Tianjin recently announced.
New Journal : Chinese Literature and Culture europe.chinadaily.com.cn
Chu Dongwei, founder and editor-in-chief of the print and online journal, is an associate professor at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies.
Chinese Literature and Culture, published three times a year, is devoted to translations of Chinese texts (works from the past or by contemporary authors), essays of cultural criticism and original writings－fiction or nonfiction－dealing with the China experience or life in Chinese communities around the world.
Report on the New Writing from East Asia event in Leeds yorkpen.wordpress.com
By Stefan Kielbasiewicz of York PEN.
The last part of the event "The Story of a Story" was recorded, and can be viewed on the Free Word Centre website
Chinese fiction - what to read next writingchinese.leeds.ac.uk
From the Writing Chinese project at Leeds University: "We asked our symposium speakers for their recommendations on Chinese fiction; here's what they came up with!"
"Unavailing": Learning English via Xinhua News Translations
By Bruce Humes, July 21, '15
As of July 22, at least 238 people have been detained or questioned since the nationwide clampdown on China's attorneys began, according to the Hong Kong-based China Human Rights Lawyer Concern Group, reports The Guardian.
That sounds worrisome indeed!
But I'm also interested in the adjective applied to describe the apparently futile efforts of critics of the crackdown as noted below:
China’s state-controlled media have rejected claims Beijing is waging a war against civil society. “Critics should first get the facts right, get to the bottom of the problem before embarrassing themselves in another unavailing episode of finger-pointing,” an editorial by Xinhua, Beijing’s official news agency, argued this week.
My question: What's the Chinese for "unavailing"? I assume the Xinhua news item was translated from the Chinese original.
I get the feeling this term may be appearing more often . . .
READ PAPER REPUBLIC hooks up with two UK organisations
By Nicky Harman, July 16, '15
A key part of the READ PAPER REPUBLIC project, apart from publishing complete short stories every #TranslationThurs for a year, has been to make sure that people read them. So we linked up with two UK organisations with a special interest in literary translation and...fast-forward a few weeks ......produced a video of a discussion between writer Dorothy Tse, Dave Haysom (Pathlight and R P R editor) and me.
Mainland Authors at the HK Book Fair (Jul 17) hkbookfair.hktdc.com
Events to be held in Mandarin/Cantonese:
文学的山河— 从《额尔古纳河右岸》到《群山之巅》 日期: 7 月 17 日 (星期五) 时间: 上午 11:30 至下午13:00 地点: 香港书展 香港会议展览中心 会议室 S226-227 讲者: 迟子建 主持: 曾瀞漪 备注: 由於讲座反应热烈，已登记人士有可能被安排观看现场直播
名作家朗诵会 日期: 7 月 17 日 (星期五) 时间: 下午 4 时至下午 5 时 30 分 地点: 香港书展 香港会议展览中心 会议室 S221 讲者: 迟子建、九夜茴、周国平、余秀华、张怡微、王跃文、查建英、陈若曦、季季、简媜、夏曼?蓝波安 主持: 陈笺 登记报名: 登记
Annelise F. Wasmoen and Eric Abrahamsen make the 2015 National Translation Award Longlist literarytranslators.wordpress.com
Congratulations to Annelise and Eric for their translations of Can Xue's The Last Lover and Xu Zechen's "Running Through Beijing*, respectively.
Diary date: International Translation Day 2015, London
By Nicky Harman, July 15, '15
INTERNATIONAL TRANSLATION DAY, jointly organized by Free Word, English PEN, the British Library, takes place 2nd October 2015. For anyone within reach of London, there's a fine selection of talks and workshops.
Nanjing Will Pay You
By Eric Abrahamsen, July 15, '15
To translate Nanjing writers!
The Nanjing municipal 文联 is teaming up with the Nanjing Municipal Publishing and Media Group to dump some money on the promotion of Nanjing arts and literature. There are many programs getting funding over the next three years, but one of them is particularly relevant to our interests: they're paying translators who successfully publish translations of works by writers in Nanjing.
Here's the link to the official application instructions.
The rules, as I understand them (and I could be wrong), are:
- You sign a contract with them before the deadline, which is the end of July, 2015, ie fifteen days from the date of this posting.
- Within three years of the signing, you translate and publish either one novel-length work, or two shorter works, by a Nanjing writer.
- They pay you either 180,000 RMB (one novel), or 150,000 RMB (two shorter works). Actually it looks like the fee is disbursed in yearly installments.
- Step four is usually "profit", but that's already happened in step three.
I'm not sure of the exact definition of a "Nanjing writer". I'm also not sure what happens if you translate the novel, and then no one agrees to publish it, which to be honest seems fairly likely. There are a few other terms and conditions, for which see the full explanation at the link above.
Update: I checked with them, and you don't need to have a novel publication contract in place to apply. They will be reviewing the applications, and making decisions based on likelihood of success, and it's enough that you find a publisher within the three-year term of the contract.
What is there to lose, comrades?