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Helen Wang is a UK-based translator and co-founder of Chinese Books for Young Readers (2016-). She works collaboratively with Paper Republic, the Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing, World Kid Lit, and Global Literature in Libraries Initiative. She was active on Twitter: China Fiction Book Club, with Nicky Harman (2012-2025); Translated World (2013-2025).
Awards:
2017 Marsh Award for Literature in Translation for her translation of Bronze and Sunflower by Cao Wenxuan
2017 Chen Bochui Special Contribution Award, for translation and increasing visibility of Chinese children's books
2025 Shenzhen Reading Month's Translator of the Year
Other publications
The Music of Ink at the British Museum (edited volume featuring Yang Lian, Romesh Gunesekera, Denis Brown, Qu Lei Lei, Rohan de Saram, Zeng Laide and Wang Tao), Saffron Books, London, 2012. Info here
Is Gao Xingjian’s play Chezhan merely a blind worship of modern Western plays as the critic He Wen claims? How far can Chezhan be compared with Beckett’s Waiting for Godot?, Bulletin of the British Association for Chinese Studies, 1986, pp. 83-89. Available here
Interviews and short pieces
Interview, with Julie Sullivan, in Words and Pictures (SCBWI), 7 Oct 2018.
Interview, with Nanette McGuinness, in SCBWI, The Blog, 7 Sept 2017.
Interview, with Eric Abrahamsen, for Paper Republic, April 2016. in English and in Chinese
Interview, with Daniel Hahn, in Books for Keeps.
On "Bronze and Sunflower" in LARB China Blog, 13 April 2016
Translating Children's Books - a short piece for Books from Taiwan (2015)
Learning about Chinese children's books - interview with Zoe Toft for Playing by the Book, 27 April 2015
Bronze and Sunflower - Ann Morgan's Book of the Month, April 2015
Guest Interview: Helen Wang on Children's Book Translation, interviewed by Avery Fischer Udagawa for Cynthia Leitich Smith's "Cynsations" blog, 26 May 2015
Review by Nicky Harman of Bronze and Sunflower in Tribune 6 March 2015
| Small Town | by Li Jingrui | October 11, 2018 |
| Self-Portrait | by Zhang Xinxin | April 21, 2016 |
| Ying Yang Alley | by Fan Xiaoqing | April 14, 2016 |
| Sunshine in Winter | by Shi Kang tr. Michelle Deeter, Killiana Liu, Juliet Vine and Helen Wang | January 14, 2016 |
| A Second Pregnancy, 1980 | by Lu Min | November 03, 2015 |
| Xie Bomao R.I.P. | by Lu Min | October 29, 2015 |
| Crows | by Cao Wenxuan | September 24, 2015 |
| Missing | by Li Jingrui | August 06, 2015 |
The Paper Republic database exists for reference purposes only. We are not the publisher of these works, are not responsible for their contents, and cannot provide digital or paper copies.
By Helen Wang, September 17, '24
For this year's #WorldKidLitMonth, Global Literature in Libraries (GLLI) is focussing on Taiwan, using the hashtag #TaiwanKidLitMonth.
We're halfway through September, and thanks to Eleanor Duggan, there are already 15 blog posts that are packed with information.
See a list of all 31 posts on Chinese Books for Young Readers click here and on the GLLI website click here
By Helen Wang, November 2, '21
With #COP26 underway, can we try and put together a list of Chinese fiction in English translation on themes of the environment and climate change? I'll start with a few links below, please add more in the comments!
By Helen Wang, November 2, '21
link to Bloomsbury Publishing website "An all-in-one craft guide and anthology, this is the first creative writing book to find inspiration and guidance in the diverse literary traditions of Asia. Including exemplary stories by leading writers from Japan, China, India, Singapore and beyond as well as those from Asian diasporas in Europe and America, The Art and Craft of Asian Stories offers an exciting take on the traditional how-to writing guide by drawing from a rich new trove of short stories beyond the western canon which readers may never have encountered before..."
By Helen Wang, December 10, '20
Nicky Harman has just won a major award in China - The Special Book Award of China. It’s the 14th year of the awards and they are a big thing. As she was unable to attend the ceremony in China, on Monday, one of her publishers (Sinoist Books) and Guanghwa Bookshop organised a surprise zoom party for her, inviting the Chinese Cultural Attaché, her authors and friends in the Chinese literature community around the world either to attend in person or to send a short video recording. It was wonderful to see everyone! Even the Cultural Attaché, whose role was to be the official, was bowled over by the genuine friendship and informal atmosphere of the occasion - and that it was a meeting of friends! The organisers have just put the highlights on Youtube - https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=jsW1aUsPvds.
By Helen Wang, September 14, '20
A Century of Chinese Literature in Translation (1919–2019) English Publication and Reception
by Leah Gerber and Qi Lintao, published by Routledge, Sept 2020. ISBN 9780367321291
"Contributors from all around the world approach this theme from various angles, providing an overview of translation phenomena at key historical moments, identifying the trends of translation and publication, uncovering the translation history of important works, elucidating the relationship between translators and other agents, articulating the interaction between texts and readers and disclosing the nature of literary migration from Chinese into English."
By Helen Wang, May 31, '19
Translating Chinese Poetry - workshop with JOHN MINFORD, Univ of Exeter, 26-27 June - Free, but must register - contact Dr Yue Zhuang ( Y dot Zhuang at exeter.ac.uk)
By Helen Wang, October 23, '18
In 2016 Minjie Chen, Anna Gustafsson Chen and I started a blog/web-resource Chinese Books for Young Readers. Here's a list (with weblinks) to the first 72 posts. Thanks to everyone who has helped us along the way. Keep following! (twitter: @cb4yr)
-- The China Shanghai International Children's Bookfair is coming up (9-11 November).
By Helen Wang, February 4, '18
In 2016 Minjie Chen, Anna Gustafsson Chen and I started a blog/web-resource Chinese Books for Young Readers. We just posted our 60th piece. Thanks to everyone who has helped us along the way. Keep following! -- See the full list with weblinks here
By Helen Wang, November 21, '17
As usual, we at Paper Republic have assembled a list of book-length translations from Chinese into English over the year. Congratulations to all authors and translators! This year’s list is longer than ever, and several books have won international prizes. Your additions, comments, corrections to this list are welcome - please leave a comment below and we’ll update the list.
This is our sixth annual list; previous lists are here: 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016.
By Helen Wang, February 28, '17
This is the last day in February, and our last post in the Global Literature in Libraries - Paper Republic series on Chinese literature. Thank you for following us! We're very grateful to all our contributors - we couldn't have managed a post a day without you! So far, all our contributors have a strong Chinese connection. But Chinese literature is not just for Chinese readers - so we asked Marinella Mezzanotte, a London-based writer (in English) and a translator (from Italian to English), who is a newbie to Chinese literature to tell us about one of our events and whether it worked for her. In December 2016 she came along to our second speed bookclub event organised by Paper Republic and the Free Word Centre in London. Here's Marinella's response:
By Helen Wang, February 27, '17
Our penultimate post is about popular Chinese fiction of the ghostly, grave-robbing kind. We are thrilled to post this piece by writer and translator Xueting Christine Ni, who is currently working with the fantasy and science fiction author Tang Fei, and writing a book on Chinese deities. Having studied English literature in London, and Chinese literature in Beijing, she is now based mainly in the UK.
By Helen Wang, February 26, '17
Chun Zhang is the translator of a beautiful children’s book The Story of Ink and Water by Liang Peilong and Li Qingye. We are always on the look-out for great children’s books created by Chinese writers and illustrators, and this one is due for publication in March 2017. We invited Chun to tell us more about it...
By Helen Wang, February 25, '17
Theresa Munford teaches Chinese at a secondary school in the UK. She took the initiative a few years ago to set up a Chinese book group. At a workshop on Chinese children’s literature in 2016 she played a video in which she interviewed two of her teenage students about the Chinese books they had read. They spoke frankly and eloquently about the books they had read. We invited Theresa to tell us more about the bookclub...
By Helen Wang, February 24, '17
In October 2015 the Chinese government announced major changes to their population policy, commonly known as the One Child policy. Instead of curbs that limited one-third of Chinese households to strictly one child, Chinese families across the nation could have two children starting from 1 Jan 2016. With incredible timing, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Mei Fong's book One Child was at the publishers! I was invited to review it for the Los Angeles Review of Books and found Mei Fong's book very readable - there was a perfect balance of detailed research and stories of individual people in real circumstances. I particularly appreciated Mei Fong's skilful vignettes - for example, the couple in Wenchuan, who, within days of losing their teenage daughter in the devastating earthquake, decide to try for another child. The odds are stacked against them (age, vasectomy, cost, friends and family avoiding them for fear of being asked for money or support) and you wonder if they are grasping desperately at straws. Yet Mei Fong slips their shoes on to your feet so softly that you find yourself wondering how you would respond in their situation.
By Helen Wang, February 23, '17
Spring 2017 will see the publication of The Ventriloquist’s Daughter, by Lin Man-chiu (tr. Helen Wang), the fourth Young Adult novel translated from Chinese and published by Balestier Press. Originally from Taiwan, Lin Man-chiu has travelled extensively in South America, and her experiences there inspired this story. The following piece is adapted from the Author’s Preface in the Chinese edition, and we’re delighted to have permission to publish it here.
