Our News, Your News
By Helen Wang, June 2, '12
From Winstonsdad's Blog:
"I m sure somewhere last year I heard some one in an interview ,they said the 21st century was going to be the century of the Chinese novel .So lets start with the Great chinese novel ,any one that reads this blog ,I m sure there are a few people know I struggle with Chinese fiction ,I feel what may be classed a the great Chinese novel hasn’t been written China is so fast-moving in the last few years you feel a book that could capture the feel of one of these Mega cities .The books I have read tend to deal with social issues and the moves from country to town ,rather than a look as Chinese culture as a whole in these mega-cities and how it effect people everyday .They are great books but not what may be classed as great Chinese novel."
Winstonsdad also reviewed Yan Lianke's Dream of Ding Village (tr. Cindy Carter) and Ma Jian's Stick Out Your Tongue (tr. Flora Drew), see his section on China
Zhou Ruchang, China's leading scholar of the classic novel A Dream of Red Mansions, died at age of 95 at his home at midnight on Thursday. His death stirred nationwide mourning and excited a new tide of interest in the literary masterpiece, which is important to the Chinese and is thought to have reached unprecedented heights...
Stepping forward in time through this month's round-up, Wenguang Huang has written a powerful memoir reflecting on how events of the past can shape present circumstance. The Little Red Guard tells the story of how Huang's family, during Mao's China, is faced with a dilemma: his grandmother's coffin. In a country that has banned a traditional burial for its deceased, Huang's grandmother wants nothing other than to be buried beside her husband after death. Religious, cultural, and political sectors churn in upheaval, while this integral symbol of the past must be guarded. The Little Red Guard has already had many wonderful reviews from The Tribune, WSJ, Publisher's Weekly, and many more. Without a hitch, this poignant memoir makes our list for the books to be devouring this month.
By Lucas Klein, June 2, '12
Why is the accepted English translation of 八零后 "post-80s"? Don't believe me? Take a look at Wikipedia, which sets the standard for everything: Post-80s. And here's a China Daily headline--they know all, too: False impression of post-80s kids.
But correct me if I'm wrong... "post-80s" in English means someone born after the eighties--so, the nineties? If you really want to talk about someone born after 1980, you don't say "post-eighties," but "post-eighty." Right? Unless it's supposed to be a plural referring not to the decade of the eighties, but to people born in that generation, as in, "I'm a post-seventy, but you guys are a bunch of post-eighty's." But based on the China Daily headline, above (and the rest of how people throw this term around), that's not what anyone says.
Until now. I say we start a campaign (no, no slogans or red books necessary) to rectify the name and start talking about the "post-80" generation, and the "post-90 generation." The revolution starts with Paper Republic.
Eighteen years after he penned his best-selling Last of the Huns (最后一个匈奴), Gao Jianqun has announced his new novel The Eminent Monk and the Hun King (高僧与匈奴王，高建群著) will be published by year-end 2012. It is based on his screenplay for Tongwan City (统万城) whose filming has already begun.
Few people in the West have heard of Porter, a translator of Chinese poetry and religious works whose books in print—many of them published by a small non-profit, Copper Canyon Press—rarely sell more than a thousand copies each year. For most of the past decade, he says, his annual income has hovered around $15,000. Several of his books humorously thank the US Department of Agriculture—for providing food stamps that have kept him and his family going.
But Porter, who translates under the pen name Red Pine (赤松), has also published two minor classics of Chinese travel writing, Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits and Zen Baggage: a Pilgrimage to China—works that have recently gained him a huge Chinese following, thanks to a small but growing new publishing culture for foreign authors.
Sina Corp on Monday enacted a point system under which users of its Sina Weibo service are punished for posting content deemed harmful. The system, which in part encompasses Sina Weibo's more than 300 million registered user accounts, comes at a politically sensitive time in China.
The new system assigns each user an equal amount of points and gives its user base a policing role, allowing administrators to dock a user's point total depending on potential offenses pointed out by other users. The account of a person whose score falls to zero will be erased, according to Sina's website.
To the reader's delight, Lovell has excellently produced a clear, agreeable, and lively account. Some lengthy passages could have been shortened, especially descriptions of the horrors of different military operations, as well as discussions of the appalling hacks pushing the Yellow Peril thesis (pp. 274-291). It is regrettable that Lovell seems to be unaware (but then again, unfortunately, so is a near totality of opium historians) that the routinely reproduced photographs of opium smokers in the late Qing are just studio jobs meant to fuel a flourishing picture postcard industry presenting a rather spurious exoticism. It is thus futile to theorise as she does over the degree of addiction and even more over the feelings of "smokers" from the time the cliché caught on (p. 17).
Any literary translation is a challenge, and I don't believe there is such a thing as a "perfect" or "definitive" translation when it comes to Chinese poetry in English. In his introduction, Murphy states his philosophy of translation this way: "I believe that the works on the page point the way to the poem. It is not just the words that we translate, but rather that which is pointed to" (v). This is a perfectly reasonable position. In practice, it is up to the translator to recreate the texture of the original through careful choices of diction, syntax, rhythm, and tone. Should one preserve the different levels of parallelism in the originals? Should one keep the repetitions so common in modern Chinese poetry, or omit them for the sake of succinctness in English? Should one use the singular or the plural form of noun and verb? Should one, at the risk of wordiness, replicate the length of a line such as "Ni zheme changjiu de chenshui jiujing wei le shenme? [你这么长久的沉睡究竟为了什么？]," or opt for a straightforward rendition: "why your long, long sleep?" (263) In most cases, Murphy exercises sound judgment.
Includes:
Yan Ge: Dad's Not Dead
Li Young-Lee: The Winged Seed
Guo Xiaolu: A Soul in Sakhalin
Ha Jin: A Pension Plan
As China attempts, tentatively, to become an exporter as much as an importer - witness the Christian Bale-Zhang [Yimou] collaboration "The Flowers of War" last year, which shares a screenwriter with "Liaisons" - remakes are an opportunity to further smooth the way. It's (presumably) a lot easier to sell a cultural product to a Western audience if that product is merely a repackaging of something they already know.
Cannes audiences have been mostly enamored with "Liaisons," giving the film enthusiastic ovations when it premiered earlier this week. Whether a global audience will respond the same way remains unclear. Though there is a familiar arc and a more conventional manner of storytelling than exists in many Chinese period pieces, the film is still ultimately a culturally specific Chinese remake of what was in itself only an art-house hit.
I was a typical patriot before 2008 [year of deadly earthquake centered on Dujiangyan, Sichuan]. I believed that “hostile foreign forces” were responsible for most of my peoples’ misfortunes. As a soccer commentator covering games between Japan and China, I wrote lines like, “Cut off the Japanese devils’ heads.” I saw Japanese soccer players as the descendants of the Japanese soldiers who brutally killed Chinese civilians in the 1937 massacre of Nanjing. I used to curse CNN for its anti-China commentaries. I was one of the protesters who stood in front of the U.S. consulate in Chengdu and raised my fist after the U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999.
But my patriotism began to come into question as I stood in front of the ruins of Beichuan High School. It became clear that the “imperialists” did not steal the reinforced-steel bars from the concrete used to make our schools. Our school children were not killed by foreign devils. Instead, they were killed by the filthy hands of my own people.
I still believe that we should “build a New Great Wall with our flesh and blood” but now I also believe the Great Wall should protect our flesh and blood.
By Nicky Harman, May 25, '12
Michael Rank asked me to post this piece about a get-together held in London last week. He writes:
Translated fiction is notoriously hard to sell in the English-speaking world, but Chinese fiction seems to be a bit of an exception just at the moment. That was the message from a meeting of about 20 translators and readers arranged by Chinese-English translator, Nicky Harman, and Michael Sheringham of Arthur Probsthain, the venerable oriental bookshop on Great Russell Street near the British Museum.
More…
...Of all the hundreds of characters and intricate plots across which ROTK ranges, Canadian filmmaker Atom Egoyan and composer Guo Wenjing have chosen the merest sliver as the subject for their new opera, Feng Yi Ting, which sees its American premiere at the Dock Street Theatre on May 27. The upshot: The empire hangs on a thread. A powerful aristocrat named Dong Zhuo plays the emperor like a puppet and terrorizes the population. His adopted godson, a showboating general named Lü Bu, is the brawn to Zhuo's brain. Enter minister Wang Yun, a world-class schemer with an ace up his sleeve by the name of Diao Chan, a svelte tigress upon whose lovely head Yun hatches a diabolical plan: to cause both Dong and Lü to fall madly in love with her, after which she is to wield the younger against the senior, slicing in two the knot that constricts the empire.
Spoiler alert: It works...
Review by Jane Housham, The Guardian, 22 May 2012
Shi Cheng means "10 cities" and reveals the structural concept of this book, one in a series of story collections about groups of cities. The idea of the city as a "character" in fiction or film is very much of our times and conjures up notions of ceaseless noise and activity, the alienation of the individual in the roiling mass. These stories confound such expectations. Not only do they resist the noirish clichés of "urban fiction", they deny us any of the themes we might expect from China; children are not an issue here, nor factory life, and only one story touches on social organisation. The cities remain mostly undifferentiated. Instead, there are strange, glancing portraits of misfits – a man who builds a car from scrap, a woman whose mission is to stop her friend committing murder. Weirdly inconsequential, most of the stories trail off, leaving little impression save that of sad, flattened lives. Some of the writers are well-known in China, but in translation, all are somehow robbed of energy. Perhaps subtleties of humour and pathos don't translate easily.
As with all Guardian online pieces, there is a comment box attached to this review, which will stay open for a few days.
This should make for an interesting talk, because the novel itself—reportedly purchased by Penguin for US$100,000—has been labelled as “fascist” by some critics in the West, and there has been quite a bit of discussion about the way Goldblatt and Penguin’s editors handled the translation.
Bertrand Mialeret introduces the author Shirley Geok-Lin Lim.
Writes venture capitalist Eric X. Li in the South China Morning Post:
"Prices of contemporary Chinese art continue to reach commanding heights. It is a phenomenon many liberal political commentators rather ignore. It does not fit their narrative. The story they prefer to tell goes as follows: Artistic freedom is the prerequisite of creating great art; China's authoritarian politics places severe limits on artistic freedom; such lack of freedom makes it impossible for China to attain real cultural achievements - the much craved 'soft power'."
"...In the long history of man's endeavour to create art, so-called artistic freedom is a very recent anomaly. Michelangelo worked for the Pope. The Chinese literati painters were Mandarins serving the imperial court. Mozart composed under the rather overbearing Holy Roman Emperor, as brilliantly depicted in the 1984 film Amadeus - 'Too many notes, Mozart!' "
"In fact, if one takes a stroll in the corridors of the world's premier cultural institutions such as the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Louvre, the vast majority of art works being admired were created with no artistic freedom at all. In every culture and every civilisation, most great art was produced under, or at the service of, political and/or religious authorities. Enduring artistic achievements were realised even under the harshest forms of dictatorial rule. The pyramids were built for the Pharaohs and Shostakovich composed, with real discomfort, beautiful music under Stalin."
By Nicky Harman, May 21, '12
Applicants must be practising literary translators.
FWC are looking for one translator in residence who is working from Turkish, as Turkey will be the country focus for the London Book Fair in April 2013. The second translator will be working from another language that is widely spoken in the local community, i.e. the local boroughs of Islington, Hackney, City and Tower Hamlets. These include: Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Greek, Gujarati, Punjabi, Somali, Spanish, Urdu and Vietnamese.
The role of translator in residence will be both challenging and rewarding. Therefore, FWC are looking for a professional, practising translator, with an aptitude for working in community settings and a proactive, collaborative approach that will engage a wide range of participants and audiences.
More…
I’ve compiled a list of the poets whose work appears in English translation in Jade Ladder, the new anthology of contemporary Chinese poetry edited by Yang Lian 杨炼, W N Herbert, Brian Holton, and Qin Xiaoyu 秦晓宇.
By Sam Taylor, Financial Times, 19 May 2012
Word Play. Translation is an art beset with linguistic pitfalls....
Anna Holmwood has three paras on translating Chinese (and Swedish).
Review by David Evans, in the Financial Times
City Limits. An anthology of Chinese stories that captures the frantic and fragmented urban experience...
Shi Cheng: Short Stories from Urban China, edited by Liu Deng, Carol Yinghua Lu and Ra Page, Comma Press, RRP£9.99, 224 pages.
The reading began with “This Minute”, an early work with a haunting refrain: the line “we live together on this planet of deserts and seas” is repeated, with a growing momentum, throughout the piece. Xi Chuan kicked things off with the Chinese, and then Lucas read the English translation. Most people in the room were bilingual, and could appreciate the poem both ways; my listening skills are still not at the stage where I can understand a poem delivered aloud, but nevertheless I caught enough tantalising glimpses of meaning to make the English reading, when it came, even more fulfilling. It was rather like looking at the sky through a thin headscarf, or a thick cloud of Beijing pollution, understanding just enough of what I saw out there to know that it was a sky and that when the moment came for me to see it clearly, it would be beautiful.
The trilogy spans most of the 20th century, hopping back and forth between the decades and capturing the non-linear Tibetan sense of time. Fan's imagination almost seems to get the better of him as Living Buddhas levitate and Shamans summon spirits to do battle, but the stories are firmly rooted in the locale's colorful history. Historical fiction with dabs of highly entertaining "supernatural realism" thrown in, if you like.
The opening novel, Harmonious Land, (水乳大地) recounts the tale of a multi-ethnic settlement in Lancangjiang Canyon (gateway to Tibet), beset by battles between arrogant French Catholic missionaries, incompetent officials and their marauding troops, Naxi Dongba Shamanists, and the dominant Tibetans, not all of whom lead pacific, vegetarian lives in the local lamasery.
An extract from 'Endless August', in The Road of Others, published in Make-Do Publishing's Modern Chinese Masters series, April 2012.
Translated by Keiko Wong.
The LRB 10 May 2012 has an article by Joanna Biggs (LRB editor) on the pre-Bookfair British Council trip that took journalists to China to meet writers. The journalists spoke to 14 fiction writers in Shanghai, Nanjing and Beijing. She mentions Yu Shi, Bi Feiyu, Han Han, Liu Xiaobo, Yan Lianke, Murong Xuecun, Qi Jiazhen (but obviously didn't meet all of them).
Her article follows a piece by Wang Hui entitled 'The Rumour Machine - Wang Hui on the dismissal of Bo Xilai'.
(via MCLC) : The Comparative Literature Programme at King's wishes to appoint an outstanding scholar in the field of 19th and 20th century Chinese Literature. This new position is the third new appointment in Comparative Literaturein the current academic year. These posts represent the growth andinternationalisation of Comparative Literature at King's, combining itshistorical strengths in modern European literatures and their classicaltraditions with its more recent expertise in Asian, Middle Eastern and/orAfrican literatures and cultures....
For further information about Comparative Literature at King's see: http://www.kcl.ac.uk/artshums/depts/complit/index.aspx . For informal enquiries, contact Professor Javed Majeed, Director of theProgramme for Comparative Literature at javed.majeed@kcl.ac.uk or
Professor David Ricks, Deputy Director of the Programme, at david.ricks@kcl.ac.uk.
. . ."I also had about 8 meetings, 30 hours in all, with Yan Lianke to discuss questions of authorial intent and so on. . .things only he could answer. He was very generous with his time, infinitely patient with my questions, and his wife makes the best noodles on the planet. My neighborhood tailor, who grew up in rural Henan, even contributed some useful sketches of the clothes worn by characters in the novel. I didn’t have a native Chinese speaker proofread my text, and actually never considered doing that: I think that with literary translation, it is important to cast one’s net wide, and not rely too heavily on the opinion of a single individual. In the end, I bear responsibility for the accuracy, fluidity and readability of the translation, and the best way to live up to that responsibility is to consult with as many people as possible, keep an open mind, and craft a translation that transcends subjectivity (my own subjectivity, and that of others)."
by Jin Wenhao
Abstract: Wang Xiaobo is a Post-Mao novelist whose works have prompted tremendous attention from the intellectuals and the public after his death. The straightforward representation of sex in his fiction is often considered as one of the sources that contribute to his “liberal spirit”. This is because many of Wang Xiaobo’s stories full of sexual depictions are set during the Cultural Revolution. But Wang Xiaobo’s ambiguous manipulation of the relationship between sex and the power makes his resistance to authoritarianism a tricky issue. On the one hand, his nonchalant attitude to both sex and politics can be interpreted as a mocking of the Maoist ideology. On the other hand, the author’s detachment from the political background and the protagonist’s sexual carnival in the rural areas can be considered as indifferent to the Cultural Revolution. The engagement with Maoist ideology in the theoretical framework of suppression/revolt cannot give a satisfactory answer to the role of sex in his fiction. This thesis amends this framework by taking other elements than Maoist discourse into consideration.
Interview with Verbena C.W., who publishes Liu Cixin in English, 10 May 2012:
Today I have the pleasure of interviewing Verbena C.W., editor-in-chief of Beijing Guomi Digital Technology, a company that is translating into English and publishing works by Liu Cixin and other Chinese authors. We talk at length about fiction in China and the company plans for the future....
Quotations Songs: Portable Media and Pop Song Form in the Chinese 1960s
by Professor Andrew Jones on Wed 30 May 2012, at 4pm
in Room 4421, SOAS, University of London
Free, All Welcome
Ma Jian talks to Alec Ash, of The Browser about:
Li Sao (The Lament), by Qu Yuan
The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, by Luo Guanzhong
The Real Story of Ah-Q, by Lu Xun
One Man's Bible, by Gao Xingjian
Tombstone, by Yang Jisheng
How about sales of Russian works?
Translations from any language as a general rule do not perform well in any English-language market. I do not think the Russian situation is particularly different from, say, the Italian situation. Of course, there are always exceptions. At Overlook/Ardis, our Russian titles are relatively modest sellers, but some of them are steady and growing.
What are your thoughts about Russian translators and translation quality?
There are probably no more than 10 really good translators out there that serious publishers can use. When it comes to translation quality, it's not a question of accuracy but of nuance, especially in fiction. The prose has to read fluidly in fiction, and this is a completely different issue from literal accuracy.
NYT: You must have had people talk to you to give you a briefing on the censorship process, about how it works or how it’s affected certain films here [in China]. Do you have any general thoughts on that?
Director James Cameron: As an artist, I’m always against censorship. But censorship’s a reality, even in the U.S. We have a form of it there. We used to have the Hays commission. We now have the M.P.A.A. ratings system, which is basically a self-censorship process that prevents government from doing it. But the economic imperatives are that if you get an R rating, the studio won’t make a film that looks like it’s headed toward an R rating, and if you get a R you’ve got to cut it yourself to comply with PG-13. So it’s really just a form of censorship indirectly.”
NYT: Do you consider that the same as Chinese censorship?
Director James Cameron: You’ve got a little more choice in it. It’s not as draconian. But I can’t be judgmental about another culture’s process. I don’t think that’s healthy.
NYT: Did you talk to other filmmakers – your peers – about Chinese censorship?
Director James Cameron: No. I’m not interested in their reality. My reality is that I’ve made two films in the last 15 years that both have been resounding successes here, and this is an important market for me. And so I’m going to do what’s necessary to continue having this be an important market for my films. And I’m going to play by the rules that are internal to this market. Because you have to. You know, I can stomp my feet and hold my breath but I’m not going to change people’s minds that way. Now I do feel that everything is trending in the right direction right now, as I mentioned earlier.
By Steve Smith, History Today, vol. 53, no. 12
... the construction of popular memory is a political matter in which differentially empowered forces seek to determine whose experience is preserved for posterity...
Steve Smith is Professor of History at Essex University. His most recent book is Like Cattle and Horses: Nationalism and Labor in Shanghai 1895-1927 (2002).
From Christopher Lupke, via MCLC List):
The Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature, Vol. 66,No. 1, pp. 45-63.
Abstract: Yu Dafu's novella "Moving South" forms a dialogic relationship with Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship in the male protagonist's translation of the song "Kennst du das Land?" Wilhelm Meister's translation of Mignon's Italian singing into this German song emblematizes the formation of a masculine rational German subject through cofiguring an Italian other as too feminine and emotional to be "domesticated. Yi Ren's translation of the central line in the song into Chinese emblematizes the formation of a transnational as a sentimental and feminine figure through cofiguring a Japanese woman as an other that cannot be domesticated. "Moving South" critiques European Romanticism and Christianity.
From Shanghai Daily, 11 May 2012
Mentions the following novelists and poets: Lu Xun, Han Han, Guo Jingming, Eleen Chang, Lin Yu-tang, Hu Shi, Yu Hua, Mo Yan, Bei Dao, Yu Qiuyu, Ouyang Jianghe, Xi Chuan, Zhai Yongming, Yang Lian.
He particularly likes Ouyang Jianghe.
Chinese Dreams: Chinese Literature, by Jake Burrell, 9 May 2012
Setting the clock back to the early 1980’s, the restrictions of Chinese society provided the perfect backdrop for imaginations to become ensnared in literature as a way of escaping economic and social hardships. For the children who grew up at the dawn of modern China, the hearts of young girls were captured by the romantic fiction of Qiong Yao, and the boys lost themselves in Jin Yong’s fantastical tales of martial arts heroes...
Voices: a sampling of contemporary Chinese fiction, by James Weir, 9 May 2012
Includes a writing competition in Chengdu, and the five short stories published by The Guardian in April.
by Bertrand Mialaret, Chinese Cross Currrents, 9.2
See also Bertrand Mialeret's bilingual (French/English) website www.mychinesebooks.com
Podcast of lecture by Frances Wood (British Library) sandwiched in between the matinee and evening performances by the National Theatre of China's production of Richard III at Shakespeare's Globe, London, on 29 April 2012.
The cover screams “The Book No One in China Dares to Publish,” the Financial Times and The Observer have offered ad-like reviews, and copies have spilled off bookstore displays in Hong Kong and London for months; The Fat Years is the new must-have for the politically righteous book consumer in the English-speaking world. Consumer, that is, not reader, since most reports mention little about the story other than its premise. Probably better this way, since aesthetics too often fail when put up against political righteousness.
Alas, the book is as heavy-handed as the state propaganda it criticizes, and there is more intrigue behind the no one in “no one in China” than within the book’s pages.
The Ming Storytellers is a historical tale of 15th century China that sweeps across the palaces of Nanjing and Beijing into the moutainous villages of Yunnan, where a mysterious shaman holds the key to a woman's destiny. Across the oceans, from the bustling bazaars of Southern India to the lush shores of Zanzibar, nothing is quite what it seems...
For more info, go to http://www.themingstorytellers.com/story.htm
by Amalie MacGowan, The Bowdouin Orient, 4 May 2012.
Kong unknowingly began her book while writing her graduate dissertation at the University of Michigan 12 years ago. Starting with Gao Xingjian's play Fugitives—one of the works for which the author won the Nobel Prize in 2000—Kong went on to explore more Chinese diasporic literature...
Also incorporates three novels: Ha Jin's The Crazed, Annie Wang's Lili and Ma Jian's Beijing Coma...
By Canaan Morse, May 4, '12
Lucas Klein will be reading selections from Notes on the Mosquito, a collection of the poetry of Xi Chuan in Lucas's English translation, recently published by the tweedy untouchables at New Directions. Xi Chuan will be there, too. In case "time" and "place" are concepts that matter to you, the schedule says May 10th, 7:30 at the Beijing Bookworm.
冯唐的世界无故事，冯唐的世界甚至无人物，没有人会想象自己是冯唐小说中人，想进去也找不到门，冯唐的世界在人的自我想象自我意识之外封闭自足，他的小说永远拍不成电影电视剧，因为他的世界没有权力和意志甚至竟然没有爱欲。
Iran's ministry of culture and Islamic guidance vets all books before publication. Three censors read each book to make sure it conforms to Islamic values. Censorship might apply to only a word, a sentence, a paragraph or sometimes a text as long as a dozen pages and the result would be given to the publisher after a long procedure that might last a year or two. Censors, who sometime use computer software to look up "unIslamic words", go as far as advising writers to substitute certain words with other "appropriate" phrases, should they wish their book to be approved. Publishing houses will be given negative points if they persist in sending too many books to the ministry which they deem to be unsuitable, encouraging self-censorship.
Speaking to the Guardian, Mehdi Navid, who has translated Richard Brautigan's In Watermelon Sugar into Persian, called some changes ridiculous. When publishing a book by Charles Darwin on evolution, he said, the ministry asked the publisher to add an introduction to the book explaining that Darwin's views were unIslamic and untrue and the book was to be published to expose the wrongdoings and the decadence of the west.
By Nicky Harman, May 2, '12
While I was Translator-in-Residence at the Free Word Centre at the end of 2011, I was asked to incorporate some translation activities for children. Easier said than done. I’d never taught children and I had none of those indispensible contacts in local schools. To cut a very long story short (and six months must surely be the world’s longest lesson preparation time), I ended up in a secondary school on the southern outskirts of London at some ungodly hour of a January morning this year, clutching a DVD of a version of Monkey aka Journey to the West and (at the teacher’s request) the whole text of my chosen 7-minute clip written out in pinyin.
More…
With lots of photos....
Poetry is not dead: It’s eternal, by Richard Abowitz (JH Weekly) 2 May 2012
“June Fourth Elegies” published earlier this year is the first English translation available of the poetry of Liu Xiaobo. It is an unusual book in a few ways. For one thing, there probably are not many poetry volumes that will appear this year with an introduction by the Dali Lama...
A balance of fact and fiction, by Mei Jia (China Daily), 2 May 2012
China Daily reporter Mei Jia interviewed Ha Jin on Nanjing Requiem, his latest book, which has been released in both Chinese and English...
Rural revelation, by Liu Jun (China Daily), 2 May 2012
Passengers on the subway during Beijing's rush hour might have wondered why I was on the brink of tears. I was simply engrossed in Story of a God (Shen Shi, yet untranslated), a down-to-earth narration by little-known author Sun Shixiang, who died in 2001 at just 32. It's daunting take - three bulky volumes involving hundreds of characters plus crude editing, the book is a worthy choice for anyone wishing to gain a deeper insight into present-day China. Published in 2004 and reprinted by Language & Culture Press in 2011, the book reveals the harsh realities of the countryside as the farmers' son Sun Fugui fights tooth and nail for a better life outside his hometown in mountain-locked Yunnan province....
The first director ever to film a movie entirely in Tibetan on the ground in China, Pema Tseden, now has another award-winning flick to his name: Old Dog. It captured the Grand Prize at the Tokyo Filmex in late 2011, and will premier on the West Coast of the US in Los Angeles on May 11, 2012. The director will be on hand for a post-screening Q & A.
“Old Dog,” writes Nicola Davidson in Tibet New Wave for the South China Morning Post, “is a story centred on an aged Tibetan Mastiff. The creature has caused a rift between a father who dresses in Tibetan Garb and rides a horse to town, and a son, an alcoholic who rides a motorbike.”
There is no way to have a fair or reasonable conversation about the literary merits of dissident or exile authors — some of whom, like Yang Lian and Liao Yiwu, are very good indeed — compared to authors who are read in China. We can probably all agree that in a better world, or at least a world in which the British Council had more backbone and the Chinese government had more maturity, the list of Chinese authors at the London Book Fair would have been a different one. Here on Earth One, though, things were never realistically going to go any other way, and so we may as well look at the authors who were on offer. Fortunately, many of them are much better and more interesting than the prevailing tone of the English-language coverage might lead you to believe.
Commentators have borrowed Ma Jian in writing vigorous — sometimes caustic — attacks on the Chinese government. And even those inclined to feel sympathy toward Chinese authors seem disappointed that they’re not pushing harder. Everyone seems to be waiting for the writers to speak with the kind of courage and moral clarity displayed by political dissidents like Liu Xiaobo and Chen Guangcheng. What’s holding them back? Asked directly, most will say that they have perfect freedom to write but imperfect freedom to publish — namely, that self-censorship is not an issue.
I don’t believe this for an instant.
By Nicky Harman, May 1, '12
I have been asked to flag up the Stephen Spender poetry in translation prize, which welcomes translations from Chinese, particularly of contemporary poetry. Deadline for entries is a month today on 1 June.
'La Balade de Yaya' Feature Animation News - April 30th, 2012 11:21 AM by Aaron H. Bynum
According to Editions Fei, La Balade de Yaya has sold more than 40,000 copies since its debut last year. The series' first volume, "La Fugue," debuted in January 2011, and introduced readers to the exuberant daughter of a wealthy Chinese merchant. War is on the horizon, however, and through the second ("La Prisonniere," July 2011) and third ("Le Cirque," December 2011) volumes, Yaya comes to rely on Tuduo, a ragamuffin whose courage in the face of adversity is well appreciated. The little girl's fondness for the finer things in life are suddenly confronted by the grim reality that her country is being slowly torn apart.
Includes the following translations:
Excerpt from Mail-Order Bride, by Zhang Ling, tr. Nicky Harman
Butterfly by Sheng Hui, tr. by Diana Shi and George O'Connell
"Written at Thirty" comes from right after Xi Chuan's switch from lyric to expansive prose poem. While it's not prose, obviously, it nevertheless contains the multitudes that any open look at one's biography requires. Other translators have published their versions—both online and in print—but my translation takes advantage of Xi Chuan's explanation to me of what he meant by the line I had earlier translated as "I grew up with the whole world's crickets": he said his teenage years coincided with the end of the Cultural Revolution (1966 – 1976), which also entailed a change in Chinese people's relationship with Maoist rhetoric. Much of his poem, he said, was an attempt to "write through" his upbringing and the language around him. English-speakers being, for obvious reasons, much less attuned to Marxist diction, I rewrote my translation through the final appeal of The Communist Manifesto, to translate the line as "with working crickets of all countries I grew up."
By Damien Walter, The Guardian, 27 April 2012.
Is science fiction literature's first international language? From China to Russia and beyond, SF is emerging as the genre best able to articulate the relentless pace of global change... The work of Liu Cixin, eight-time winner of the Galaxy award and arguably the most popular SF author in China, is now available in English translation. Liu Cixin's writing will remind SF fans of the genre's golden age, with its positive focus on scientific development, combined with a consistently constructive vision of China's future role as a global superpower. It's characteristic of an SF genre which has been embraced by Chinese culture because it is seen as representing the values of technological innovation and creativity so highly prized in a country developing more quickly than any other in the world today.
http://arts.nationalpost.com/2012/04/27/a-publishers-year-at-the-london-book-fair/
Later, on Tuesday afternoon, MacLachlan and Fizet head towards the Chinese pavilion, where MacLachlan will talk about a book she knows little about. The Chinese have scheduled a press conference to announce the English-language edition of Black Flame, a children’s book to be released by Anansi’s sister publisher, Groundwood Books, in 2013.... The emcee, a young woman in a black cocktail dresses, describes Heihe, the book’s author, as “one of the most popular authors of animal stories in China.” The book is about a puppy orphaned after its mother is killed by a snow leopard. After a short speech from Huang Jian, president and publisher of Jieli Publishing House, the book’s Chinese publisher, MacLachlan takes the podium. Normally an assured public speaker, she seems out of her element.
This book is translated by Anna Holmwood
Lennie Goodings, publisher of Virago Press and one of Margaret Atwood’s editors, stops by the table. A couple of years ago, Anansi bought the Canadian rights to Ai Mi’s novel Under the Hawthorne Tree from Virago; it is now a Heather’s Pick at Indigo, and has sold 15,000 copies in Canada. “Do you have another Chinese novel that I need to buy?” MacLachlan asks.
This books was translated by Anna Holmwood.
By Helen Wang, April 28, '12
During my challenge on Paper Republic, I wanted to find out more about Chinese literature in France: who is translating it, and who is publishing it. After hours of surfing, I had produced a list, but I didn't really have a feel for what I was doing. So I asked Bertrand Mialaret (editor of the website www.mychinesebooks.com) if he could help. He has produced two really helpful lists for us, which are now posted on this website under Resources for Translators.
Thank you, Bertrand!
Reviewed in The Guardian, 23 April 2012
Translated by Cindy Carter.
Circulated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain via MCLC (denton.2@osu.edu) Subject: Lan Lan and Yi Lu
A chapbook (translations + bilingual) of contemporary Chinese poets Lan Lan and Yi Lu has just been published by The Offending Adam: http://theoffendingadam.com/2012/03/15/a-chapvelope-three-sighting/
By Helen Wang, April 25, '12
China in Ten Words by Yu Hua, Duckworth £16.99 (4/5 stars), reviewed by Siobhan Murphy in The Metro (free newspaper, London), 25 April 2012, p. 39. The translator, not named in the review, is Allan H. Barr.
I'm posting this because it is the second review of a Chinese novel that I’ve spotted this year in The Metro (free London newspaper). The first was Geling Yan’s The Flowers of War, translated by Nicky Harman. Maybe coincidence, or maybe the Arts Editor is taking an interest in Chinese fiction?
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By Alice Xin Liu, April 25, '12
The second issue of Pathlight: New Chinese Writing, themed “The London Book Fair,” is now downloadable as Epub (most devices including Apple) and Mobi (Kindle devices) by following this link!
The kind of writing that is coming out of China right now include chick-lit, family-orientated dramas, tales of escape from the rural to the urban, of grievous policies in the countryside, science fiction, and historical epics. It’s possible that we cover all of those topics in the new issue.
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