Our News, Your News
By Eric Abrahamsen, July 30, '09
Yesterday's big news was the announcement of the republication of Ruined Capital by Jia Pingwa, one of the major novelistic works of the past few decades, and a perpetual lightning rod for controversy and criticism. The Writers Publishing House is doing the honors.
The book has for some years been under something like a soft ban: no new editions have come out for a while, and it was getting harder and harder to find a non-pirated version of the book. The 'controversy', based almost solely on the fact that there's sex in the book, was pretty silly from the beginning: it was an awfully prurient read when it came out in 1993, but the constitution of the modern Chinese reading public is highly fortified compared to what it used to be, and it's hard to imagine anyone really raising an eyebrow at the steamy scenes today.
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Hong Kong, 24 July 2009 – The Administrative Committee for the 2009 Man Asian Literary Prize has today announced the longlist of works for this prize.
[ed. Su Tong and Roan Ching-yueh are the only Chinese writers on the longlist]
By Lucas Klein, July 20, '09
I've been a casual follower of Chinese - English and English - Chinese translation issues involving The Onion (America's Finest News Source) ever since a 2002 article about American Congresspeople wanting to move from the Capitol building was re-printed in the Beijing Evening News 北京晚报.
Then there was the report from the Onion News Network about China becoming "the world's number one producer of air pollution": "It is a very proud day for my country," says the ambassador from China.
And now The Onion reports that it has been sold "To The Chinese."
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MCLC Resource Center is pleased to announce publication of Wang Dun's and Michael Rodriguez's translation of the first chapter of the novella "Love in the Age of Revolution" 革命時代的愛情, by Wang Xiaobo 王小波. Chapters 2 and 3 will be published later.
This is a book about sexual love. Sexual love is propelled by its own force; however, oftentimes, acting spontaneously is not permitted, which makes things complicated. For example, the Summer Palace is north of my home. If there were no such direction as "north," I would have to go south, crossing both the South and North poles, covering over forty thousand kilometers to arrive there. What I'm trying to say is this: people can indeed explain everything in a far-fetched manner, including sexual love.
Sexual love can therefore arise from most untrustworthy rationales.
A Lifetime Is a Promise to Keep contains an introduction to Huang Xiang 黄翔 and his poetry. According to the translator, Michelle Yeh, "As a poet, he addresses the perennial concerns with the inner self and the meaning of life." Regarding form, "Huang Xiang's prose poetry often begins as a pedestrian narrative, but as it unfolds, unexpected twists and turns are introduced, establishing roadblocks for readers and forcing them to read between the lines."
There are many such hidden rules in official circles, and a special genre titled the "Officialdom Novel" (Guanchang Xiaoshuo) revealing such secrets has been gaining popularity in the past few years, reflecting an "artistic reality" the country is going through.
By Eric Abrahamsen, June 30, '09
Following this previous link to an interview with Mo Yan in French, Igor Yegorov wrote in with an English translation so we didn't all have to suffer through the Google translator. Thanks Igor!
Writer Mo Yan : From dictatorship of the Party to that of the market
By Bertrand Mialaret | 24/06/2009 | 12H57
The Chinese writer Mo Yan is spending a week in France to talk about his books and his new novel, due to be published in late August. The meeting with him in Beijing was facilitated for Rue89 by Bertrand Mialaret, chronicler of Chinese literature, and Pierre Haski. The exchange was rendered possible by Chantal Chen Andro, translator of several books by Mo Yan.
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By Cindy M. Carter, June 29, '09
Some folks document contemporary Chinese society with words. Others do it with photography, visual art, music or film. At Paper Republic, we tend to focus on the wordsmiths: the novelists, essayists and poets who form the landscape of Chinese literature, and help to shape our perceptions of modern China.
But some of the most daring work in China today is being done by independent documentarians, guerrilla filmmakers armed with newly-affordable digital cameras, laptop computers and editing software. They tend to work alone, on shoestring budgets, outside the state-owned studio distribution system and - perhaps more importantly - beyond the reach of censors. And they're not the cast-offs, people who couldn't cut it the world of mainstream film: many are graduates of the Beijing Film Academy, alumni of China Central Television (CCTV), accomplished directors or cinematographers who left lucrative commercial careers to make the kind of films they always wanted to.
One of these days, we'll have a section on Paper Republic about Chinese indie film. Maybe we'll call it Digital Republic. In the meantime, my little bio of film work includes synopses of 15 outstanding documentaries and feature films from the last 8 years, with links to directors (photos/bios/filmographies), film festival awards and reviews in industry publications. Some of the highlights:
Wang Bing - continuing "his run as one of the world's supreme doc filmmakers with Fengming: A Chinese Memoir." (Variety)
Zhao Liang - whose Crime and Punishment "cements China's position as a doc powerhouse" (Variety), says that sometimes he feels "like I’m stealing from the people I shoot. It’s their life that has given me the inspiration to create, and that’s why I feel guilty."
Li Ying - who was forced to relocate his production company offices in Tokyo after receiving right-wing death threats related to his film Yasukuni, a controversial documentary about Japan's Yasukuni Shrine. Although the film was expected to sail through the Chinese censorship process, it has yet to be approved for theatrical release in China.
Cui Zi'en - author, director and university professor widely hailed as one of the pioneers of Chinese queer cinema.
And those are just the filmmakers I've translated, the ones who happened to make the list. Here are some other outstanding documentary directors, not to be missed:
Du Haibin: Along the Railway, Beautiful Men, Umbrella
Wu Wenguang: Bumming in Beijing, Dances with Migrant Workers, Fuck Cinema!
Yang Lina: Old Men, Home Video, The Love of Mr. An
Ni Zhen: Graduation, Postscript
Duan Jinchuan: The Square, No.16 Barkhor Street
Zhang Yuan: The Square, Demolition and Relocation, Crazy English
Yu Guangyi: The Last Lumberjacks, Survival Song
Luo Jian/Jiang Ping: Tale of Zhou
Chris Irwin, who lives outside London, was irked by the third multiple-choice question, which asked what “incentive” translators would prefer, with five nonmonetary choices including an upgraded LinkedIn account and none (“because it’s fun”). Mr. Irwin checked a sixth choice, “Other,” typing in that he would prefer cash. In a phone interview, Mr. Irwin said he was surprised that LinkedIn “would have the effrontery to ask for a professional service for free.”
By Canaan Morse, June 29, '09
Adam Kirsch’s review of David Hinton’s Classical Chinese Poetry: An Anthology begins with a brief retrospective of Ezra Pound’s work as the first serious translator of 中国古诗. Its use is primarily rhetorical. Though Kirsch is careful to note the obvious care with which Pound handled his task, he spends the greater portion of his word limit in describing the seemingly insuperable gaps in expertise that separated the translator from his subject. This allows him, when he gets to Hinton, to endow the reader with a sense of perspective as well as a vague idea of progress. I say rhetorical because the most dependable avenue by which Kirsch might have been able to derive substantial conclusions regarding Hinton’s relative merits—direct textual analysis—he leaves entirely alone. This may be due to lack of confidence in his own ability to critique pieces whose originals he can’t read, or because he believes that evaluation is a task better left to the reader. Both are worthy considerations.
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« Mao avait dit la politique en premier, l'économie en second ; actuellement tout est au service de l'économie. Autrefois le peuple considérait la politique comme importante, maintenant c'est l'argent. »
A short interview with Mo Yan, 15 (!) of whose works are available in French.
For me, the most important of all is to have a sense of the English ear: how much it can receive a foreign language presented in English. In general, if a character speaks Mandarin or another foreign language, the speech should not be too standard in English, but then how much can it be stretched and even distorted? That has to be decided case by case.
By Lucas Klein, June 19, '09
My review of Eileen Chow & Carlos Rojas's translation of Brothers 兄弟 by Yú Huá 余華 is out, printed in this summer's edition of Rain Taxi.
Since it's only available in print, you'll have to order a copy from the website or else pick up an issue--for free--where available. They're often on offer at independent bookstores in North America.
"At the entrance of the theatre, though, JAT noticed this silly, but egregious translation error: '4 Uygur theater admission matters needing attention'."
(To see the poster and text, scroll down to "Out of Character")
Sinosplice has an interview with our very own Brendan O'Kane, in which he discusses his background, literary interests and the realities of working as a freelance translator in China. The interview offers practical advice for early-career translators and students of Chinese, and includes a useful summary of print and online dictionaries and Chinese reference materials. I liked the following quotes:
"Chinese-as-a-second-language teaching materials [...] don't really do much to prepare students for dealing with Chinese as a living language. (When asked my opinion of Chinese textbooks, I tend to rate them from 'bad' to 'less bad.') Once you get past a certain level, language environment is the real make-or-break factor."
"Chengyu, while nice, tend to be much less visible to a Chinese reader than they would be to a foreign reader of Chinese, so there's no real excuse for rendering something like 每个字贵如金玉 into chinoiserie like 'every word was as precious as gold or jade' when the text is just using a bog-standard set phrase that would pass unnoticed in Chinese. Knowing what to delete and what to add, what to soft-pedal and what to amplify in a translation is important, and the only way you can really know is by having a sense of what people are actually saying — and that comes from long-term immersion in the environment."
The David T. K. Wong Fellowship is a unique and generous annual award of £26,000 to enable a fiction writer who wants to write in English about the Far East to spend a year in the UK, at the University of East Anglia in Norwich. The Fellowship is named for its sponsor Mr. David Wong, a retired Hong Kong businessman, who has also been a teacher, journalist and senior civil servant, and is a writer of short stories himself. The Fellowship was launched in 1997 and the first Fellow appointed from 1st October 1998. The Fellowship Winner in 2008 was Nam Le. His collection of short stories, The Boat, won the Dylan Thomas Prize (2008). Further details of the Fellowship, including terms and conditions and how to apply, can be found on our website at https://www.uea.ac.uk/lit/awards/wong. The deadline for applications is 31 December 2010.
Dressed in a sharp, light summer frock, Professor Yu Dan sits in the cafeteria of a posh Beijing hotel, sipping from a largish glass of green tea. Just back from a book tour in London, where the English translation of her phenomenally-successful discourse on Confucian ideas was launched with due fanfare, the professor of media studies with Beijing Normal University-turned TV show hostess-turned bestseller-author is visibly glowing.
By Nicky Harman, June 6, '09
Comma Press is an independent publisher based in the UK, specialising in short fiction. In 2007 Comma launched a translation imprint, with the remit of bringing original, contemporary short stories in translation to UK readers.
Comma is currently exploring the feasibility of publishing an anthology of contemporary Chinese short stories, translated for the first time. They say: "As we begin our search for stories to consider, we’d welcome putative submissions from literary translators interested in taking part and willing to recommend stories for inclusion in the anthology."
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‘I can manage. This is easy.’ He smiled, cutting the fish’s fins and tail with a large pair of scissors.
‘You never cooked back home.’ She stared at him, her eyes glinting. Ever since her arrival a week earlier, she’d been nagging him about his being henpecked. ‘What’s the good of standing six feet tall if you can’t handle a small woman like Connie?’ she often said. In fact, he was five feet ten.
Dirty words are a huge part of the book and they don't feel quite right, ever. Sometimes it feels like the swear words are being spoken by a kindergarten teacher and sometimes by, you know, not a kindergarten teacher.
I can't agree that Baldy Li was trying to look at Lin Hong's "pubic area." He was a horny little kid peeping in a public toilet, not a gynecologist. And, yo, she wasn't a "wanton hussy" or a "shameless hussy," she was a "slut." You know? To have Chinese villagers calling someone a "cretin" feels kind of weird somehow.
By Eric Abrahamsen, May 31, '09
Foreign publishers considering attending the 2009 Beijing International Book Fair might want to know about the Special Publisher Program, aimed at publishers who want to attend the fair but are a little tight on funds. The application deadline for this program has been extended to the end of July, so if you're interested click here for more details and application instructions.
For this anniversary, the Op-Ed editors [of the NY Times] asked four writers, who were students or working at the time, to reflect back on the event.
By Cindy M. Carter, May 29, '09
There's a song that's been making its way around the Internet: Zhou Yunpeng's "Don't Ever Be a Chinese Child"
(不要做中國人的孩子 by 周云蓬) - if the above link is blocked, try this. I've been working on a translation, but felt it was too depressing to post. Maybe it's time:
Don't Ever Be a Chinese Child
Don't be a child of Karamay
whose burns would scorch a mother's heart
Don't be a child of Salan Town
who finds no rest beneath dark waters
Don't be a child of Chengdu
who waits for mum's return
after her week-long binge
Chorus (children laughing)
Don't be a child of Henan
where AIDS cackles in the blood
Don't be a child of Shanxi
where mines turn dads
into baskets of coal
Chorus (laughter)
Don't be a child of Karamay
Don't be a child of Salan Town
Don't be a child of Chengdu
Don't be a child of Henan...
Don't ever be a Chinese child,
or the grown-ups will
eat you when they starve
At least in the wild,
mountain goats are fierce
enough to protect their kids
Don't ever be a Chinese child,
because mommy and
daddy are cowards
When the theatre caught fire,
they steeled their hearts
and let the cadres exit first.
不要做中國人的孩子
周云蓬
不要做克拉瑪依的孩子，
火燒痛皮膚讓親娘心焦
不要做沙蘭鎮的孩子，
水底下漆黑他睡不著
不要做成都人的孩子，
吸毒的媽媽七天七夜不回家
不要做河南人的孩子，
愛滋病在血液裡哈哈的笑
不要做山西人的孩子，
爸爸變成了一筐煤，
你別再想見到他
不要做中國人的孩子，
餓極了他們會把你吃掉
還不如曠野中的老山羊，
為保護小羊而目露兇光
不要做中國人的孩子，
爸爸媽媽都是些怯懦的人
為證明他們的鐵石心腸，
死到臨頭讓領導先走
Zhou Yunpeng is a blind folk musician - singer, songwriter and guitarist - now living in Beijing.
Brothers is not a tale of two individuals struggling to overcome. Rather, it is China’s story, and the experience of Baldy and Song Gang can be seen as the germination of the “modern” and the “old” ideologies that currently duel to establish credibility in modern China.
If the characters in English can be said to determine their fate, then love—most specifically, failed love—is where that individuality finds its expression. The tale abounds in secret crushes, love affairs, adultery, obsession, and broken hearts. Love becomes subversive, a personal route through the complexities of a conformist society.
"The Cultural Revolution was a craziness for revolution, then we had a craziness to earn money," Yu says. "It's like a pendulum that's swung from one extreme to another. It's gone from being an extremely oppressive society to being an extremely free one with no moderation."
In 1967, amid China's Cultural Revolution, he volunteered to go to the countryside to learn from the peasants. He was 21, a fervent revolutionary Red Guard, yet rebellious enough to take two crates of Western literary classics to the countryside with him. He spent the next 11 years in the grasslands of Inner Mongolia.
By Nicky Harman, May 27, '09
From Sunday 19 - Saturday 25 July 2009, the British Centre for literary Translation (BCLT) at the university holds its tenth annual International Literary Translation Summer School, which will for the first time offer an intensive workshop in translation from Chinese to English. This hands-on networking and training opportunity takes place at UEA from July 19-25 and will involve author Xinran (China Witness: Voices from a Silent Generation, Miss Chopsticks, The Good Women of China) and her translator Nicky Harman.
Also, as part of the Worlds Literary Festival, to be held at various venues in Norfolk from June 20-25, BCLT is also hosting author and filmmaker Zhu Wen (I Love Dollars, released by Penguin in 2008) and his translator Julia Lovell. The festival, entitled Worlds in Translation, is a celebration of international writing and includes various readings, workshops and panel discussions that will be open to the public.
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