Our News, Your News
By Nicky Harman, January 8, '14
I (Nicky) was very struck by JS's review of a review in LA Review of Books of Mo Yan's Sandalwood Death. It appeared on the MCLC list. His words immediately reminded me of the endless debates we've had in UK among translators, about how we'd like our translations reviewed, and the struggles to remind even long-established cultural institutions like the BBC that translations of poetry and fiction should be credited when they are broadcast, not treated as if the author had originally written in English. With Jonathan's permission, I have reproduced his letter to the list here. In the event, it sparked off a lively debate, including contributions from the reviewer, Jiwei Xiao, herself. Those interested can join the list to read the whole thread.
.................................
I was quite excited to discover that at long last the LARB had published a
review of Mo Yan’s Sandalwood Death. As the editor of the CLT Book Series
that published Howard Goldblatt’s English translation of the novel at the
beginning of 2013, I had all but given up on the LARB reviewing it. By the
time I reached the end of this substantial review, however, I had to face
a rather peculiar and unsettling reality: after nearly 2,400 words, the
reviewer, Jiwei Xiao, never mentions the fact that the book she is
reviewing is Howard Goldblatt’s English translation of Mo Yan’s novel. I
may be a bit more sensitive to this omission given the fact that I, as the
editor and a translator myself, am quite excited by the attention
Goldlatt’s translation is getting from the translation community: the book
has already been nominated for several awards, and, in fact, only a few
months earlier Goldblatt had been interviewed by LARB about his
translation work!
So while Xiao quotes liberally from the English text (sans citations), she
never mentions even once that the book under review is not《檀香刑》, which
was
published well over a decade ago, but is instead its English translation.
Of course, any review of translated literature will necessarily focus on
the merits of the original, but at the very least professionalism requires
a reviewer to acknowledge the work of the translator in some form. Most of
the time readers rely on a review to find out whether a book is a good
read in English, so it is important for a reviewer to offer a critical
opinion on this matter so the reader can make an informed decision. In
this review, however, the reader is invited to enter the original text as
if it were still in Chinese, yet miraculously transparent to the English
reader’s mind.
The reviewer spends a fair amount of time discussing the “dissonant
sounds” upon which “the novel was inspired,” and while Mo Yan’s aural
ingenuity naturally rests at the heart of the reviewer’s commentary, it is
important to note that these aural textures were delicately and boldly
translated into English by Goldblatt. In fact, I would argue that these
challenging moments constitute some of the most formally experimental—and
successful—moments in Goldblatt’s esteemed career. When I first read the
translated manuscript, I marveled at his ability to imbue the English with
a parallel set of aural textures (rhyme, meters, vocables, etc.),
producing often uncanny results.
Yet this is not really what left me feeling so uneasy. Instead, I fear
that there remains a deep and stubborn refusal to take translation (and
translation studies) seriously enough within both Chinese Studies and our
broader public literary culture (after all, the LARB editors must have
first read this piece before publishing it). I am not going to speculate
on the latent ideological (or epistemological) conditions that undergird
moments like these, but I do feel we must take such opportunities to
refocus attention on the collaborative nature of world literature
translated into English. As most people know, literary translators are
incredibly important cultural producers and yet most of them struggle to
make a living wage from their work. In fact, a recent report by the
Conseil Européen des Associations de Traducteurs Littéraires concludes
with the following observation: This survey clearly shows that literary translators cannot survive in the
conditions imposed on them by "the market". This is a serious social
problem on a continent that is meant to be developed, multilingual and
multicultural, but it is also and most importantly a very serious artistic
and cultural problem. Indeed, what does it say about the quality of
literary exchange between our societies if literary translators are forced
to dash off their work just to be able to earn a basic living?
The objectives outlined by UNESCO in its 1976 Nairobi Recommendation are
far from being realised, that is the least one can say. It’s time to act!
(www.ceatl.eu)
What is true in the European context is even worse in the US (and for
Chinese-English-Chinese translation, the pay scale of which is often
calculated in RMB as a way of lowering the cost). Translators work for
many of the same mysterious reasons writers do—not because it pays well
(though I hope this can be remedied soon), but to contribute to the
cultural work of our time, to participate in the global conversation of
literature itself. If our work as translators is not discussed in reviews
of our work (or even simply acknowledged), when, pray tell, will it be?
It is important for me to note, however, that I believe Professor Xiao
would have gladly incorporated her thoughts on the translated nature of
the text had it been brought up in the editing/review process, or if it
had been listed as a prerequisite on the LARB contributor information
page, or if there existed broader university support of and
academic/prestige capital invested into translation inside the realm of
Chinese Studies. So I do not wish for the instructive moment of this
review to be reduced to a critique of this review alone (for clearly
Professor Xiao has many interesting things to say about this novel), but
as a general reminder to all reviewers (and to those of us who publish
them) to spend a moment engaging with (or better yet, exploring) the
translative nature of world literature, for this is our responsibility,
not to mention one of the great joys of our work.
Jonathan Stalling
Chinese Literature Today
Liu Daxian (刘大先), the holder of a Ph D. in literature and member of the editorial board of Studies in Ethnic Literature (民族文学研究), has just published the equivalent of a fairly comprehensive review of China’s 2013 "mainstream" ethnic fiction scene (2013 少数民族文学综述) . . .
Born in Shanghai in 1921, C.T. Hsia, also known as Hsia Chih-tsing, moved to the United States in 1947, later becoming a professor at Columbia University. Though he adored Western literature, he is best known for introducing Chinese literature to the West amid the information vacuum about China that characterized the Cold War, and establishing a literary canon that lasts to this day, Mr. Wang said.
...
In the 1950s, there was no field called modern Chinese literature, so the publication of his book in 1961 ["History of Modern Chinese Fiction"], that was a big thing. That was a book that made him famous in the West. As a result, a discipline was established.
...
One cannot start any new study of Chinese literary modernity without first consulting, challenging, or at least reflecting his opinions.
By Lucas Klein, January 1, '14
UK's The Guardian is out with a set of "1000 novels everyone must read: the definitive list"--and this is definitive, people, so if you haven't read a thousand novels in your lifetime, or not these particular thousand novels, then really there's no accounting for you.
The Guardian doesn't let on what's going to happen if you don't read these novels, but let's just say I don't want to be around to find out (fortunately, the list isn't titled "must read before you die," as some are, so that should buy us all a bit more time).
Anyway, as you may recall, I raised a stink about Flavorwire's "50 Works of Fiction in Translation That Every English Speaker Should Read" not including a single work in Chinese. Fortunately, Chinese fiction fares better when it comes to the top thousand in any language: two whole novels! That's 0.2% of the best long fiction written in the history of the world! Chinese fiction isn't in such bad shape, after all!
More…
On December 28, the 2013 Nationalities Literature Magazine Awards (年度奖) were handed out to 23 works in five categories: novel, short story, poetry, translations into Mandarin from other languages indigenous to China, and translations from Mandarin into English. Only texts published in one of the six editions of the magazine (民族文学)—Mandarin, Kazakh, Korean, Mongolian, Tibetan, and Uyghur—were eligible . . .
Already home to the world’s biggest online literature web sites—some of which charge readers a wee fee for the privilege—and fan base, China is forging ahead to form the marketeers of the future . . .
Announcing the Ancient Asia Issue of Cha (December 2013), featuring new translations of Chinese poetry by Xi Chuan, Tao Yuanming 陶淵明, Du Fu 杜甫, He Qifang 何其芳, Xiao Kaiyu 肖开愚, Liu Yong 柳永, the Shijing 詩經, Laozi 老子, Du Mu 杜牧, and Li Shangyin 李商隱, and new work by Eliot Weinberger, Matthew Turner, Eleanor Goodman, Sharmistha Mohanty, and Jonathan Stalling.
By Nicky Harman, December 13, '13
Here's this year's list, compiled by Nicky Harman and Helen Wang. Feel free to add any we've missed out:
Ten Loves by Zhang Yueran , translated by Jeremy Tiang , pub. Math Paper Press, Singapore
Island of Silence by Su Wei-chen , translated by Jeremy Tiang , pub. Ethos Books, Singapore
Durians Are Not The Only Fruit by Wong Yoon Wah , translated by Jeremy Tiang , pub. Epigram Books, Singapore
Tongwan City by Gao Jianqun, translated by Eric Mu, pub. CN times Books.
I can almost see the clouds of dust, poems by Yu Xiang, translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain, pub. Zephyr Press and Chinese University Press of Hong Kong (bilingual)
Canyon in the body, poems by Lan Lan, translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain, pub. Zephyr Press and Chinese University Press of Hong Kong (bilingual)
Wind says, poems by Bai Hua, translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain, pub. Zephyr Press and Chinese University Press of Hong Kong (bilingual)
Other Cities, Other Lives by Chew Kok Chang , translated by Shelly Bryant , pub. Epigram Books, Singapore
Mr Ma and Son by Lao She , translated by William Dolby , pub. Penguin Modern Classics
Cat Country by Lao She , translated by William A Lyell , pub. Penguin Modern Classics
Irina’s Hat: New Short Stories From China by Authors and translators various , translated by ed. Josh Stenberg , pub. Merwin Asia
Last Quarter of the Moon by Chi Zijian , translated by Bruce Humes , pub. Harvill Secker
The Song of King Gesar
by Alai , translated by Howard Goldblatt
, pub. Canongate Books Ltd
Black Flame by Gerelchimeg Blackcrane , translated by Anna Holmwood , pub. Groundwood Books of Toronto, Canada (in association with Anansi Books)
For a Song and a Hundred Songs: A Poet’s Journey Through a Chinese Prison by Liao Yiwu , translated by Wenguang Huang , pub. New Harvest Books
The Matchmaker, The Apprentice and The Football Fan by Zhu Wen , translated by Julia Lovell , pub. Columbia University Press
The Earnest Mask by Xi Ni Er , translated by Howard Goldblatt & Sylvia Li-chun Lin , pub. Epigram Books, Singapore
The Man With The Compound Eyes, by Wu Ming-Yi, tr Darryl Sterk, pub. Harvill Secker
Every Rock a Universe: The Yellow Mountains and Chinese Travel Writing, writings by 17th century poet and artist Wang Hongdu, translated by Jonathan Chaves (Floating World Editions). Review forthcoming in Chinese Literature: Essays, Articles, Reviews.
Search for the Buried Bomber, by Xu Lei, tr. Gabriel Ascher, pub. AmazonCrossing
More…
Yes, language is political. So it’s refreshing to see that the unspoken ban on non-Han languages in Chinese cinema has clearly ended. In Taiwan, Seediq Bale—shot entirely in Seediq—was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the 2012 Oscars. On the mainland, Pema Tseden’s Old Dog in Tibetan has also won international acclaim.
Now it’s the turn of the Yi (彝), who number eight million and live primarily in rural and mountainous areas of Sichuan, Yunnan, Guizhou and Guangxi . . .
Joy Child: Two brothers, their wives, and their young sons share a small flat with their dying mother. When tragedy strikes, the after-effects take an unusual form. Joy Child, a stage adaptation of a short story by Chinese author Yu Hua, explores the nature of revenge and the promise of ‘the future’.
-- The short story is 《现实一种》 One Kind of Reality
When Chinese author Wang Gang brought a smile to the faces of his Turkish listeners as he recounted how a musician back in Xinjiang had sung him a tune dubbed “Istanbul” just a few days ago, it’s unlikely few in the audience recognized the irony.
After all, the theme of China’s presence at the 2013 Istanbul Book Fair is Ipak Yolu—Yeni Sayfa (The Silk Road—A New Page). One major traditional Silk Road route began in Chang’an, today’s Xi’an, and ended in Constantinople, today’s Istanbul, skirting Xinjiang's deadly Taklamakan Desert along the way.
When the first volume of The Plum in the Golden Vase [金瓶梅] came out in 1994 the Roy translation was received with rapturous applause. Over the following 19 years, the novel has become more topical by the year. In that time, erotic fiction has come to inhabit a position of near-total dominance in the publishing industry, basically paying for all the rest of fiction, and the rise of China has made everybody who reads the newspapers familiar with figures of corruption in Imperial — excuse me, Communist Party — circles.
I’ve been reading about Hsi-Men Ch’ing for years. His name has been Zhang Shugang and Jiang Jiemin and Bo Xilai. Just today it was revealed that one of the major causes of the condo boom in Beijing is the need to house so many mistresses — a fact that could have come straight from the Chin Ping Mei. The book is 400 years old, but its moment is right now.
Includes gigs by Yu Hua, Wang Gang, Xu Zechen and more.
Hebei Province, which surrounds Beijing, is China’s top steel-producing province. Steel plants play a big role in air and water pollution, but the city of Cangzhou’s answer to the problem is an anti-smoking campaign.
A Hebei official newspaper, Yanzhao Dushi Bao, reported in July that local officials in Cangzhou held a public meeting pledging their commitment to the anti-smoking cause. With smoke billowing from the chimneys of factories in the distance, officials promoted the slogan: “Curbing air pollution starts with me!”
. . . Simon and Schuster’s trade imprint acquired from Yilin [Press] the world English rights to a select group of books, made up of nonfiction titles about Chinese culture and history as well as popular and critically acclaimed fiction, including such authors as Shen Congwen, Lu Xun, Bing Xin, Ye Zhaoyan, and Su Tong, some of whom have never been translated into English. Simon & Schuster will publish the first list of eight titles in Spring of 2014.
Qiu Xiaolong, a St. Louis-based novelist whose mystery thrillers are set in Shanghai, said Chinese publishers who bought the first three books in his Inspector Chen series altered the identity of pivotal characters and rewrote plot lines they deemed unflattering to the Communist Party. Most egregiously, he said, publishers insisted on removing any references to Shanghai, replacing it with an imaginary Chinese metropolis called H city because they thought an association with violent crime, albeit fictional, might tarnish the city’s image.
What do you expect when you pick up a novel – very probably your first – from Taiwan? A spiky assertion of independence, perhaps, or wistful, Japanese-inspired fables? The literary landscape of mainland China has begun to take shape for western readers, but that of Taiwan remains a blank – despite the island's sophisticated and long-established publishing industry. The English translation of Wu Ming-Yi's intriguing fourth work of fiction simultaneously plunges the reader into the melting pot of contemporary Taiwanese fiction and refuses any attempt to define it.
BEIJING — A frequent topic of conversation among my friends here has been: Who will be arrested next?
Some of us met recently for dinner and started a list of potential candidates. We included outspoken scholars, writers and lawyers who have discussed democracy and freedom, criticized the government and spoken out for the disadvantaged.
don’t go to sleep, don’t
Dear, the road is long yet
don’t go too near
the forest’s enticements, don’t lose hope
write the address
in snowmelt on your hand
or lean on my shoulder
as we pass the hazy morning
[...]
¤ Monkeying Around with the Nobel Prize: Wu Cheng'en's Journey to the West by Julia Lovell
¤ A Monument to What Might Have Been: Qian Zhongshu's Fortress Besieged by Brendan O'Kane
¤ Getting The Good Earth’s Author Right: On Pearl S. Buck by Charles W. Hayford
¤ Untidy Endings: Lao She by Paul French
Back in 2000, Chinese titles included in the event totalled just 2400. But by 2009 that number had increased to 6398. In 2000, China signed contracts on 953 items of copyright trade; twelve years later in 2012, the number climbed to 2682. [...] 160 Chinese exhibitors have attended this year’s fair. Exhibitors say instead of relying on promotional activities sponsored by the Chinese government, now Chinese books are attracting attention on their own. In addition, previously it was just the big publishing houses who attended, but now more small scale, less known publishers have a presence. Moreover, foreign publishers are seeking to promote their books to Chinese publishers and distributors at the fair, hoping to take a share of the promising Chinese book market.
A quip from another era, usually attributed to Aldous Huxley, defined an intellectual as someone—presumably a man—who discovers there are more interesting things in life than women. Reading the exiled Chinese poet and writer Liao Yiwu suggests a less sexist corollary to this badly dated notion: the best writers are artists who have learnt that other people are more interesting than themselves.
No glamorous chandeliers, no extravagant façade -- to find the most beautiful bookshop in China, travelers just have to follow the yellow-striped road to an underground car park.
Before Librairie Avant-Garde owner Qian Xiaohua, 50, obtained the 4,000-square-meter underground space beneath Wutaishan Stadium in Nanjing in 1999, it was a government car park and, earlier, a bomb shelter.
I'll admit that, as a non-French-speaker, it's a little hard to figure out what's going on here, but more publications of Wang Xiaobo has to be a good thing!
By Bruce Humes, October 11, '13
On October 31, Professor Tai Zaixi will speak on (Self) Censorship and the Translator-Author Relationship: The Case of Full Translations, Partial Translations, and Non-translations in the Chinese Context at HK Baptist U's Centre for Translation.
More…
Theatre UCF graduate student Whit Emerson will present a new full-length play in the UCF Performing Arts Center on Oct. 10-13. The comedy, titled All of Chinese Literature Condensed covers 10 major works of literature that contribute to modern day Chinese culture.
The play is written in a style reminiscent of the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s series of plays (The Bible Abridged, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare Abridged) in that it comically distills a huge body of work into short, comprehensible scenes.
By Bruce Humes, October 2, '13
In Nobel Win, Ho Ai Li of Singapore’s Straits Times notes that Mo Yan’s Nobel Prize—regardless of how his own writing is perceived abroad—is helping to spark interest in translated Chinese fiction. Since most of us won’t be able to get beyond the pay wall, I’ve selected three choice quotes from the article below. But pls resist the temptation to re-tweet Eric’s words on your Weibo account, as we’d hate to see his visa renewal application denied next time round . . .
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A good question. I also think that the Chinese know much more about America and the West than you know about China. In China, in the early eighties, a group of young writers studied western literature quite deeply, and these western classics opened their field of vision. They produced quite a number of good works. Can Xue was one among them. The group are all born in fifties or sixties—a very idealistic group. That was a literary era full of hope. But since the nineties, almost everybody in this group has changed their mind. They felt that they had had enough the West, and now want to return to their own tradition, which is much greater than the Western tradition. So their works, except a very few writers, have become more and more traditional, more and more readable. People welcomed this great regression. But I think this returning is the death of a language and a soul. Because our own cultural tradition has not got enough strength to support a new writing, the only way to develop it is by blood transfusion. I think as a Chinese writer, I should criticize my culture severely, only having done so, I get the possibility to develop it.
As for my own writing, the readers in China think that I’m very difficult but unique among Chinese writers. I dare say, no fiction writers in China has studied the Western literature and Western philosophy so exhaustively like Can Xue.
French ambassador to China Sylvie Bermann presented the knights badge of the Order of Arts and Letters to Wang Anyi, a renowned Chinese author, in Shanghai, east China, September 26, 2013.
“THE CHINESE THINK, act, and feel almost exactly like us; and we soon find that we are perfectly like them, except that all they do is more clear, pure, and decorous, than with us,” Goethe is reported to have enthusiastically declared after reading a Chinese novel.
Is it possible to have a different view on China from India? Might we read Chinese literature neither out of eagerness for an exotic difference nor to come away amazed at a common humanity, but rather with the awareness of certain cultural, historical and social affinities and a curiosity about how their writers and ours interpret them in fiction? Given these affinities, could we approach Chinese literature more organically and not, following the Western model, as one more instance of ‘otherness’ to be annexed to the compendium of world literature?
By Bruce Humes, September 28, '13
To help the nation recover the revolutionary spirit, a new – lightly edited for political correctness, or annotated perhaps? – version of Mao's Little Red Book will reportedly hit the shelves soon (Revamp):
The new version is due for release in November, just before the 120th anniversary of Mao's birth. Its chief editor, Chen Yu – a senior colonel at the Academy of Military Science – describes it as a voluntary initiative. "We just want to edit the book, as other scholars work on the Analects of Confucius… We don't have a complicated political purpose," said Chen.
Sounds innocent enough . . .
Narrated in the first person by the aged wife of the last chieftain of an Evenki clan, Chi Zijian's Last Quarter of the Moon is a moving tale of the decline of reindeer-herding nomads in the sparsely populated, richly forested mountains that border on Russia.
Over the last three centuries, three waves of outsiders have encroached upon the Evenki’s isolated way of life: the Russians, whose warring and plundering eventually pushed the Evenki down from Siberia across to the southern (“right”) bank of the Argun River, the tributary of the Amur that defines the Sino-Russian border; the Japanese, who forcibly recruit them into the ranks of the Manchukuo Army; and the Han Chinese of the People’s Republic, who fell the forests that are crucial to the survival of reindeer, outlaw hunting, and eventually coerce the Evenki to leave the mountains for life in a “civilized” permanent settlement.
For links to reviews of the English novel in French, Spanish, English and Chinese, as well as an interview with the translator and an excerpt from the novel, visit Evenki Odyssey.
By Lucas Klein, September 21, '13
By now you've probably seen Flavorwire's 50 Works of Fiction in Translation That Every English Speaker Should Read. I found it presumptuously titled, annoyingly laid out, and repetitively repetitive in its tastemaking, but at least it covers the standards, some works I've been meaning to read, and some books I'm glad to be introduced to (I get annoyed by the privileging of fiction over other literary genres, but novels serve at least to limit the selection criteria).
But evidently Jason Diamond, who compiled the list, doesn't believe the fiction of the world's longest-standing civilization, its most populous country, and a rising power on the global stage (with two Nobel literature laureates in the last fifteen years) deserves to be read by every English speaker. Among the fifty novels listed, with many repeats of Russian, Spanish, French, and German, not a single one was written in Chinese or by a Chinese writer.
Subtitles is broken into three “chapters,” the first takes a direct look at official Communist Party banners that hang in the side streets of Shanghai’s poorest neighborhoods – the bureaucratic slogans become menacing gashes amidst crumbling homes, empty alleys and the promise of worse to come. In his second chapter, Leleu riffs on the government’s use of banners by fabricating his own, printing alternative slogans on them and hanging them himself. Photographs in the third and final chapter show blank red banners strung up in rural settings, a silent cry from nature far away from the political noise of urban China.
As I read through this story for the first time, and reached the point where A Yi compares the relationship between urban and rural Chinese to that between blacks and whites in America, I felt that twinge of quiet mortification you get whenever someone outside your culture wanders in and starts cheerfully man-handling its most sensitive parts. There are certain social issues that exist more concretely as a set of rules for how to talk about them than they do as issues themselves, and when someone who doesn’t know the rules goes barging in, generally all you can do is wince a little and hope it will be over soon.
In February the South China Morning Post ran a review I called “horribly written” and said made me feel “embarrassed to say I like the translations in a book that could inspire such homely homilies.”
Here’s another stupid review of contemporary Chinese poetry in the SCMP, of I Can Almost See the Clouds of Dust 我几乎看到滚滚尘埃 by Yu Xiang 宇向, translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain.
. . . renewed interest in defining what constitutes a “good” literary translation comes in the wake of the awarding of the 2012 Nobel Prize for Literature to China’s Mo Yan (莫言). Chinese translation professionals—and government officials keen on expanding the country’s soft power overseas—are searching for lessons to be drawn from Mo Yan’s resounding success.
One key lesson could be that China’s customary academic emphasis on word-for-word translation, in the belief it yields the greatest accuracy, doesn’t actually fly, marketing-wise. The article points out that Mo Yan’s English translator, Howard Goldblatt, edited freely as he translated (连译带改) Mo Yan’s Garlic Ballads (天堂蒜薹之歌), and that the German publisher chose to base its translation on the English too.
In China is Focusing on the Fringes published by The Guardian in March this year, literary translator Nicky Harman presciently pointed out that “independent–minded Chinese writers are becoming seriously interested in the geographical fringes of ‘China proper’, drawing on its people, their traditions and conflicts at work.” And as you can see in the table below, foreign publishers are interested . . .
The China International Translation Contest 2013 organizing committee has chosen 30 award-winning pieces of contemporary Chinese short stories from renowned writers including Jia Pingwa, Wang Anyi and Nobel prize winner Mo Yan.
...
Participants are required to choose one of the 30 stories to translate into English, French, Russian, Spanish, or Arabic and submit their works before Feb. 28, 2014.
...
The top prize for each language will be 5,000 U.S. dollars.
Tibetan writer Alai’s novel The Song of Gesar, translated from Chinese by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Lin, explores what’s in the hearts of both humans and deities. It’s an epic story from Tibet, told by generations of bards, and now in a written format by Alai; the author of a number of novels and collections of poetry and short stories (besides Gesar, only his novel Red Poppies seems available in English).
...
Such passages make the reader (and the characters) wonder whether the gods actually care about humans. Will they help humans or do they expect humans to sort things out on their own? What actually would be best for people? And what are the deities up to anyway? As this might show, The Song of Gesar is part of Canongate’s brilliant Myths series (which also includes work by Ali Smith, Klas Östergren, and Margaret Atwood, among many other important writers), and it’s a vital addition, as this is the first time the Tibetan story has appeared in English.
By Canaan Morse, September 4, '13
"Human shadows flicker to and fro over the double-paned windows, followed by threads of tiny lights that run across the glass like hairline cracks, then vanish instantly. When the train arrives at a station, the windows all light up, admitting the shadows of those without. Yet the light dispersed into the train car washes out the view of things inside..."
Wang Anyi, In The Belly of the Fog
More…
By Canaan Morse, September 3, '13
Yep! We're finally on the 140-character social media scene. Have a question? Tweet at us @PathlightMag.
Just updated as of Thursday Sep 12th. Now includes list of Chinese authors who'll be there, including Su Tong (苏童), best-selling children's book author Yang Hongying (杨红樱), poet Xi Chuan (西川) . . .
We are delighted to announce the winners of the 2013 Science Fiction and Fantasy Translation Awards (for works published in 2012) ... The jury has additionally elected to award three honorable mentions in each category.
Long Form Winner
Atlas: The Archaeology of an Imaginary City by Kai-cheung Dung, translated from the Chinese by Anders Hansson, Bonnie S. McDougall, and the author (Columbia University Press)
Short Form Honorable Mentions
“A Hundred Ghosts Parade Tonight” by Xia Jia, translated from the Chinese by Ken Liu (Clarkesworld #65)
In Niche Literary Reader, Liu Jun (刘浚) introduces Uyghur short story writer Alat Asem (阿拉提·阿斯木), one of a handful of writers widely published in both Chinese and his native Uyghur . . .
But these approaches prompt the question: Has China left its golden age of reading forever behind?
Today's China is far different from the closed society in the 1980s, then convalescing from decades of devastating political movements and hungry for intellectual nourishment. It is difficult to imagine that the reading renaissance during that period, kindled by this hunger, would return today. Amid the grim outlook of China's book industry, however, a curious case has emerged: Last December, the Chinese version of the first part of James Joyce's 1939 novel Finnegans Wake was published after an English professor in a Shanghai university spent eight grueling years translating it. The book became an unexpected hit, with its first run of 8,000 copies sold out in a month.
Yet The Republic of Wine had a catalysing effect on Mo Yan’s career. It made him believe that he could write large, ambitious novels of the sort that many in his generation – Yu Hua, Su Tong, Wang Anyi – would write in the 1990s and 2000s. Big Breasts and Wide Hips, a family saga that runs from the turn of the 20th century up to the early post-Mao period, confirms that this capacity was beyond him. Rather than evading death and atrocity, as Mo Yan’s critics claim, the novel is overburdened by them. Filled, like a classical Chinese novel, with a huge network of characters from many families, Big Breasts and Wide Hips gets into narrative difficulty keeping up with them all against the churning historical background.
On the flip side, the richly homophonic nature of spoken Chinese opens up endless possibilities for punning, which has often been used, along with parody and double entendre, to satirize the hypocrisy of official speech and to dodge the effects of widespread censorship. For all the comic relief offered by occasional acts of resistance, however, Link is understandably pre-occupied with what the long-term effects on public culture might be of several generations of Chinese living and breathing a language so severely twisted and constrained by the machinations of a repressive one-party state. While he does not underestimate the difficulty of recognizing, let alone breaking free of a tainted or impoverished language, he sees cause for guarded optimism in the opportunities for greater freedom of experimentation and self-expression that technology has made available in recent years.
“Cat Country,” considered by some to be the first Chinese science-fiction novel, is out next month in a new edition as part of Penguin China’s Modern Classics series. A second Lao She book, “Mr. Ma and Son,” first published in 1929, is also being made available in English this month for the first time in many years. Both are part of Penguin’s bet that there is a growing market for English translations of Chinese literature.
“Cat Country” is a dystopian story that reads like a hybrid of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm” and “1984,” a thinly veiled condemnation of Chinese society that predicts a world of corruption, violence and xenophobia.
As I often remind readers, the publishing 'business' (and its models) are entirely beyond my understanding, but ... holy shit, this can't be the way things are done, can it? We're talking about Chinese here, not some obscure language spoken by a few million, or a few tens of millions of people. And there are publishing professionals relying on ... the Italian version ? (And shelling out $60,000 on the basis of that .....)
What's particularly interesting here is (the claim) that:
The novel by Shanghai author Xiao Bai sold only moderately well in China, but it has the elements that appeal to Western readers.
Yes, it isn't even a particularly successful Chinese novel -- but, apparently, perceived to be a Western-reader-friendly one. Yes, clearly this book sold (to US publishers, etc.) not on the basis of its Chinese success or qualities, but on the basis of its Italian success.
Award-winning novelist David Mitchell is using the Douban Read platform, part of Douban, which is one of China’s biggest online cultural communities, to launch a translation contest for two of his short stories today (1 August 2013).
The contest is the first stage of a new collaborative research project led by Nesta, working with Douban Read, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, British Council and The Literary Platform. The translation contest is designed to generate qualitative and quantitative research to better understand the Chinese market for British writing.
By Nicky Harman, August 1, '13
Free Word London ("a global meeting place for literature, argument and free thinking") are offering two places on its Translators in Residence programme for 2014. Any languages can be offered by interested applicants. More information, including deadline for application, available here: http://www.freewordonline.com/info/work-for-us/
