Nicky Harman

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Nicky Harman lives in the UK. She translates full-time from Chinese, focussing on contemporary fiction, literary non-fiction, and occasionally poetry, by a wide variety of authors. When not translating, she spends time promoting contemporary Chinese fiction to English-language readers. She works for Paper-Republic.org, a non-profit registered in the UK, where she is also a trustee. She writes blogs (for instance Asian Books Blog), give talks and lectures, and takes part in literary events and festivals, especially with the Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing. She also mentors new translators, teaches summer schools (Norwich, London, Warwick and Bristol), and judges translation competitions. She tweets, with Helen Wang, as the China Fiction Bookclub @cfbcuk.

She taught on the MSc in Translation at Imperial College until 2011 and was co-Chair of the Translators Association (Society of Authors) 2014-2017.

Winner of the 2020 Special Book Award of China; the 2015 Mao Tai Cup People's Literature Chinese-English translation prize; and of first prize in the 2013 China International Translation Contest, Chinese-to-English section, with Jia Pingwa’s "Backflow River", 倒流河

Forthcoming publications:

Beijing Boys, A Novel (《男孩们》) Annabel Yang Hao, co-translated with Michael Day, Balestier, 2024
Fellow Feelings, Collected stories by Han Dong, co-translated with Megan Copeland and Jack Hargreaves, no publications details yet

2023 publications:

Shaanxi Opera, (《秦腔》), Jia Pingwa, co-translated with Dylan Levi King, Amazon Crossing, 2023.
The Sojourn Teashop (《暂坐》), Jia Pingwa, co-translated with Jun Liu, Sinoist Books, 2023

2022 publications:

Flight of the Bumblebee (《野蜂飞舞》)Huang Beijia, Balestier , 2023
Wake Me Up at Nine in the Morning, (《早上九点叫醒我》), A Yi, Oneworld
Literary Lectures (《文学课》) , by Bi Feiyu, Routledge
Dinner for Six (《六人晚餐》), co-translated with Helen Wang, Balestier
I Want to be Good (《我要做好孩子》) , Huang Beijia, New Classic Books

2021 publications:

More Than One Child: Memoirs of an Illegal Daughter, Shen Yang, Balestier

2020 publications:

Oriental Silk, by Zhu Xiaowen, Hatje Cantz (Germany)

2019 publications:

Broken Wings, By Jia Pingwa, ACA Publishing

2018 publications:

The Chilli Bean Paste Clan, by Yan Ge, Balestier Press (awarded a PEN Translates grant)

Our Story: A Memoir of Love and Life in China, by Rao Pingru, Knopf Doubleday (awarded a PEN Translates grant)

2017 publications:

Jia Pingwa, Happy Dreams, Amazon Crossing, 2017.

Fish Tank Creatures, by Dorothy Tse, short story, translated with Natascha Bruce

2016 publications:

Crystal Wedding, novel by Xu Xiaobin, Balestier Press, 2016 (awarded a PEN Translates grant)

2015 publications:

Paper Tiger, essays by Xu Zhiyuan, co-translated with Michelle Deeter, Head of Zeus, 2015 (awarded a PEN Translates grant).
Sissy Zhong by Yan Ge, published READ PAPER REPUBLIC.
January:Bridges, by Dorothy Tse, published READ PAPER REPUBLIC. The translation and editing of this story is discussed and illustrated here: Free Word Centre.

Also, 2015-2016, READ PAPER REPUBLIC short story series: launching, planning, translating, editing, promotion and publicity.

2014 publications:

The Book of Sins by Chen Xiwo published by FortySix, October 2014.

White Horse, novella by Yan Ge, Hope Road Publishing, October 2014.

A Tabby-cat's Tale by Han Dong, winter 2014.

The Unbearable Dreamworld of Champa the Driver by Chan Koon-chung, Doubleday, April 2014.

Snow and Shadow, short story collection by Dorothy Tse, East Slope Publishing, March 2014.

A New Development Model and China’s Future, by Deng Yingtao, Routledge, March, 2014.

The Stone Ox that Grazed, short story by Sun Yisheng in Asymptote, April 2014.

A Loud Noise, poems by Han Dong, March 2014.

Other Published Translations in date order:

Urban Control and the Modernist City - essay by Leung Man-Tao, in LA Review of Books, originally appeared in Paper Republic, August 2013.

Woman Fish, by Dorothy Tse, for the Guardian newspaper, March 2013

The Shades who Periscope through Flowers to the Sky, by Sun Yisheng, for Words Without Borders, December 2012, and Dad, Your Name is Bao Tian, by Sun Yisheng, for The World of Chinese, March 2013.

Old Man Xinjiang, by Xue Mo, in China Stories for the Guardian newspaper, April 2012.

The Man with the Knife by Chen Xiwo, for Words Without Borders, November 2012

'Goodbye to Anne', in the novella collection The Road of Others, by Anni Baobei, Makedo Publishing, 2012.

Throwing out the Baby, by Xu Zechen, in Words Without Border, April 2012.

Shi Cheng: Short Stories from Urban China, Comma Press "Tales from Ten Cities" series, the two by Han Dong and Ding Liying, 2012

Flowers of Nanjing by Yan Geling, , published by Chatto and Windus, January 2012

A Phone Call from Dalian: Selected Poems by Han Dong, published by Zephyr Press, April 2012. Multiple reviews including World Literature Today and Peony Moon

The Eye of the Eagle, short story by Bai Hua, published by Hope Road Publishing

Prize-winning novel Gold Mountain Blues/Jin Shan by Zhang Ling, published by Penguin Canada

Short stories for Ou Ning's Shenzhen & Hong Kong Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture, 2009, and literary magazine Chutzpah, 2010 and 2011.

Message from Unknown Chinese Mothers (Author: Xinran), Chatto & Windus, 2010.

China Witness (author: Xinran), oral history Co-translator with Esther Tyldesley and Julia Lovell. Chatto & Windus , 2008.

Banished! (author: Han Dong) (《扎根》 韩东), novel. University of Hawai’i Press, 2009. Won a PEN Translation Fund Award (2006) for this work. Longlisted for Man Asian Literary Prize, 2008.

‘Long Corridor, Short Song’ (author: Zi Ren, in To Pierce the Material Screen: An Anthology of 20th Century HK Literature, to be pub. Renditions, Hong Kong 2008); (《长廊的短调》 梓人) short story.

China Along the Yellow River (author: Prof. Cao Jinqing, pub. Routledge Curzon, December 2004); (《黄河边的中国》 曹锦清) sociology of rural China.

K – The Art of Love (author: Hong Ying, pub. Marion Boyars, 2002); (K 虹影) novel.

Research publications:

Li Hao: Translation of Contemporary Chinese Literature in the English-speaking World: An Interview with Nicky Harman, The AALITRA Review, No 4 (2012)

What's that got to do with anything? Coherence and the translation of relative clauses from Chinese. In Journal of Specialised Translation (www.jostrans.org) issue 13, January 2010

Foreign Culture, Foreign Style: a Translator’s View of Modern Chinese Fiction. In Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 14(1): 13-31. (2006).

Beyond Paper Dictionaries: Mining the Web for Technical Terminology in Chinese (available from http://isg.urv.es/cttt/cttt/research.html, or on request from NH).

Visiting Fellow at the Research Centre for Translation at Chinese University Hong Kong, April 2006. Visiting Scholar, Fudan University and Beijing University, China, 2008.

Nicky Harman translated for READ PAPER REPUBLIC, week 3, 2 July 2015, and READ PAPER REPUBLIC, week 10, 20 August 2015.

 

Read Now: On Paper Republic

One Night on the Wharf by Han Dong February 01, 2022
View from a Window by Han Dong April 16, 2020
Hide! Hide! Hide! by Yan Geling March 28, 2020
Letter to My Mother by Ou Ning October 04, 2018
Dad Your Name is Field-Keeper by Sun Yisheng February 04, 2017
Gu Jieming – a Life by Han Dong June 09, 2016
The Bathtub – Scene of a Struggle by Han Dong May 12, 2016
Snow by Xu Xiaobin tr. Natascha Bruce and Nicky Harman March 24, 2016
That Damned Thing She Said by Fu Yuli March 03, 2016
Backflow River by Jia Pingwa February 25, 2016
Apery by Sun Yisheng January 28, 2016
The Cry of the Deer by Han Dong January 21, 2016
Sissy Zhong by Yan Ge August 20, 2015
January: Bridges by Dorothy (Hiu Hung) Tse July 02, 2015

Read Now: Around the Web

The Cry of the Deer by Han Dong Pathlight: New Chinese Writing
Mother Earth (excerpt) by Chiu Zu-Yin Books from Taiwan
Free! by Wang Bang Words Without Borders
Old Man Xinjiang by Xue Mo The Guardian

Book Publications

The Shaanxi Opera cover

The Shaanxi Opera

Jia Pingwa | Nicky Harman and Dylan Levi King

May 23, 2023

Flight of the Bumblebee cover

Flight of the Bumblebee

Huang Beijia

December 30, 2022

Dinner for Six cover

Dinner for Six

Lu Min | Nicky Harman and Helen Wang

November 22, 2022

I Want to To Be Good cover

I Want to To Be Good

Huang Beijia

January 01, 2021

Broken Wings cover

Broken Wings

Jia Pingwa

May 03, 2019

The Chilli Bean Paste Clan cover

The Chilli Bean Paste Clan

Yan Ge

May 01, 2018

Happy Dreams cover

Happy Dreams

Jia Pingwa

October 01, 2017

Crystal Wedding cover

Crystal Wedding

Xu Xiaobin

January 01, 2016

White Horse cover

White Horse

Yan Ge

March 01, 2014

The Unbearable Dreamworld of Champa the Driver cover

The Unbearable Dreamworld of Champa the Driver

Chan Koon-Chung

January 01, 2014

Gold Mountain Blues cover

Gold Mountain Blues

Zhang Ling

March 01, 2012

K: The Art of Love cover

K: The Art of Love

Hong Ying | Nicky Harman and Henry Y.H. Zhao

June 15, 2004

Original Works

Non-fiction (1)

All Translations

Poem (27)

Short story (38)

Novella (1)

Novel (15)

Essay (3)

Non-fiction (2)

Graphic novel (1)

Excerpt (3)

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.

Posts

Arts Council England grant for Paper Republic

By Nicky Harman, October 22, '08

We are delighted to announce that Paper Republic has received a substantial grant from Arts Council England to develop the website and to fund associated activities. Our aim is to re-design the site to provide more services both to publishers and agents who are considering publishing a particular work in English, and to translators who are looking for guidance in getting a favourite work published. Resources pages will provide useful information for both groups, from translation rights to translation rates.

We also want to expand the books database: if you read Chinese (whether or not you are a translator) and have a favourite book which has not yet been translated, please write and tell us about it. Include name (in Chinese with English translation), author, publisher and date of publication. Then please add a personal comment about the book, and a short paragraph summarising the story. Your contribution can be signed or unsigned, as you choose.

We will also retain the section (which currently exists as a blog) where translators discuss translation issues, as this provides a useful forum bringing together translators who normally work in isolation, and allowing them to exchange ideas.

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New fiction, new translated fiction

By Nicky Harman, August 26, '08

Richard Lea at the Guardian newspaper (UK) has some new "Original Writing" on China in the Books online section.
On 25 August 2008: China reflected: Hari Kunzru kicks off a series of new short stories by Chinese and British writers with the tale of some very partisan pandas. Those of us who attended the Moganshan Literary Translation workshops in March 2008 will find that Hari (who also attended as a visiting writer) has set his lovely and funny story in a place which uncannily resembles Moganshan!

And two weeks earlier, on 11 August, my translated excerpt from Jia Pingwa's new novel Happy (Gaoxing) appeared. Lets hope that features like this attract publishers' attention...

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Excerpt from Han Dong's Banished! 《扎根》

By Nicky Harman, August 1, '08

Han Dong's book 《扎根》 (published in 2009 as Banished!, was long-listed for the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize.
There were a number of things which convinced me I wanted to translate Banished! I liked the fact you can read the novel at different levels. He describes village life carefully, sometimes lovingly, but there is an underlying sense of political tension. There is humor, often scatological, but the depiction towards the end of the book of Tao, the frustrated writer, is bitter and painful. The language is occasionally lyrical but usually appears quite plain; then again, there are parts which are enigmatic to say the least, especially when they come from the unnamed ‘I’ voice. The emotional relationships are understated, but there is real warmth in the adults’ protectiveness of the child, young Tao, and the latter’s feelings for his father. I hope that this excerpt at least gives a flavor of some of these qualities.

3 comments

Talking about China - Ma Jian and Confucius

By Nicky Harman, June 7, '08

I originally sent this as a comment on Eric's piece about Ma Jian's recent articles, but am now posting it with a few added comments:

On Tuesday 3 June, I attended an English PEN event in London entitled "Chinese whispers... are Chinese writers free to face up to the difficult issues facing their society in the twenty-first century, or are they forced to speak in a whisper?...” [this was one of several suggested topics, but basically the only one discussed in the short time available.] English PEN says it "campaigns to improve the understanding of freedom of expression as a fundamental human right" so you would expect the discussion to be focussed more on politics than on literature, as indeed it was. All the more important, then, that the debate should be balanced and well-informed.

The three Chinese speakers were Ma Jian, Liu Hong Cannon and Diane Wei Liang (the latter two write in English). I was disappointed, not to say frustrated, by the evening's event: it was dominated by a rant from Ma Jian, similar in tone and content to his 30 May Times article. I wrote down the following sentence (Ma Jian said it in Chinese, Flora Drew interpreted): Chinese writers can only do three things in China today - collaborate, remain silent or leave the country. This is a misleading and skewed statement in my judgment, and insulting to many writers in China. Why does it matter? Because Ma Jian is probably the most politicised and most vocal of diaspora Chinese writers. People do listen to what he says. Some of the audience came knowing very little of what life is really like in China - and went away knowing just as little, it seemed to me. (For example, towards the end, someone asked whether the three speakers were able to return to China. Diane and Liu Hong looked at each in some surprise, and said, yes, they go back every year. Even Ma Jian said that he could go back, just not publish there.) With the number and the quality of cultural events on China available this year in the UK, we should surely be able to leave the Cold War behind and talk about China as it really is, in all its complexity. A one-dimensional rant does nothing to increase understanding. (In fairness, please let me emphasise that Diane and Liu Hong expressed completed different views, when they could get a word in edgeways. Also, Ma Jian writes much better than he speaks - it is obviously more difficult to engage in debate where everything needs to be interpreted for you, no matter how good the interpreter.)

Can there ever be a well-informed debate about China when most of the participants are non-specialists? Well, take for example, the discussion which followed Jonathan Spence’s first Reith lecture this week on Confucius, on BBC Radio 4*. Index on Censorship, Amnesty and the church were all represented in the audience, and the basis of the lecture may have been historical, but the ensuing discussion focussed on contemporary moral and political issues. It did not matter that those who asked questions had clearly come prepared to say their piece, no matter how distant the link to Confucianism; the discussion was interesting on many levels, and one hopes it succeeded in opening up the debate about China in people's minds.

*Still available here as a podcast; a half-hour lecture was followed by half an hour of questions.

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Translating Scat

By Nicky Harman, May 9, '08

Translating Scat – how do you choose the ‘right’ register in English?

Is a taste for ‘scat’ humour cultural? (Sorry, no pun intended!) Reading Cindy Carter’s recent piece Studies in Scat: Excerpts from Yu Hua, Zhu Wen and Li Er about the Chinese scatological sense of humour started me thinking.

What to do if your editor doesn’t like all this talk of crap? My translation of Han Dong’s 扎根, which will appear in English as Banished!, is at the copy-editing stage. The copy editor has put a lot of careful work into correcting my ‘infelicities’ (lovely word!) of expression for which I am extremely grateful, but we have one major disagreement. It’s – you’ve guessed it – the language used to translate those ‘toilet functions’!

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Translation Course: Dinner!

By Nicky Harman, March 28, '08

It wasn’t all work and no play…

Some of us went to a local restaurant.

The local produce was fantastic. Here’s the menu:

Cold Starters 冷菜

Pickled bamboo shoots (bamboo grows everywhere and gets into everything).
Wild ‘herbs’ 野菜 with chopped beancurd (the herbs were about the size and thickness of chives, and had a slightly astringent flavour).
Warm salad of chicken giblets.
Salad of cucumber slices.
Fried dried fish slivers.

Hot dishes

Soup of chicken and terrapin.
Red-cooked wild boar.
Red-cooked wild rabbit with bacon.
Red-cooked game chicken (野鸡 unspecified, maybe partridge).
Scrambled eggs with fungi of some sort.
Deep-fried fishes (about the size of whitebait) mixed with lots of deep-fried bay leaves and chilli peppers.
Stir-fried greens and various other dishes of stir-fried vegetables, more or less .

Local beer; local tea; local grain spirit (白酒).

Total cost 100 RMB, which including treating our leader, author and helper.

Wow!

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