By Helen Wang, September 11, '12
Have you tried this? http://iwl.me/
Copy and paste something you've written or translated, then press the Analyse button, and it will suggest an author you write like. I don't know how this works (or how accurate it is), but it's quite good fun.
Tan Twan Eng - Malaysian, born 1972. His first novel, The Gift of Rain, was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2007.
Set during the Japanese occupation, The Garden of Evening Mists follows young law graduate, Yun Ling Teoh, as she seeks solace among the plantations of the Cameron Highlands. Here she discovers Yugiri, the only Japanese garden in Malaya, and its owner and creator, the secretive Aritomo. Aritomo agrees to accept Yun Ling as his apprentice “until the monsoon” so that she can design a garden in memorial to her sister. But over time the jungle starts to reveal secrets of its own…
Mo Yan, one of the country's most acclaimed authors, once wrote a novel for the big screen. It was turned down flat by the well-known film director, Zhang Yimou. ... Writer Su Tong, whose novels have frequently been adapted into movies and television series, says he has always remained cautious about book-to-screen adaptations, which he treats as "remote relatives". ... "Literature is like a drug like crack, except it has healthy side effects," the British writer [David Mitchell] says. "It alters the state of your mind, stimulates imagination and helps you understand other culture and other people."
David Mitchell's first encounter with a Chinese writer during his visit to China in August was with Xu Zechen, the author of Running through Zhongguancun, in a café crowded with fans and readers in Beijing. Mitchell and Xu have read each other's works.
Xu said he prepared lots of questions to "bombard" the writer of Cloud Atlas. Xu sees in Mitchell a change of literary trends in the West and thick cross-cultural traces.
In the dialogue, with the theme of "How to Build a House of Fiction", Su compared Mitchell's work to Lego, as he magically puts together many seemingly random elements to create a book.
"There is no limitation of time or space to his imagination," Su says.
By Helen Wang, September 11, '12
Paper by Yang Shu (University of Oregon)
British Association of Chinese Studies (BACS) Annual Conference, 3-5 September 2012.
Full list of abstracts here
By Helen Wang, September 11, '12
Paper by Liu Qian, University of Oxford
British Association for Chinese Studies (BACS) Annual Conference, 3-5 September 2012.
Full list of abstracts here
By Helen Wang, September 11, '12
Paper by Chen Szuchi (Chung Yuan Christian University, Taiwan)
British Association for Chinese Studies (BACS) Annual Conference, 3-5 September 2012.
Full list of abstracts here
Including International Translation Day and the 2012 Harvill Secker Young Translators’ Prize (for translating Han Dong's work).
By Helen Wang, September 10, '12
Report by Antje Richter on the workshop that took place recently at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Some letters are literary, some are historical.
For more on the conference, see details
From details posted on H-Asia
British writer and Booker Prize winner A.S. Byatt, and the Chinese writer Wang Anyi (The Song of Everlasting Sorrow), who was nominated for the Man Booker International Prize last year, held a forum in Shanghai recently to discuss the current state of women and feminism in literature. The Global Times has picked some highlights of the Q and A session.
A potent mix of state censorship, conservative publishing choices and scant translation means international readers are given a narrow view of contemporary China, industry critics say.
Quoting Harvey Thomlinson and Julia Lovell.
文学新血：《天南》年轻作者见面会【嘉宾】周恺（《天南》第九期作者1990年生）余幼幼（《天南》第八期作者1990年生）孙一圣（《天南》第七期作者1986年生）【主持】欧宁（《天南》主编）【时间】9月9日15:00 -17:00【地点】东城区东直门外香河园路一号当代MOMA小区2号楼一层库布里克书店
Zhou Kai (b. 1990), Yu Youyou (b. 1990), Sun Yisheng (b. 1986) at an event hosted by Ou Ning, at the Kubrick Bookshop in Beijing, 9 September.
Things are hotting up over the use of English abbreviations in Chinese since a well-known Chinese dictionary included a few hundred English (gasp!) terms:
百余名学者向国家新闻出版总署、国家语言文字委员会联名举报，说商务印书馆出版的《现代汉语词典》第6版，收录了NBA等239个西文字母开头的词语，涉嫌违法。他们说，这是汉字拉丁化百年以来对汉字最严重的破坏。
In the second International Summit of Chinese Literature Translation, sinologists and translators gathered in Beijing to discuss the state of the current translation scene. They’re also looking into future opportunities to promote and spread Chinese literature across the world.
Language barrier could be the most crucial obstacle to promoting contemporary Chinese literature.
For readers from non-English speaking countries, many Chinese writers’ novels are first translated to English, then translated again to their native language. The double conversion has increased the possibility of twisting the original idea. And this has dampened their understanding and reading experience.
In Yu Hua's China in Ten Words, essays make good entry points for readers to understand China. New in Paperback
Includes a link to an interview with Yu Hua at Berkeley. Also features Andrew Jones and Robert Ashmore.
By Helen Wang, September 8, '12
Another Lin Yutang moment - this one relates to tragedy and tragic figures in Chinese literature
"It is passion that is the soul of life, the light in the stars, the lilt in music and song, the joy in flowers, the plumage in birds, the charm in woman, and the life in scholarship. It is as impossible to speak of a soul without passion as to speak of music without expression. It is that which gives us inward warmth and the rich vitality which enables us to face life cheerily.
Or perhaps I am wrong in choosing the word ‘passion’ when I speak of what the Chinese writers refer to as qing 情. Should I translate it by the word ‘sentiment’, which is gentler and suggests less of the tumultuous qualities of stormy passion?
By Helen Wang, September 7, '12
Having come across the name and words of Lin Yutang (1895-1976) several times this week, I pulled my old copy of The Importance of Living from the shelf, blew off the dust, and was delighted to find Appendix B: A Chinese Critical Vocabulary. It's written for the general reader, and includes 81 specific terms and many more in and amongst:
eg. 48. 豓 yan: voluptuous, georgeously beautiful, dazzlingly beautiful, passionate. eg. the peony, Mae West.
eg. 67. 瘦 shou: thin, slender. This is a strangely beautiful word in the Chinese language. Slender rocks and bamboos are always painted together. It expresses non-sensuous beauty.
Reading it now, six centuries after Guo Jujing wrote this paean to parental devotion, The 24 Paragons of Filial Piety comes off as a collection of scary bedtime stories. There is the woman who cut out her own liver to feed her sick mother, the boy who sat awake shirtless all night to draw mosquitoes away from his slumbering parents and the man who sold himself into servitude to pay for a father’s funeral.
Quality remains high in Part Two, with standout poems in every category. All traditions are excitingly combined in the experimental section, as in Yu Jian’s poem-file mash-up ‘Zero File’, the Names and Devices of Gu Cheng’s ‘Liquid Mercury’, or the joyous, post-ironic “tongue-twister to try”, Yang Xiaobin’s ‘Super-Cutie Language’ ...
If you really want to export great masterworks of literature and art, it’s actually very simple: Don’t keep sticking your finger into every pie.
Winter Sun Poems by Shi Zhi, Introduction by Zhang Qinghua, translated by Jonathan Stalling. To be published in 2012, as vol. 1 in the Chinese Literature Today Book series, ISBN 9780806142418.
This issue's featured author is Yi Sha, but there are lots of other familiar names too, and reviews of new books.
New Chinese-language edition of Granta appears next month.
From her perspective one of the things that draws readers in general, especially young readers, to Sci- Fi is the wish to look forward. She pointed out that much of Chinese literary and television looks to the past. By reading forward-looking novels Chinese readers can think about what may come rather than linger on the past. They can imagine what China will be like in the future.
Poetry reading and discussion with Xi Chuan and Zhou Zan 周瓒 at the Library of Congress last October in promotion of Push Open the Window. Xi Chuan read his poems in Chinese and English in my [Lucas Klein's] translation; Zhou Zan read her poems in Chinese, with English translations read by Carolyn Forché. A discussion follows.
Blog posted 30 Aug 2012
Article by Clarissa Sebag-Montefiore in the International Herald Tribune.
By Canaan Morse, September 3, '12
Chinese content for our next edition of Pathlight: New Chinese Writing has been set in soap, and I'm glad to announce that this issue will include far more poetry than any of the previous issues have. Faced with an abundance of work and a dearth of talented contacts, this is a call for motivated, experienced translators of Chinese poetry to establish a relationship with us. To be featured are Zhu Ling (朱零), Ou Ning (欧宁), Yao Feng (姚风) , Wang Yin (王寅), Wang Xiaolong (王小龙), Yang Zi (杨子), Huang Jinming (黄金明) , Liao Weitang (廖伟棠) and Yang Xiaobin (杨小滨). The deadline is coming up soon; we'll do our best to assign poems based on their relationship with the translator, and first drafts will be due in mid-September. Compensation is, if I may say so, exceptional for poetry. If interested, please send an email either to canaan@paper-republic.org or westrunningbrook@mac.com.
By Canaan Morse, September 3, '12
Three days ago, I hit up the People’s Literature Publishing House booth at the Beijing International Book Fair. One of PR’s best friends and industry contacts was on duty, and I stopped by to pick up a book and see how the work we’d done for them had come out. By the way, she said, Ge Fei has a new book out with us called The Invisibility Cloak. I asked her what she thought. She didn’t like it. Why not? A lot of unresolved suspense, she said, and it was too ambiguous. You didn’t know what to feel about it. But the writing was mature. Bells ringing dimly in my back brain, I took a copy. We long ago discovered that it often takes a negative review from her to spark our interest. By yesterday night, I had chewed through all one hundred eighty-eight pages, a pace I admit to not having reached since high school.
Interview with Harvey Thomlinson of Make-Do Publishing.
By Helen Wang, September 1, '12
Data compiled from the entry 中国作家富豪榜 on www.baidu.com
Chinese Writers’ Rich List 2011
1. Guo Jingming 郭敬明 (2010 - no.1 // 2009 - no.2 // 2008 - no.1)
2. Nan Pai San Shu 南派三叔 (2010 – no.14)
3. Zheng Yuanjie 郑渊洁 (2010 – no.3 // 2009 – no.1 // 2008 – no.2)
4. Yang Hongying 杨红樱 (2010 – no.1 // 2009 – no.3 // 2008 – no.3)
5. Anni Baobei 安妮宝贝 (2008 – no.22)
6. Jiang Nan 江南
7. Dang Nian Ming Yue 当年明月 (2010 – no.4 // 2009 – no.4 // 2008 – no.15)
8. Lang Xianping 郎咸平 (2010 – no.6)
9. Han Han 韩寒 (2010 – no.8 // 2009 – no.8 // 2008 – no.18)
10. Cai Kangyong 蔡康永
