International Translation Day, British Library, 26 September 2014
By Nicky Harman, June 13, '14
Save the date.
Booking here: http://www.bl.uk/whatson/events/event162774.html
Our News, Your News
Call for China-based "Translator-in-Residence" Program
By Bruce Humes, June 13, '14
I recently made a number of suggestions on concrete steps that could help ensure greater success for the “campaign to take Chinese literature global.” They are detailed in Open Letter to China Literary Exports, Inc..
中华读书报 (China Reading Weekly) interviewed me about my proposal, including the establishment of a Translator-in-Residence program. If you'd like to read the interview (in Chinese), and see the part of the draft text that was deleted just before publication, visit 建议：建立 ‘驻地翻译基金’，积极征募外国翻译家到中国短期居住.
Master "Manaschi" Jusup Mamay Passes from the Scene bruce-humes.com
Along with the Tibetan King Gesar and the Oirat's Janggar, the Kyrgyz Manas is one of China's three officially recognized, classic oral epics originating among non-Han peoples.
Jusup Mamay, the last master "manaschi" (玛纳斯奇) capable of performing all 8 parts of the massive trilogy, has just passed away . . .
Capturing Xibe, "Language of Exile," for Posterity bruce-humes.com
The China Xibe Language and Culture Research Center in Ili, Xinjiang, has announced that it will soon begin systematically recording speakers of this Tungusic tongue that is closely related to Manchu (锡伯语言数字化). This is part of the national “Chinese Language Audio Database Project” (中国语言资源有声数据库工程) inaugurated in 2008 by the State Language Commission, and the center aims to complete the Xibe portion by August 2015 . . .
Accessibility?
By Eric Abrahamsen, May 24, '14
We're not blocked, are we? 'Course, it's hard to tell these days, they seem to be blocking most everything…
A DVD Playlist for Running Through Beijing twolinespress.com
As you might expect, there’s a lot of cinema in this book. And, interestingly, there’s a lot of Chinese cinema that deals with similar subject-matter to Running through Beijing—young man immigrates from the provinces to the capital, does what he has to in order to survive, meets all sorts of other outsiders along the way.
So what we decided to do was to make a sort of DVD playlist to accompany Running through Beijing. Some of these films are actually in the book, and some of them are great material to watch alongside a reading of the book. Here they are, along with our pithy summaries, and some clips to give you an idea of the action.
Chinese Lianhuanhua: A Century of Pirated Movies www.nickstember.com
Since the turn of the 20th century Chinese lianhuanhua or "linked picture books" have made a tradition of recycling film classics from East and West alike.
China's Banned Books
By Nicky Harman, May 23, '14
Great interview on BBC World Service "Fifth Floor"
From the Beeb: "Chan Koon Chung is a Chinese author who writes about ethnicity, sex, and other provocative issues in China. His latest novel has been banned, although like other writers who delve into taboo subjects he remains free to live and continue writing from within China. The book is called The Unbearable Dreamworld of Champa the Driver, and to talk about its themes we've bring together Vincent Ni from BBC Chinese and Juliana Liu who is based in Hong Kong."
With @nivincent, @julianaliu on @BBC5thfloor http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p01z6f5z.
But please! #namethetranslator
May 2014: First Xibe Literary Anthology Published in Chinese bruce-humes.com
Xibe is a Tungusic tongue closely related to Manchu, and there are still a handful of writers using the language today . . .
2014 Translation Database at Three Percent's website
By Nicky Harman, May 21, '14
2014 Translation Database at Three Percent is an inspiring list in lots of languages. Any books not on the list? Contact: chad.post@rochester.edu and he'll add them.
“Mysterious Realm of Lop Nur”: Xinjiang’s Answer to Tibetan Fiction Fever? bruce-humes.com
The phenomenal success of He Ma’s The Tibet Code (《藏地密码》, 何马著)—reportedly over 3m volumes sold—has spawned a host of thrillers and mysteries driven by a similar fascination with Tibetan history, religion and relics.
But Tibet is certainly not the only area of the People’s Republic rich in non-Han culture and history with strong potential for such fiction. Two novels by former journalist Jueluo Kanglin, including the newly launched 罗布泊秘境 (literally, The Mysterious Realm of Lop Nur), are bound to raise Xinjiang’s profile among aficionados of the “exploration thriller” genre . . .
Jin Porn Mei: Comic Book Adaptations of the Chinese Novel www.nickstember.com
Comic book adaptations of the the Jin Ping Mei 金瓶梅, a notoriously pornographic vernacular Chinese novel believed to date from the late sixteenth century.
Running Through Beijing review in the LARB blog.lareviewofbooks.org
Xu Zechen’s slim 2008 novel /Running Through Beijing/, recently translated into an English version published by Two Lines Press (2014), transported me back to that city and all its colorful inhabitants. The novel captures the taste and tension of Beijing better than any I’ve ever read. I felt the grit from Beijing’s frequent sandstorms sting my eyes. I savored on my tongue again the spicy mutton of a hotpot joint. Readers will internalize the restlessness and loneliness of young strivers. And Eric Abrahamsen’s translation is so deft, it’s hard to remember that it wasn’t originally written in English. He especially executes slang-filled dialogue with pizzazz.
Not Altogether an Illusion: Translation and Translucence in the Work of Burton Watson www.worldliteraturetoday.org
Burton Watson is not the poet-translator largely ignorant of Chinese as Pound or Rexroth were. Since the 1970s, he has lived mostly in Japan; nearing ninety, he still spends hours each morning and evening on translation work. Born in 1925, he was first exposed to Asian languages growing up in New Rochelle, New York, when workers at the laundry his father went to gave him lychee nuts, jasmine tea, and illustrated Chinese magazines; later a high school drop-out in the Navy stationed in the South Pacific, he picked up some Japanese to help him on shore leave. After being discharged, he studied at Columbia University, both as an undergrad and for his PhD (completed in 1956), under L. Carrington Goodrich and Chi-chen Wang, and was later a colleague of C. T. Hsia there.
...
His translations aim at readers looking for an introduction to Chinese literature rather than at specialists who want to test a fellow academic’s mettle via footnotes and bibliographies. Yet even as the scholar in him acknowledges that he can offer nothing but “one of a variety of tentative interpretations,” the translator in him nevertheless finds ways to make us, in Eliot’s words, “believe that through this translation we really at last get the original.”
“Champa the Driver”: Tibetan Dreamer in an Alien Land
By Bruce Humes, May 14, '14
“ Dreams are so good. Why do we have to make them a reality? ”
What’s a young Tibetan stud to do for a living nowadays in a tourist hotspot like Lhasa? And what happens when his childhood dream—to hang out in the capital of a country called China—comes true?
In the just-published The Unbearable Dreamworld of Champa the Driver, author Chan Koonchung takes us on a rocky road from Lhasa to Beijing. Along the way he paints disturbing vignettes. An apartheid-in-the-making. The eerie death wish of a would-be self-immolator. The Kafkaesque “black jails” where provincial petitioners who dare air their grievances to the Beijing Mandarins are brutalized, then sent home.
If they’re lucky, that is.
Duorina Mongolian Literary Prize Winners Announced bruce-humes.com
Founded in 2010, the Duorina awards (朵日纳文学奖) aim to promote Mongolian literacy in the wider sense by rewarding those writing in the language, translating into or out of it, or writing about Mongolian literature in Mandarin.
Late in March 2014 the awards were handed out in Beijing, the capital of the Yuan Dynasty ruled by the Mongols, when it was known as Dadu (大都). Some 154 works were submitted for the competition, and among the 109 which were actually judged, 79 were in Mongolian and 30 in Mandarin.
Jack Ma: New Idol for China-based English Teacher/Translators? finance.yahoo.com
Trends in the "Chinese Literature Globalization Campaign" bruce-humes.com
China’s culture apparatchiks are getting serious about bringing Chinese-literature-in-translation to the masses near you. Here are 3 trends detailed in an article (作家 “走出去” 新谋略) reprinted from China Publishing and Media Daily . . .
Chinese-to-English Literary Translator Database bruce-humes.com
Foreign Authors and the Allure of "Special" Editions of their Books for Chinese Eyes bruce-humes.com
Ai Weiwei and Politically Correct Interpretation cn.tmagazine.com
The name and works of Ai Weiwei have been removed from a show in Shanghai, "15 Years Chinese Contemporary Art Award," about the history of Chinese contemporary art because of pressure from government cultural officials.
Mr. Sigg [former Swiss Ambassador to China] said he was angered to learn minutes before the opening of the show that museum workers had removed Mr. Ai’s name from the lists of winners and jury members painted on a wall.
He said he had considered stopping the show, but without any way to negotiate with Shanghai Municipal Bureau of Culture officials and minutes to go before the start, he instead chose to register his complaints in his opening comments. His mention that one artist couldn’t be included was not translated, he said.
Primer: Tibetan Kangba Literature in Mandarin bruce-humes.com
. . . “Kangba” (康巴) refers to parts of Sichuan, Yunnan, Tibet and Qinghai where the Kangba dialect of Tibetan is widely spoken, as well as to the people and their culture. This region was a “hub” of the ancient Tea Horse Road (茶马古道), and (reputed) birthplace of the King Gesar epic (格萨尔史诗) and Kangding love songs (康定情歌) . . .
China's Ethnic Literature Translation & Archiving Projects Make their Mark bruce-humes.com
Meanwhile, the editors at China’s very official Nationalities Literature Magazine (民族文学), which appears in Mandarin, Kazakh, Korean, Mongolian, Tibetan and Uyghur, have undertaken an innovative series of intensive “editing training courses” (改稿班) that bring together the magazine’s editors with minority writers and their translators. . .
Chinese Expressions: Which Ones Should Appear in English Dictionaries? blogs.wsj.com
"We're buying your country," suggests Pat Johnson.
Daughter of the River Review
By Eric Abrahamsen, April 22, '14
The following review of Hong Ying's Daughter of the River, by Karen Ma, first ran on the NPR website
Hong Ying's autobiography, Daughter of the River, is doubly astonishing. First, it's an account of the Cultural Revolution that's not written by an intellectual. There's a certain genre of Chinese memoir that looks at upheaval under Mao through an elite lens, and I have to admit, I've been growing tired of those books. But Hong Ying comes from a very different background indeed.
I saw her speak at a literary festival in Jaipur, India in 2011, where she told the audience how she grew up along the Yangtze River in the slums of Chongqing — China's largest and most crowded city — and survived the great famines and Mao's failed political campaigns as a bastard child in abject poverty. I bought her memoir immediately. Her speech had touched me — but her book blew me away.
Goldblatt Questions Export Potential of Contemporary Chinese Lit www.chinanews.com
“在我看来，中国传统文学的结构与写作方式对当代作家的影响还是很大的。譬如说，中国小说可能一上来就花几页纸描述一个地方，这对英文读者来说，会立即让他们失去耐心。”葛浩文说，尽管作家没有为读者写作的义务，更没有为国外读者写作的义务，他们可以只为自己而写，但基于中国文学“走出去”的强烈意愿和努力，写作就不能无视一些长期以来形成的、国际公认的对小说的标准。
The Culture of Mistranslation www.koreatimes.co.kr
Instead of requesting [sic] the work to a translator, Kim suggests the author of the work, if he or she has the ability to write fluently in both languages, translate his or her own work into the second language.
This process called self-translation is not exactly a translation process but a re-writing and re-interpretation of the work into a different language, closer to “dual-writing” which means writing in two languages. This method gives special right to the author to not translate the work literally but create another version of the work with more freedom.
Nobel Committee's Sinologist: Poor Translation of Chinese Lit "should be stopped" www.scmp.com
That's why he [Göran Malmqvist] believes sinologists should not only engage in academic research but also in translation; and for himself: "It's to allow people from my country to appreciate the Chinese literature I like."
Unfortunately, he says, there are as many poor translators as there are good writers in China.
"What makes me angry, really angry," he cries, eyes blazing, "is when an excellent piece of Chinese literature is badly translated. It's better not to translate it than have it badly translated. That is an unforgivable offence to any author. It should be stopped.
"Often translations are done by incompetent translators who happen to know English, or German, or French. But a lot of them have no interest and no competence in literature. That is a great pity."
There are notable exceptions such as the late British sinologist David Hawkes' rendition of Cao Xueqin's epic novel The Story of the Stone, which he regards as a rare gem of translated Chinese literature.
Report on LBF's "The Translator as Agent" Forum publishingperspectives.com
“You have to be willing to do things for free at first,” said Tobler. “It’s only after you’ve got the editor’s interest that you might get a contract. If you’re starting out as a literary translator and you can’t be bothered to translate some extracts, well then, you’re not passionate enough! Getting into literary translation, every hour is not going to pay financially. You get into it because you love literary translation and then down the line it all works out.
Chinese literature on BBC Radio 4 today bbc.in
SUNDAY 13 April, 16.00 - BBC Radio 4 Open Book, featuring contempoary Chinese literature with Nicky Harman, Karen Ma and Eric Abrahamsen (and available as a podcast afterwards)
Yu Hua on the Cultural Revolution: The Good Ol' Days? cn.nytimes.com
The attitude of the Japanese government toward its nation’s history infuriates Chinese people. But the Chinese government also needs to reflect on its own record. We keep warning Japan that it runs the risk of repeating its mistakes if it will not face up to its history of aggression. Surely there is a lesson for us to learn, as well . . .
"Translate in the City" Literary Translation Summer School 2014, London, UK
By Nicky Harman, April 4, '14
Monday 23rd- Friday 27th June 2014. Details here
New story by Wu Ming-yi
By Nicky Harman, March 30, '14
Beijinger Dave Haysom has uploaded a new story, ‘The Magician on the Footbridge’, by Wu Ming-yi here.
The Weird and Wonderful World of Dorothy Tse's Hong Kong - review by ARB
By Nicky Harman, March 30, '14
Asian Review of Books' Peter Gordon has just reviewed Snow and Shadow, short stories by Dorothy Tse, translated by me. Great, thought-provoking review.