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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, November 30, '16
The Chinese name of the grant (《上海翻译出版促进计划》 翻译资助) translates more literally as the "Shanghai Translation Publishing Promotion Scheme translation grant". The terms and conditions can be found here. Details of the winners of 2016 Shanghai Translation Grant can be found here.
By Helen Wang, November 19, '16
Yan Ge 颜歌 will be at the China Changing event at the Southbank Centre, London, on 16 December.
Here, Martina Codeluppi introduces a Young Adult story by Yan Ge, writes about her experience of translating Yan Ge's work into Italian, and interviews Yan Ge and translator Nicky Harman, who has translated Yan Ge's work into English.
By Helen Wang, October 17, '16
Maybe it's time to check the Links page on this website? (scroll down to the bottom of your screen - if you're using a big screen, it's on bottom left)
By Helen Wang, September 16, '16
NEW RESOURCE: Chinese books for young readers - from Helen Wang, Anna Gustafsson Chen, Minjie Chen - launched this week!
First five posts:
(1) Chinese books for young readers
(2) Gerelchimeg Blackcrane
(3) Chinese children's literature and the UK National Curriculum
(4) Happy Mid-Autumn Festival!
(5) The Reason for Being Late
By Helen Wang, March 7, '16
At the start of 2016, we decided to revisit the 2009 dream-list of untranslated Chinese novels recommended by the Paper Republic team. We wanted to see which of them had been translated (see update here), and to invite our readers to recommend titles for a new 2016 list.
Translators and agents, if you are working on samples, we’d like to add this information to the database – we can tag them as “excerpts” - you can search for a list of excerpts here. If you tell us that an "excerpt” is available from [a named person or job-title] at [literary agency], we can add this too! Think of it as free publicity!
By Helen Wang, February 18, '16
Featuring authors Fan Xiaoqing, Qian Zhongshu, Dai Lai, Wang Dajin, Yan Huajun and Huang Fan.
By Helen Wang, December 4, '15
Programme below. Contact elisabeth DOT forster AT history.ox.ac.uk for further details.
By Helen Wang, December 1, '15
For the last three years we have produced a list of Chinese to English translations (books only) published over the year. Here is our list for 2015. As always, if we’ve missed any, please add them below. (Previous lists are here: 2012, 2013, 2014). We have also added most of these titles to our list on Goodreads.
By Helen Wang, October 6, '15
Chad W Post and two interns have been adding the author's gender to his database of translated fiction published for the first time in the US between 2008 and 2014. Here's the weblink to Chad's report.
Total figures: 2471 fiction translations, of which 657 were written by women, and 39 by both men and women. Percentage of female authors: 26.6%.
For poetry collections, it’s 169/571 collections by women (29.6%).
For China it's 76 male authors, 21 female authors (20%)
By Helen Wang, July 31, '15
"One of Livings’ interesting techniques is switching point of view at multiple junctures within his stories, often just for a sentence or two, so that the reader slips out of a protagonist’s thoughts for an instant and sees him or her from the outside, as others might. The habit is at first disorienting, but, slowly, the disorientation gains a strength. By the end of the collection, it feels like an artistic credo of sorts: a belief in seeing things from all angles." -- Review by Jonathan Lee in The Guardian, 16 July 2015
By Helen Wang, June 5, '15
Featuring authors Ye Zhaoyan, Qian Zhongshu, Ding Jie, Xu Zechen, Pang Yuliang, Tao Wenyu and Han Dong.
By Helen Wang, April 27, '15
Here's the My BEA Show Planner of events listed under the heading "Global Market Forum: China".
New York, 27-29 May 2015:
By Helen Wang, February 10, '15
Style in Translation: A Corpus-Based Perspective by Libo Huang (New Frontiers in Translation Studies, 2015), ISBN 978-3-662-45565-4
Publisher's page here
Front Matter, incl Contents available as pdf
Back Matter, incl Appendices available as pdf
By Helen Wang, February 10, '15
Paola Iovene, Tales of Futures Past: Anticipation and the Ends of Literature in Contemporary China (Stanford University Press, 2014)
Carla Nappi reviews the book and interviews the author here:
By Helen Wang, February 6, '15
Ann Morgan’s recent publication Reading the World: Confessions of a Literary Explorer devotes no fewer than five pages (pp.208-212) to the first translations of Sherlock Holmes into Chinese, the spoiler-titles (eg The Case of the Sapphire in the Belly of the Goose and The Case of the Jealous Woman Murdering Her Husband), and the Chinese gong’an (court case) tradition.
