Our News, Your News
By Eric Abrahamsen, September 24, '10
As mentioned previously I've been
organizing some literary events for the
Get It Louder festival, the first of
which was last Tuesday. Originally meant to be a head-to-head between
the writer Han Dong and Li Jingze,
editor-in-chief of People's Literature magazine, it lost some of its
drama when Li Jingze pulled out at the last minute due to an
unforeseen and rather dramatic workplace incident.
Han Dong and I did it ourselves, recapping and extending onstage the
conversation we'd had at dinner the night before, though without the
assistance of red wine. I asked him to start with his involvement in
the Rupture
movement, and to talk about how artists' relationships with the
critical establishment and publishing industry had changed over the
past decade, from an era when writers felt the need to burn their
bridges lest they be gentled over to the dark side, to today's
situation, where it's much easier to maintain one's independence.
Talking about the government's push to disseminate Chinese culture
abroad, Han Dong said he remained deeply leery of any "assistance"
that came with strings attached—I asked if there was any kind of
government assistance that he felt was fairly innocuous, and he said
he doubted it. The problem inside China is that everything is still
based on human relations: no help is given without strings attached,
no work is published without a debt owed, and you can't get anywhere
without being part of some kind of clique. The writer's career depends so much on his/her navigation of a social environment, and rarely is the work
allowed to stand on its own merits.
More…
The Peony Literary agency has launched a new website, with more information about their services and authors. New additions (at least new to use) are Mo Yan's Frog and Han Han's Ideal City. Nicely done!
By Eric Abrahamsen, September 19, '10
Gah, sorry, this is happening 3pm on Tuesday, not 7pm! Sorry about the confusion…
Our apologies if the lights have seemed to dim around here recently; rest assured it is not due to mere sloth on our part—on the contrary! Well, maybe there was a little sloth this summer, but since then it has been go, go, go, mostly organizing literary events for the Get It Louder art festival. Get It Louder's been going for a few years, but up until now it's mostly focused on art, design, film, and other frivolous art forms—only in 2010 have they seen the light, and added a literary dimension. The festival goes from September 18th to early October in Beijing, then mid-October to early November in Shanghai. (A third station in Guangzhou was cancelled because the Asian Games will be held there this December; it seems city officials cannot walk and chew gum at the same time.)
I'll give heads-ups here as events approach. The first one takes place next Tuesday evening (the 21st) at 3pm, at the Sanlitun SOHO in Beijing (the pavilion in the plaza). The title is "Exposure Anxiety", and features Li Jingze (head editor of People's Literature magazine) and writer Han Dong discussing the project of Chinese culture and literature "Going Out", and the general air of anxiety that is creating within China.
The "anxiety" might end up more literal than I'd intended. Li Jingze is an über-representative of the literary establishment—over the past several decades he has found and promoted many writers who enjoy a reputation today—while Han Dong has gone from being very vehemently anti-establishment (he was a member of the "rupture" movement), to being uneasily taken under its wing, and I don't think it sits well with him. They're both pretty relaxed guys, but there is a lot of tension between artists and the establishment when it comes to "Going Out" (ironic double entendre there!) and there's a potential for snappishness. Could be fun!
All events are going to be filmed and will eventually make their way online, for those of you who aren't in town. One good thing about this whole festival-running thing, otherwise a nightmare for the organizationally-challenged, is that it's been a great excuse to get in touch with a bunch of new authors…
By Eric Abrahamsen, September 16, '10
The pause that refreshes! Just a couple of days ago I got a new Kindle 3 thanks to some intrepid cross-Pacific muling (thanks Canaan!), and while I have refrained from actually drooling on my shirtfront in public, I am, to say the least, enthused. To spare the unimpressed, screen shot etc is after the jump.
More…
By Nicky Harman, September 14, '10
Diary date for anyone within striking distance of London, UK.
On Thursday 30th September, join English PEN and other leading translation organisations for a full day of events focused on the future of literary translation, organised by FLOW The Free Word Festival. Visit their website or download the flyer here
As Guest of Honor in 2009, China was omnipresent at last year's Frankfurt Book Fair.
But there will also be plenty of Chinese publishers and China-related events in 2010 too, including: A session about imprisoned Uighur writer Nurmuhemmet Yasin, nature writing in Taiwan, new novels set in Tibet, and more.
Follow the link for regularly updated China-related news on the Oct 6-10 event...
First published in April 2010, Each Leaf a Bodhi Tree: My 15 Years at Dunhuang (一叶一菩提——我在敦煌十五年), a memoir detailing how Buddhist grottos in northwestern China were saved from marauding Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution, has been formally banned from further publication and distribution in China.
By Eric Abrahamsen, August 25, '10
Submissions for the 2010 Man Asian Literary prize will be accepted up until the end of the month! Remember, submissions must be of published English-language translations of books by Asian citizens, and must be submitted by publishers. If you're a translator (or Asian-citizen-author) with a novel you're proud of, bug your publisher now!
For the language-impaired (if you don't speak Chinese!):
Access to English-language schedule of 100+ events—press conferences, seminars, panel discussions, book readings/signings—featuring publishers, agents and authors
Recommendations on events of particular interest to overseas publishing professionals
By Nicky Harman, August 17, '10
from Danny Hahn, Translators Association, London
For some time those of us at the (British) Translators Association have been discussing the possibility of setting up a mentoring scheme, as a way of allowing emerging translators to benefit from the experience of their more experienced colleagues. Mentoring does of course happen informally all the time – translators are a benign, helpful bunch on the whole, after all – but we wanted something more formal, something that the emerging translator could rely on for a set period of time, and which would also involve a modest fee to recognise the mentor’s time. And thanks to the generosity of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation we are delighted to have secured funds to make this happen at last.
More…
By Eric Abrahamsen, August 13, '10
I planned to write a bit about whatever translation-related issues of
interest cropped up in the midst of Notes of Civil
Servant, and as it happened I barely got
through the preface before I reached the first hard-to-crack nut. So
here is Imponderable Number One: the word 官场 (guānchǎng), guan
indicating government officials or officialdom, chang here meaning
"field" or "arena". I suspect that this term is a derivation of 战场
(zhànchǎng), "battlefield", which gave birth elsewhere to 职场
(zhíchǎng), "professional arena" or, as we prosaic Westerners might
call it, the employment market.
It's precisely the touch of martial romance inherent in the term that
is significant. Your typical North American or Western European civil
servant is anything but romantic. Dull of eye and stunted of fancy,
clad in the sober weeds of duty, they do one thing and they do it, if
not well, at least doggedly. They are cogs in the machine, possessing
perhaps even less moral agency in their day-to-day decisions than your
average voter/taxpayer.
More…
My Chinese Books provides reviews of Chinese novels and information about Chinese authors, currently in French but with an English version coming soon!
By Eric Abrahamsen, August 3, '10
Here comes a rather impressive dispatch from the far reaches of linguistic brain-bendery: Johnathan Stalling's Yingelish, a poem written in Chinese characters, which can be read aloud (in Chinese) to create a completely different story in Chinese-sounding English. As if that weren't impressive enough, the whole thing was rendered last week as a "Sinophonic English Opera" at the University of Yunnan, where the text was sung, acted out, and accompanied by a dizzying array of musical instruments. Download the flyer for the event, or see a few pictures here (Chinese only).
Bi Feiyu has joined the ever-growing list of authors, artists, musicians and academics denied entry into Britain for short-term professional visits either by outright refusal or – in his case – by bureaucratic delays in the processing of visa applications under Byzantine new rules. ...Bi was due in London last week to discuss his work and promote the English translation of 《玉米》- Three Sisters (trans. Howard Goldblatt, pub. Telegram Books, 2010).
Director Feng Xiaogang graces the covers of at least 5 major publications this week, thanks to his direction of the red-hot "disaster" movie, Aftershock, based on Zhang Ling's novel of the same name about the 1976 Tangshan earthquake that killed over 200,000.
But Southern Metropolis Weekly's interview with the screenwriter, who just happens to work for the Film Review Board under the infamous State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT), is a gem in itself...
From George Szirtes, poet, translator and blogger: "....Can we have books re-translated? Is it right to do so?
The pragmatic answer is that it is always difficult to to get the copyright and persuade a new publisher to publish something that has already appeared in the language via another publisher relatively recently, in other words in the sales cycle of the book.
The less pragmatic answer has an ethical dimension that can cut both ways. It may, on the one hand, be morally desirable to replace bad work with good, but it may not, on the other hand, be morally desirable for a newcomer to push aside a firstcomer, especially when opinions about quality may vary."
By Nicky Harman, July 28, '10
It's been a good year for Chinese to English translation, and it's getting better. Eric Abrahamsen is to translate Wang Xiaofang's well-known novel on official corruption in China, working title Notes of a civil servant. The publisher is Penguin and the book is due out in 2011. Eric needs no introduction, since he is the founder and driving force behind Paper Republic. Great news, Eric!
At last author Fan Wen (范稳) has his reward for a decade of immersion in the multicultural wonderland along the Yunnan-Tibet border: Dadi Yage (大地雅歌), the closing novel in his longish trilogy, has just been published in Chinese.
That day in 1999 when he came across the "lonely" grave of a martyred Swiss missionary in Lancangjiang Canyon, Father Maurice Tornay, he realized he had found his "sacred vocation". Indeed, the area straddling the provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan and Tibet autonomous region is an anthropologist's dream. One finds Tibetans, Han, Naxi, Yi, Lisu and other ethnic groups living together.
"I find describing the interaction - and collisions - between different cultures a challenging and engaging affair," Fan says. "Conflicts have taken place due to differences in culture and faith, like wars between Naxi and Tibetans, and Tibetans and Han. Irreconcilable contradictions occurred between Tibetan Buddhism and Catholicism when the latter was introduced."
Some translators find themselves by bringing you the project in the first place (see my blog of 29 June on how Saramago came to be published by Harvill). Of course, an editor may find themselves in the awkward position of be alerted to a book by a translator who just isn’t right for the job. Fortunately that doesn’t happen very often. If a translator with a good track record feels sufficiently passionate about a novel to persuade a publisher to acquire the rights, the chances are he or she is the right person to translate it. It is important that a translator really likes the text they are to translate. After all, they have to live with it for at least a few months, if not a year – or longer depending on the length of the book. Translators have frequently turned down my offers of work because they just don’t feel a sympathy for the book I’m proposing. As one translator wrote to me today: ‘It sings in a key that is well out of my range.’
As for the people living in this paradise, they are happy, almost eerily so, in a manner that has resonances of the Stepford Wives or a Truman Show, albeit with Chinese characteristics. They have wealth, they have entertainments and divertissements galore, they know how to have fun, and they know their French wines. They spend a lot of time on the Internet and in self-congratulation, frequently combining both activities. They are able to do and get almost anything they want in life, so long as they don’t cross certain boundaries of acceptable behaviour, including those related to political expression. Because these boundaries have a way of shifting, people involved in borderline activities such as worship in non-sanctioned Christian churches tend to remain more alert and anxious than most. But who cares? Lao Chen describes this situation as ‘ninety-percent freedom’ (jiucheng ziyou 九成自由).
By Eric Abrahamsen, July 17, '10
Cha: An Asian Literary Journal (http://asiancha.com/) iis now accepting submissions for "The China Issue", an edition of the journal devoted exclusively to work from and about contemporary China. The issue, which will be published in June 2011, will feature poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, scholarly works and visual art exploring the modern Middle Kingdom. We are looking for submissions from a wide range of Chinese and international voices on the social, political and cultural forces which are shaping the country. If you have something interesting, opinionated or fresh to say about China today, we would like to hear from you. Please note that we can only accept submissions in English. More information here: http://asiancha.blogspot.com/2010/07/call-for-submissions-china-issue.html
