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."
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.
Right up to today, all Chinese literary history is actually the history of literature written in hànyǔ — the history of literature by the Han plus literature written in hànyǔ by some ethnic minority writers . . .
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Book Series: East Asian Comparative Literature and Culture (ISSN: 2212-4772) www.brill.com/eacl
Series Editors: Professor ZHANG Longxi (City University, Hong Kong) and Professor Wiebke Denecke (Boston University, Boston).
Editorial Board: Alexander Beecroft (University of South Carolina), Ronald Egan (University of California, Santa Barbara), Joshua Fogel (York University, Canada), Alexa Huang (George Washington University), Peter Kornicki (Cambridge University, UK), Karen Thornber (Harvard University), and Rudolf Wagner (Heidelberg University, Germany).
Time/date: 12:00-13:00 Friday, Jan 30 2015
Venue: Nottingham University, England.
Speakers: Dr Kathryn Batchelor & Dr Catherine Gilbert.
Topic: “Literary Translation, Image Building and Soft Power: Exploring 21st century Sino-African dynamics” . . .
The four classics of Chinese vernacular literature during the Ming and Qing Dynasties — Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin, Journey to the West and Dream of the Red Chamber — were all more or less fully translated into Manchu under the Qing, writes Yiming Abula (伊明·阿布拉) in Minority Translators Journal (民族翻译) . . .
Under the guidelines, creators of online content will still be allowed to publish under pen names. But unlike before, when some writers registered accounts under fake names, websites will know exactly who is publishing what.
Beyond the Iron House: Lu Xun and the Modern Chinese Literary Field. Beijing: Tsinghua University Press, 2014. 294 pp. ISBN: 978-7-302-38494-6 [written in English]
Preface written by Julia Lovell:
"I first read Sun Saiyin’s eye-opening work on Lu Xun when I was finishing my translation of Lu Xun’s complete short stories. For months, I had been absorbed in Lu Xun’s fictional language: in trying to understand his choice of words and tone, and trying to replicate them faithfully in English. Saiyin’s work drew me back outside Lu Xun’s abstract, fictional worlds, pushing me to re-engage with the writer as an individual and with his context..."
In much the same way as modern gender studies have exploded the myth that great writers throughout human history were necessarily male, contemporary research into literary production by non-Han authors is slowly lifting the veil on their role in China’s pre-20th-century literary life . . .
The winners of the first-ever Aksay Kazakh Literary Competition have been announced (“阿克塞” 哈萨克族文学奖揭晓). It joins two existing high-profile sets of awards for writing in languages other than Mandarin: the Junma Ethnic Literary Awards, which accepts entries in all non-Han languages, and the Duorina Mongolian Literary Prize. The competition was jointly sponsored by China Institute of Minority Writers and Aksay Kazakh Autonomous County in Gansu Province, with the collaboration of National Literature Magazine (民族文学) . . .
It took 46 years, but at long last English-language readers are now able to enjoy one of Eileen Chang ’s most popular works, “Half a Lifelong Romance,” published last year by Penguin Classics, with a U.S. edition from Vintage Books scheduled for release next month.
By Canaan Morse, January 23, '15
CANAAN MORSE reviews:
Salsa, by Hsia Yu, translated by Steven Bradbury (Zephyr Press, 2014)
The poet and the translator of this collection have successfully created and re-created poetry across a linguistic boundary. This may sound unremarkable, but consider: not all translation, but only good translation can achieve this. These poems, especially the translations, exist both within and outside of their originators’ control, and now that each of the many essential parts has coalesced, it is also necessary to name those parts: a name on the book cover that belongs to one of the most important poets in Taiwan’s literary history; a collection of forty-six poems that has been through ten printings in the Chinese; forty-six English poems that are translations of the forty-six Chinese poems, and are also poems in themselves; the visible hand of the translator, Steven Bradbury, a professor of English literature in Taiwan whose scope as a translator encompasses classical, modern, and contemporary poetry in Chinese; and a vast, burgeoning interpretive space, not a gulf between the two versions but an aura around each that opens up as the reader vivifies the writing.
(Reuters) - China's pollution crisis has inspired an environmental regulator in a smog-blanketed northern province to write a novel whose extracts have gone viral online, spurring plans for two more books.
Culture writer Yu Qiuyu pens his first novel "Icy River" ( 余秋雨:《冰河》)
Zhu Tianwen is one of the most famous Taiwanese writers, she has just been awarded the Newman prize, a biennial prize by the University of Oklahoma. She is the first female recipient and was in good company with finalists such as Yu Hua, Yan Lianke, Ge Fei. She succeeds Mo Yan and Han Shaogong who were awarded the prize in 2009 and 2011 as well as theTaiwanese poet Yang Mu...
Xinhua reports that the first 3 volumes of a new all-Tibetan dictionary will be published within 2015, with the other 27 to be gradually launched through the end of 2018 (新版《藏文大辞典》).
Anyone who follows the PRC’s dictionary scene knows that the Chinese authorities can be more than a tad political about their dictionaries – which script they employ, which words make the cut (or don’t), and crucially, who actually edits them . . .
By Nicky Harman, January 18, '15
The beginning of the year sees various deadlines for submitting books for ‘best translated books’ awards. What’s out there, and who can apply?
Finding something to read on the underground just got a bit easier in Beijing, where travellers can now access a free electronic library.
Carriages on Line 4 of the city's metro feature barcodes which people can scan with their tablets or smartphones, China's BTV News channel reports. They'll be able to choose from a selection of ten books, which will change every couple of months.
By Nicky Harman, January 16, '15
The new Social Media list on the right of the Paper Republic home page lists the China Fiction Book Club. For those of you who haven't come across it before, the CFBC started out as a London-based translation club, meeting every month to translate and discuss contemporary Chinese fiction. After a couple of (very lively and successful) years, work pressures got the better of most of us, and the CFBC went a bit quiet until the day, soon after, when it turned into a Twitter account, @cfbcuk. Amazingly, Helen Wang and I got together over a cup of coffee to set up the account on Twitter the very day that Mo Yan won that prize. Two and a bit years later, the @cfbcuk has hit two milestones: over 1,000 followers and very nearly 5,000 tweets. Follow it if you can!
New York Review Books is pleased to announce the debut of Calligrams, a new series of writings from and on China. Calligrams will encompass a wide array of poetic masterpieces, classic fiction, thrilling dramas, travel writing, criticism, and histories written by both Chinese and Western writers from antiquity to modern time. The series, made possible by a publishing partnership with the Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, is edited by Eliot Weinberger.
"Chen Xiwo’s worldview mimics various types of pain, both fierce jabs and slow throbbing. ... “The Book of Sins” is Mr. Chen’s first full collection of stories to be translated into English. Nicky Harman, a former translator-in-residence at the Free Word Center in London, does this with aplomb, allowing Mr. Chen’s delight in the intricacies of his language to shine through. At one point Mr. Chen writes that the character for “smile” (笑 ) looks “like a radiant grin,” “cry” (哭 ) “like a sad face” and, most pertinently, “death” (死 ) “like someone meeting the end fearlessly, head on.”
"The Books of Sins" by Chen Xiwo, tr Nicky Harman, reviewed by Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore in the Wall Street Journal.
"Eric Abrahamsen's... version sounds absolutely authentic; his dialogue is spot-on. Credit also to Two Lines Press for taking a punt on a work by an author few westerners have heard of. With luck, more of Xu’s longer work will follow."
By Bruce Humes, January 13, '15
You may recognize the name of Sheng Keyi (盛可以) as the novelist who wrote Northern Girls (北妹) and more recently Death Fugue (死亡赋格), both translated into English. But you might not know that she is a budding artist as well. She took up painting in 2013. Check out her brushwork here.
You are invited to attend the exhibition, comprising 26 tableaux, as well as the launch of her latest novel, Savage Growth (野蛮生长), which also features her own illustrations:
Date/time: 3:00-5:00 pm, January 17
Venue: New Millenium Gallery (北京千年时间画廊)
Curator: Zhang Siyong (张思永)
Academic Support: Feng Tang (冯唐)
Special Guests: Li Jingze (李敬泽), Liu Zhenyun (刘震云), Wu Hongbin (武洪滨), Li Jian (李健), Li Xiuwen (李修文) and A Yi (阿乙)
By Bruce Humes, January 13, '15
In 贾平凹：只能是守株待兔, we learn that Jia Pingwa’s latest novel 老生 (Lǎo Shēng) topped Sina Online’s 2014 ranking of “ten great books” (新浪年度十大好书).
The report points out that despite his popularity in China, his novels are rarely translated. “Whoever is willing to translate [my books], I welcome to come and negotiate the rights. But if no one does, I don’t know where to go to find translators,” says the author himself, perhaps slightly exasperated at the lack of interest from overseas publishers.
As usual, this is a bit of an exaggeration. Several of his books have been translated into French, including the once-banned La capitale déchue (废都). But only one of his novels, Turbulence (浮躁, tr. Howard Goldblatt), appears on Amazon in English. So this is probably more about his failure to gain more prominence in the English-speaking world.
Thus the question: Given his reputation in China, why haven’t most of Jia Pingwa’s novels been translated into European languages?
The Writing Chinese Project (University of Leeds) chooses a different author each month for its bookclub.
January's author is Sun Yisheng
In spite of his success, Ha Jin’s prose has divided critics. Unanimously they have celebrated Jin’s courage to write in English — Jin is, of course, a non-native speaker. (In an admiring profile of Jin in 2000, Dwight Garner asked, “How can someone write English so fluidly, yet speak it so haltingly?”) But when John Updike reviewed Jin’s 2007 novel A Free Life, he noted that “the novel rarely gathers the kind of momentum that lets us overlook its language.” Reviewing a collection of Jin’s short stories, The Bridegroom, Claire Messud wrote that “his works read as if he had written them in Chinese and merely undertaken the translations himself.”
Critics suggest that Jin’s flat style results from either the fact that English is not his first language or his desire to convey an effect of translation, so that a reader grasps an “authentic” China. We don’t disagree, but we wonder if a third reason is at work as well: Jin’s ambivalence about his own status as a writer-in-exile mutes his prose.
Grants of up to £4000 are available to assist UK publishers with promoting and marketing books being published for the first time in English translation.
Deadline is Friday 13th of February
Ms. Liu Ruilin (刘瑞林) has the clear and calm voice of someone who instantly gets the attention of everybody in a room. The general manager of Beijing BBT Book Publishing Limited and editor-in-chief of Guangxi Normal University Press is an outstanding personality, admired by many in the Chinese publishing world. She manages an “in-between” publishing house — meaning one “in-between systems and in-between topics.”
Chen Xiwo's The Book of Sins (tr. Nicky Harman) has been nominated for the 2014 Typographical Translation Award. Voting is still open if you'd like to support it. Anyone can vote! Closing date is 31 Jan.
By Lucas Klein, December 30, '14
What is Chinese Literature?
As noted earlier, 2014 produced a "bumper crop" of Chinese literature translations in English, but almost all the titles listed are of contemporary fiction and poetry by living or recently deceased writers (and at least one of those titles won't be released until sometime in 2015).*
Yet 2014 also saw the publication of some very significant bronze age works. While China may not have the five thousand-year history the cultural nationalists claim for it, its written history does extend about three thousand years, with texts from that era serving as reference for intellectuals and underpinning longstanding habits of belief. Three of those texts are now available in major new English translations:
According to book data company Bookdao, which compiled the ranking, Scholastic USA is the most influential foreign publisher, followed by Penguin Random House USA in second position and Casterman, the Belgian publisher of Tintin, in third. Bloomsbury UK was the highest ranking UK-based publisher, coming in at fourth position, and Walker Books UK came in at number 19.
Confucius was also an indefatigable traveller, and Wang himself shows no signs of slowing down. In September, two weeks before Liu Xiaobo’s Nobel Prize was announced, Wang gave a talk at Harvard’s Asia Center. Before he arrived, he lamented to me how little dialogue there had been, in the post-1989 era, between Chinese and American writers—less, he said, than between Chinese and American military officials. He had prepared his talk in English, in the hopes of speaking across a chasm. At Harvard, he described his childhood deprivations and his youthful involvement in the Chinese revolution. He recalled a conversation he had had when his grandson turned fourteen, the age at which Wang joined the Communist Party. When he criticized the boy for spending too much time on computer games, he replied, “Poor Grandpa, I’m sure you had no toys when you were a kid. If you had a childhood without toys, what else could you do except join the revolution?”
“If 2013 was ‘Mo Yan Year’, then 2014 was ‘Year of the Literary Prize’ ” writes Chen Mengxi at Beijing Evening News . . .
Not a few commentators hold the opinion that every writer should actually address the readership in his own land that speaks his language, and with whom he shares a common history and destiny. In other words, the fundamental question is: For whom is the work written, who shall be its premier reader? Only when this is the case, then if our writers become aware of the existence of others readers in the world, this will not be a bad thing.
"Our top ten picks for books that tackle new ground in China", including
Death Fugue, by Sheng Keyi, tr Shelly Bryant
Mu Shiying: China’s Lost Modernist, by Andrew Field, and tr Effy Hong
The Unbearable Dreamworld of Champa the Driver, by Chan Koonchung, tr Nicky Harman
"A reader who brings an open mind to Frog, the novel first published in Chinese in 2009, awarded the Mao Dun literary prize in 2011 and now impeccably translated into English by Howard Goldblatt, will discover a subtle if occasionally baggy text that does not slot easily into a political binary."
In ancient times, the myths, epics and narrative poems of minority ethnicities blossomed with éclat in the garden of Chinese — even global—literature . . .Guan Hanqing (关汉卿), Pu Songling (蒲松龄), Nalan Xingde (纳兰性德), Cao Xueqin (曹雪芹), Abay (Ibrahim) Qunanbayuli (阿拜), Tsangyang Gyatso (仓央嘉措), Maḥmūd al-Kāšġarī (喀什噶理), Ali-Shir Nava’i (纳瓦依), Kutadgu Bilig (福乐智慧), The Gate of Wisdom (真理的入门), Compendium of the languages of the Turks (实厥语大辞典), Secret History of the Mongols (蒙古秘史), Dream of the Red Chamber (红楼梦), Storied Building with a Single Floor (一层楼), Weeping for the Red Pavilion (泣红亭), and The Story of Qing Dynasty History (青史演义) are all world-renowned authors and works.
“My first reaction was ‘it’s about time,’ because the profit-driven market has been China’s main thing for over 25 years, and everything is for money, and that’s pretty much out of control right now, and it’s kind of starting to hurt the children, the next generation,” said [Anchee] Min, author of more than works of historical-fiction on Chinese culture. “I go back to China every year and ship boxes of books. It used to be quality literature, but nowadays there are no decent books, really. I find the boxes getting smaller and smaller.”
By Nicky Harman, December 14, '14
London Book Fair is offering an International Literary Translation Initiative Award. This is a new prize, set up last year, one of a dozen the LBF is awarding annually. It recognises the contribution of "organisations that have succeeded in raising the profile of literature in translation, promoting literary translators, and encouraging new translators and translated works." Qualified for nomination are: "Any company or organisation operating outside the UK, whose scope of achievement is outside the UK." Last year, the Best Translated Book Award (USA) won it.
So: a prize, a literary magazine, a summer school, a website...all would qualify, and anyone can nominate their favourite "initiative".
The deadline for nominations is 16 January 2015 (webpage currently says 9th, but this will be altered), and all the nominators have to do is fill in a fairly simple form, stating in 300 words why the organisation they're nominating deserves to win. Here's the link to the info and to the nomination form
