Our News, Your News
By Bruce Humes, March 22, '13
Murakami Haruki’s latest novel, his first major release since the 1Q84 trilogy in April 2010, goes on sale in Japan April 12. I haven’t found any hint of its name in English, but according to a report by Shi Chenlu at Chinanews.com (村上春树新长篇) , its (temporary) Chinese title is <没有色彩的多崎造和他的巡礼之年>.
Intriguingly, now the hunt is on for the Chinese translator. You may recall that the monopoly of long-time Murakami translator Lin Shaohua (林少华) ended abruptly when the contract for rendering What I Talk about When I Talk about Running was handed over to Shi Xiaowei (当我谈跑步时我谈些什么，施小炜译).
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Summer in the city brings a strange transformation in this short story from Dorothy Tse, Woman Fish....
"China's writers are scouring the nation's borders for inspiration, as well as the far reaches of surrealist and fantasy writing..." my blog for the Guardian, to go with the Water stories.
Spiegel Online interviews Mo Yan, who says “I am guilty.”
The Guardian writes that “Mo Yan dismisses ‘envious’ Nobel critics.”
Mo Yan writes that “Good Literature Should Let Readers Discover Themselves”
One “Mo reason for culture promotion”
The Complete Review notices Mo Yan has more than one agent with “full rights to represent him in copyright talks and any other negotiations on cooperation.”
Sabina Knight on “Mo Yan’s Delicate Balancing Act.”
Martin Winter blogs about Mo Yan and Liao Yiwu 廖亦武
Chad Post on a book that didn’t make the Best Translated Book Award long list.
Charles Laughlin on “Mo Yan’s Nobel Prize for Literature: Resetting Chinese Literature” (a development of his article on “What Mo Yan’s Detractors Get Wrong“).
Perry Link at the Chinese University of Hong Kong Faculty of Law, 28 March: “A Tale of Two Nobels: Liu Xiaobo & Mo Yan” (in Chinese). Click to register.
At the Popup Chinese Sinica Podcast Alice Xin Liu, David Moser, and Brendan O’Kane talk to Kaiser Kuo about Mo Yan’s writing & reception, including a quick analysis of the three anecdotes from his literary acceptance speech.
The contemporary Chinese novelist, if they are a serious novelist, must therefore look for a new narrative method in order to establish a corresponding relationship between the novel and present social realities, and must respond as best they can to the complexity of Chinese reality. These responses first arise out of my questioning of how to preserve my true self in contemporary society. What kind of method is there to use in order to preserve at least a shred of the individual's subjectivity? How to converse with others using personal experience is, I believe, the most crucial reason for the existence of the novel under our current heightened systematisation.
Chan Koonchung, the Beijing-based, HK-born author of the Fat Years (盛世) has just launched his new, sure-to-be-controversial novel in Chinese, entitled <裸命> (The Unbearable Dreamworld of Champa the Driver). Hong Kong’s Peony Literary Agency reports it has negotiated the sale of rights to Transworld Publishing, and plans are to release it in English in May 2014.
(in Chinese) - link tweeted by Chris Kang @KangKai
By Nicky Harman, March 15, '13
"Writers have long been fascinated by the wet stuff, and now we're opening the floodgates on a series of aquatic-themed short stories" says Richard Lea in the Guardian today. The Guardian has featured Chinese fiction before - five short stories translated from Chinese marked last year's London Book Fair. The current collection of "water" stories are from all around the world, some written in English, others translated. Dorothy Tse (谢晓红）wrote one in Chinese especially for this series, and it's translated by me.
Literary agent Kelly Falconer, who this week formally celebrates the launch of her Asia Literacy [sic] Agency (ALA) in Hong Kong, has some strong words to say in defence of a group of people she feels are overlooked by the industry.
“I am very concerned by the general disregard and lack of due respect given to translators,” she says. “I despair of the paltry fees offered to them, many of whom barely subsist on what they earn. I think fairer agreements need to be made more standard, and not only afforded to the big names in the translation industry.”
All my works — my novels, essays and stories — can be downloaded free. My most recent book, “China in Ten Words,” which cannot be published in mainland China because of the climate of censorship, was accessible online here as soon as it was released in Taiwan. Pirated hard copies of books circulate just as openly — my last novel, “Brothers,” had been on sale in bookstores for only a few days when a copycat edition appeared in sidewalk stalls outside my house.
While the city boasts a bustling literary scene this month thanks to the ongoing Bookworm and Capital literary festivals with visiting international authors, journalists and thinkers, Metro Beijing spoke with some of the local writers in town, established and new. What they offer is a picture of how Beijing's wordsmiths are making their way into a successful writing career.
Featuring Sheng Keyi, Xia Jia and Vincent Qi.
Paper Republic affiliates Brendan O'Kane and Alice Xin Liu discuss with Kaiser Kuo and David Moser.
Imagine if every British novel published since the 1940s was about the Second World War. That’s about as accurate a view of contemporary China held by readers in the Anglophone West, say experts here.
Article by Samantha Kuok Leese, in The Spectator, 13 March 2013. Quotes Harvey Thomlinson, Julia Lovell, Kelly Falconer...
Rather, his essays are nothing short of an objective lesson of a "comprehensive" mind reflected in both content and style. The rich and myriad allusions in his essays serve to connect various "limited views," different conceptual and aesthetic categories both Eastern and Western, often in a surprising yet brilliant manner. Qian's knack for allusions, as Rea argues in his introduction, is more than simply showing off his erudition. It connotes, rather, a form of "intellectual egalitarianism" and exemplifies the working of a cosmopolitan mind. Still, even as Qian's cosmopolitanism is premised upon a conceptual equality among world cultures, this worldliness can also be daunting simply because the knowledge-scape it commands is too vast for any scholar with "limited views" to grasp.
By Eric Abrahamsen, March 9, '13
I recently finished Jagannath, a collection of short stories from Swedish author Karin Tidbeck which, I only realized at the end of the book, belongs to the rare and strange category of books that have been translated by their own author.
"Damn this is a good translation," I thought more than once as I read the stories. There's no guarantee that an author will have the chops in a second language to do themselves justice, but Tidbeck does. From her afterword:
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To save 50% simply use the coupon code "SALE" in your shopping cart after you have entered all the books for your order, click "apply" and your savings will be calculated.
The fine print:
1. Sale is for North American orders only.
2. No special shipping (Next-day, 2-day, etc.)
3. All Sales final, no returns.
4. Discount applies only to orders placed through our website.
5. The "SALE" discount code cannot be combined with any other discount codes.
The Matchmaker, the Apprentice, and the Football Fan: More Stories of China, by Zhu Wen, tr. Julia Lovell, due July 2013.
"Atlas" by Dung Kai-Cheung, tr Anders Hansson & Bonnie S. McDougall is on the longlist for Three Percent's Best Translated Book Award 2013!
Chan Koonchung's sexually explicit novel, The Bare Truth about Champa, explores politically explosive issues in China today – relations between Han Chinese and Tibetans. Chan goes where no other Chinese writer has gone before. Transworld plan to publish in 2014.
Via the Complete Review:
In China Daily Mei Jia offers an appropriately muddled and confused
article claiming Literary agents open new chapter in China.
There's Nobel laureate Mo Yan announcing that: "his daughter Guan
Xiaoxiao has full rights to represent him in copyright talks and any
other negotiations on cooperation" -- though maybe that doesn't extend
globally, as Andrew Wylie still lists him as a client...
Then there's:
Chen Liming, president of Beijing Genuine and Profound Culture
Development Corp, who has been offering literary agent-like
services to top Chinese writers including Mo and Mai Jia, known
for his spy and detective novels.
(Personally, I think representation by them is worth it just for the
name alone -- who could ask for more than: 'Genuine and Profound
Culture Development' from their representative ?)
Of course Chen does have a problem:
Thursday, March 7:
4:30 - 5:45: AWP Boston: R267. Contemporary Chinese Literature in Translation, with Eleanor Goodman and Jonathan Stalling (Room 305, Level 3)
7:30: Cha: An Asian Literary Journal reading at the Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies at Harvard University, with Eleanor Goodman, W. F. Lantry, Kim Liao, Mai Mang (Yibing Huang), Tracy Slater, Marc Vincenz, and Nicholas YB Wong. Hosted by March issue guest editors Kaitlin Solimine and Marc Vincenz.
Friday, March 8:
12:00 - 1:30: Harvard University EALC Common Room (2 Divinity): Notes on the Mosquito – Poetry Reading and Talk by Xi Chuan, moderated by David Der-wei Wang and Lucas Klein
Monday, March 11:
7:00-8:00: Middlebury College Axinn Center 229: Poetry Reading by Xi Chuan
Tuesday, March 12:
4:30: Middlebury College Robert A. Jones '59 House conference room: Translating Poetry: A roundtable discussion with Chinese poet Xi Chuan, Central Academy for Fine Arts (Beijing), and his translator, Assistant Professor Lucas Klein of City University of Hong Kong, and Middlebury College faculty.
Wednesday, March 13:
TBA: reading at NYU China House
Friday - Saturday, March 15 - 16:
2013 Princeton Poetry Festival
by Alison Flood: "In first major interview since winning the literature prize, novelist insists his portrayal as a Chinese 'state writer' is unfair"
Henry Luce Foundation Chinese Poetry & Translation Fellowships at VSC. The Vermont Studio Center (VSC) invites applications for its Chinese Poetry & Translation Fellowships Program supported by the Henry Luce Foundation. In 2013, VSC will award 10 outstanding Chinese poets and literary translators with 4-week joint residencies to create new work individually and in collaboration as part of VSC’s diverse creative community.
Applications for this inaugural round of VSC/Luce Foundation Chinese Poetry & Translation Fellowships are accepted online or in printable form at www.vermontstudiocenter.org/apply as part of VSC’s April 1, 2013 international fellowships deadline.
2013 VSC/Luce Foundation Chinese Poetry & Translation Fellowships:
-- Five awards for poets whose primary language is Chinese. These awards include roundtrip travel and a discretionary stipend.
-- Five awards for English-language translators working with Chinese poetry.
-- These fellowships are available to individual poets and translators, as well as established working pairs.
Wait...a balanced, truthful, well-considered opinion about China, posted in the New York Times?
Could - could it be the NYT's Beijing Bureau is finally moving away from poorly informed, ideologically rigged reportage and toward transparent journalism? A miracle!
Oh, wait...Yu Hua wrote it...
The South China Morning Post has published a review of Wind Says 风在说 (Zephyr Press), by Bai Hua 柏桦 and translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain.
It’s a positive review, but it’s a horribly written one: full of cliches about Chinese essences (“Messages are conveyed in sharp but poignant images, paying homage to Chinese and Western writers of the past, as well as to the philosophical tradition in which Chinese writing is steeped.”), the untranslatability of translated poetry (“one must question how much is lost to the non-Chinese reader in translation”), and literary historical nonsense (“realism is, after all, a defining characteristic of Misty poetry, a reaction against restrictions on art during the Cultural Revolution”). By the time we reach the end line (“In Bai’s poetic voice, one can almost feel the winds of change blowing through the pages”), I feel queasy and am embarrassed to say I like the translations in a book that could inspire such homely homilies.
Oh, and there’s a picture of Chinese mountains enshrouded in mist–you know, because Bai Hua is post-”Misty,” get it?
By Helen Wang, February 23, '13
This week I came across these two expressions for the first time. I'm about curious to know if there are Chinese translations of these expressions; if they come up in discussion in China; and if so, what people are saying?
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By Canaan Morse, February 22, '13
Only a thought, which seems to me worthy of being aired:
After all these years, I find it harder to read Chinese literature while I am here in China than when I am elsewhere. China’s living social context actively limits my freedom to read. By this I mean the ability of the reader to remove himself and the work from a social context that tells him what he ought to think, so that the text may rise from the water of the reader’s emotions and present itself again as something with independent tensile strength. Now, I don't know that separation is particularly valued now; a straw poll of my memories suggests that more emphasis is placed on engagement with foreign cultural contexts, both for readers and writers, and especially as regards mainland China. I also don’t wish to presume that freedom to read and freedom to write are the same thing, but they are connected, and when I consider how much easier it is for me to enjoy Chinese literature when I am away from the country and its excessive, falsified cultural dick-waving, I wonder how right those people are who point fingers at Ma Jian, Ha Jin and the other diaspora writers to criticize them for “not knowing what’s going on in China now.”
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First things first: this is a book of amazing, beautiful poetry, and you should read it.
In translating Xi Chuan’s Notes on the Mosquito: Selected Poems (New Directions, 2012), Lucas Klein has given readers access to a bilingual journey through more than two decades of Xi Chuan’s evolution as a writer, a person, and a historian. The poems collected and rendered in Notes on the Mosquito range from evocative lyric verse about shepherds and loneliness to historical essays that consider the “New Qing History.” (It is a striking range, and one that was quite unexpected for this reader and historian.) In our conversation, Lucas was generous enough to explain many aspects of his process and approach as a translator, and to read a number of the translated poems collected in the volume. We talked about several aspects of his work, including both practical issues and more conceptual questions about the linking of history and poetry in the writing of a poet and a reader’s approach to the resulting work. It was a pleasure, and I hope you enjoy listening.
Translated by Hongling Zhang and Jason Sommer. Mentioned in The New Yorker's "Briefly Noted" section.
Translated by Zhang Hongling and Jason Sommer. Launched in the UK this month and getting good reviews.
这种为翻译家写作的趋势绝不可取。尽管文学走向世界必须经过翻译家的翻译，必须经过他们创造性的劳动，但是作为一个作家，在写作的时候如果想着翻译家，那势必使自己的艺术风格大打折扣，势必为了翻译的容易而降低自己作品的高度和难度。因此，作家在写作时，什么人都可以想，就是千万别想着翻译家；什么人都不能忘，但是一定要忘记翻译家。只有如此，才能写出具有自己风格、具有中国风格的小说来。
“The death of Haizi the poet will become one of the myths of our time,” eulogized Xi Chuan 西川 in 1990, a year after the suicide of one of his closest friends. Four years later, however, he tried to pierce that mythology: if we continue to “frame Haizi in a sort of metaphysical halo,” he wrote, “then we can neither get a clear view of Haizi the person nor of his poetry.” Testifying to its significance in the promotion and dissemination of Haizi’s writings, the first quotation (differently translated and romanized) also appears on the back cover of Over Autumn Rooftops (Host Publications, 2010), the collection of Haizi translations by Dan Murphy… The reconsideration, however, presents a cognizance essential for literary history and readers interested in approaching the reality, rather than mythology, of the poet. It is also the starting point for Rui Kunze’s ambitious, painstakingly researched, yet ultimately uneven study, Struggle and Symbiosis: The Canonization of the Poet Haizi and Cultural Discourses in Contemporary China.
An upbeat and inspiring look at literary translation by Danny Hahn who says: 'You know you’re in safe hands with “Once upon a time” – the hands of a storyteller, a writer, perhaps a translator. Good stories start with a “Once upon a time”. In English, at least.'
By Nicky Harman, February 17, '13
This year, the Birkbeck (London) Translation Summer School offers Chinese to English as an option again. There will be a mixture of texts to study - from literary to technical via reportage. Dates: 22-26 July 2013. For more details see here. The workshop leader will be Nicky Harman.
Article by John Samuel Harpham, in Criticism, Volume 55, Number 1, Winter 2013, pp. 95-118. (subscription needed)
Tired of rants castigating Mo Yan, the alleged Chinese “government stooge” and recently decorated Nobel Laureate?
Tiresome because most of his critics have read few if any of his novels in any language; Mo Yan bashing has so far concentrated on the much-awaited criticisms he has not uttered about his government’s shameless censorship policy. With Folk Opera in the New York Times, we get a better educated view from Ian Buruma, who has actually read some of Mo Yan’s novels in both Chinese and English translation . . .
By Helen Wang, February 10, '13
Happy New Year from the China Fiction Book Club (especially if you were born in the year of the snake, the most unloved/ feared/ despised of the 12 animals). Here's what we posted on twitter (@cfbcuk) earlier...
金蛇出洞！Hoping that the Year of the Snake ("little dragon") will be a good year! Some very famous Chinese writers were born in the Year of the Snake: Qu Yuan 屈原; Lu You 陆游; Wu Jingzi 吴敬梓; Lu Xun 鲁讯, Mao Zedong 毛泽东.
[Source: http://www.shengxiao5.cn/shengxiao/6/shengxiao500.htm …]
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By Helen Wang, February 10, '13
My surprise last week at the Chinese New Year display and stock of Chinese fiction at Watermark Books in King's Cross Station was because most bookshops in London stock very few Chinese books (and then mostly on the X,Y,Z shelf). What's more, the staff usually know next-to-nothing about the Chinese fiction they're selling (Mo Yan? Who?). The exception is Arthur Probsthain Bookshop (known to locals as Probsthain’s) which always has a range of Chinese fiction on display and for sale, not just at Chinese New Year, and has knowledgeable staff.
Arthur Probsthain Bookshop specialises in Asian, Middle Eastern and African books, and is located at 41 Great Russell Street, opposite the British Museum. The business was founded in 1902 on Bury Place (round the corner) and has been at its current location since 1903. It is still a family-run business. Recently refurbished, there is now a bookshop and gallery at street level, and a very nice café called Tea and Tattle downstairs. There’s also a branch of Probsthain’s at the School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), a short walk away. Michael Sheringham, the great-nephew of Arthur Probsthain, has supplied details of the Chinese fiction currently on display for Chinese New Year.
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Yan Lianke, whose bleakly humorous novel Lenin's Kisses is published in Britain on Thursday, had two books banned in the past decade. He said it had been easier to publish in the five years before that.
He also criticised the intelligentsia – including last year's Nobel literature prize-winner Mo Yan – for failing to speak out on important issues. "Chinese intellectuals haven't taken enough responsibility. They always have an excuse, saying they don't have a reason to talk or don't have the environment ... If they could all stand up, they would have a loud voice," he told the Guardian.
By Nicky Harman, February 7, '13
Translate a poem from any language, classical or modern, into English. Three categories – Open, 18-and-under and 14-and-under – and cash prizes. Details, entry forms and free booklets of past winning entries available from the Stephen Spender Trust. Closing date Friday 24 May 2013.
So much for the invisible translator. With the launch of his Chinese renditions of classics whose copyrights had expired (新译本), such as The Old Man and the Sea (老人与海) and The Great Gatsby (了不起的的盖茨比), Li Jihong (李继宏) has managed to infuriate a host of fellow translators, hommes de lettres and even would-be readers.
Partly due to the aggressive advertising campaign accompanying the launch that claims these are “the finest translations to date,” and partly by bringing up the very vulgar, very touchy subject of $ earned for literary translation work . . .
By Bruce Humes on Ethnic China Lit:
The authorities are clearly worried about where all this public anger could lead. We learn from a NYT essay (Masters of Subservience) that Wang Xiaofang (王晓方), author of 13 popular fictional exposés such as Civil Servant’s Notebook (公务员笔记), has since reportedly been unable to publish his three newest works.
In his entry in the 2004 report on the state of the discipline, Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization, David Damrosch, doyen of world literature studies, reproduces a table showing the MLA citation index of Lu Xun 鲁迅 (1881 – 1936) over the previous four decades. According this bibliography, Lu Xun was referred to in 3 articles between 1964 and 1973, in 12 articles from 1974 to 1983, in 19 articles from 1984 to 1993, and in 22 articles between 1994 and 2003 (David Damrosch, “World Literature in a Postcanonical, Hypercanonical Age,” in Comparative Literature in an Age of Globalization. Haun Saussy (ed.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006, p. 49). Without question, in what may be the disciplinary “age of world literature” even more than “an age of globalization,” Lu Xun has entered into a certain kind of canonicity. Investigating and interrogating the specifics of that canonicity, and the ways in which Lu Xun is framed, understood, translated, and transformed via such canonicity, is the subject of Daniel Dooghan’s fascinating, revealing, and provocative dissertation, Literary Cartographies: Lu Xun and the Production of World Literature (University of Minnesota, 2011).
In China, “bureaucracy lit” is a hot genre, far outselling spy stories and whodunits as the airport novel of choice. In these tales of overweening ambition, the plot devices that set readers’ pulses racing are underhanded power plays, hidden alliances and devious sexual favors . . .
“I never thought I would drink urine for a full five years,” reflects one unfortunate flunky on his attempts to ingratiate himself with his boss in the opening scene of Wang Xiaofang’s “Civil Servant’s Notebook,” which has sold more than 100,000 copies in China since its publication in 2009 and has just been published as an e-book in English [translated by Eric Abrahamsen]. “Urine is a metaphor for the culture of officialdom that has existed in China for thousands of years,” Wang told me. “Urine is the garbage excreted from people’s bodies. And this book is an attack on the culture of officialdom.” Bribery, he explained, is ingrained in every aspect of Chinese culture. “When devotees go to worship Buddha, they don’t cleanse their souls, like Christians confessing their sins in church,” he said. “They kneel down and donate money to the collection box, to bribe the Buddha.”
By Helen Wang, February 3, '13
Having heard that Watermark Books in Kings Cross station (London) was doing a promotion on China-related titles, I went to take a look this afternoon. They have a small table, piled with about a dozen non-fiction titles (eg by Yang Jiping, Frank Dikotter, Fuschia Dunlop, Henry Kissinger, Julia Lovell, Martin Jacques), a dozen fiction titles and a couple of books for children. If anyone’s interested, I’ve put some photos on twitter @cfbcuk . By Chinese standards this is a tiny display, but for a non-specialist bookshop in the UK, and bear in mind that this is a small bookshop located in a railway station, it’s quite impressive. This is the first Watermark Books in the UK; there are other Watermark Books in other countries, also located in station/airport locations.
The fiction and children’s books on the table were all produced by Better Link Press, Shanghai Press & Publishing Development Company 上海新闻出版发展公司. There were also some glossy posters behind the till desk, so I assume that the publisher is involved in the promotion, or at least is the source of the fiction books, children’s books, and the decorations. They had a couple of other China-related titles on their regular shelves : the Penguin Classics edition of The Analects, and The Flowers of War, by Geling Yan, translated by Nicky Harman. When I pointed these out, they added them to the table display.
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