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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:
Diablo's 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.
| 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 |
| 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 |
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 Nicky Harman, December 17, '20
2020: torrid times. Not all of the ones on our 2020 Forthcoming Translations (posted in December 2019) made it into publication this year, but a number of translations from Chinese have still come out.
Kudos to writers, translators and publishers alike!
By Nicky Harman, October 13, '20
Most readers nowadays, asked to name a contemporary Chinese writer, could manage at least one. But the odds are that it will be a man. In these interviews, we explore how Chinese women authors from mainland China see themselves and their status.
In recent decades in mainland China, there have been vast improvements in standards of living and personal freedoms (to choose one's higher education and career, and to travel, for instance) and a small number of women writers have flourished. For instance, the current head of the China Writers Association, Tie Ning, is a woman. However, women writers still appear to lag far behind their male counterparts in other respects. Only nine of forty-three winners of the Mao Dun Literary Prize were women between 1982 and 2015; as were only twenty-seven of 228 Lu Xun Prize awards (various categories) between 1995 and 2017. And far fewer women are translated into English: of 117 novels translated from Chinese between 2012 and 2018, only thirty-five were by women. Our aim in translating and publishing these interviews is to bring the opinions of Chinese women writers on this topic, in all their variety and complexity, to English-language readers.
Notes: With the exception of Wang Bang, all writers answered in Chinese. The initials of the translator can be found at the end of each interview. Some writers chose to remain anonymous. We have published the response of another writer, Tang Fei, separately. It can be read in Words Without Borders.
By Nicky Harman, April 18, '20
What better way to spend lockdown than having a shot at literary translation? You know you always wanted to try it, so why not have a go now? Paper Republic and The Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing have partnered up to offer an essay by Deng Anqing as a piece for first-time translators. Deadline 30th April 2020, and details here: https://writingchinese.leeds.ac.uk/give-it-a-go-translation/
By Nicky Harman, March 28, '20
This essay is now part of the Read Paper Republic: Epidemic series and can be read here
By Nicky Harman, March 16, '20
The author Fang Fang has been writing some fiery blog posts since being locked down in her home city of Wuhan. Now, thanks to the brilliant Brigitte Duzan, a couple of these blogs are in French, on Brigitte's website. The original blogs in Chinese (frequently taken down as soon as they went up) have apparently found a more stable home on Caixin.
By Nicky Harman, March 16, '20
Hong Kong translator and editor Min Lee, formerly of Chinarrative, has launched a separate newsletter spotlighting reader-generated Chinese non-fiction. Gushi focuses on extended essays on everyday life from the general public published in PRC online platforms. The first few issues feature stories set against the coronavirus outbreak in China. Please take a look. If you like what you read, do subscribe and spread the word.
By Nicky Harman, January 23, '20
Registration for the Warwick Translates Summer School has now opened! Details here. It takes place 8-12 July 2020 inclusive, and there will be a Chinese-to-English option, led by Nicky Harman.
By Nicky Harman, December 13, '19
Here’s our roll-call of books translated from Chinese in 2019
There’s (almost) something for everyone this year – scifi and Singapore fiction have a strong showing, as do pre-modern classics, and even one self-help book. But still, fewer translated works were published in 2019 than in 2018 (31, as against 40-odd in 2018 ) Worst of all, only four of the list below are women writers. Every year, novels that are funny, sharp, moving and entertaining are published in the Chinese-speaking world – there is plenty for publishers and literary agents to seek out. We at Paper Republic continue to work hard to bring our favourite novels to their attention. (Watch out for our list of 2019 publications in Chinese, to be posted next week.) Read on
By Nicky Harman, December 4, '19
On 29th November 2019, Paper Republic launched as a UK-registered charity promoting Chinese literature in translation. We are, as you may know, a virtual organization, with a team of volunteers spread from America to the UK and China. But to celebrate our new non-profit status, we decided to have a fund-raising party in the literary heart of London. The raffle prizes (tea, maotai, books, books and more books, signed by any of their translators who happened to be present) went like hot cakes, and the pub room was jam-packed and raucous. Inevitably, because our supporters are spread all over the world, there were some familiar faces who couldn’t be there and were sadly missed, though Eric Abrahamsen, our founder and Chair of Trustees, made a special trip over from Seattle. But now we’ve got the party bug, we hope to host more literary parties in the US and China in the near future.
By Nicky Harman, March 13, '19
Paper Republic, One-Way Street Magazine and the LA Review of Books’ China Channel publish new essay by Chinese writer Liang Hong, translated by Michael Day.
Paper Republic is delighted to announce the publication of a new creative non-fiction essay. This marks the launch of a second series of Read Paper Republic: China Dispatches, a unique three-way collaboration between Paper Republic, One-Way Street Magazine (单读) and the Los Angeles Review of Books’ China Channel. The series focuses on translating the best non-fiction coming from China right now – and making it available online, completely free to read.
The first instalment – “A Fortune-teller in a Modern Metropolis” by Liang Hong – is translated by Michael Day. The essay tells the story of Xian Yi, a man in an old profession that is curiously out of step with modern China.
By Nicky Harman, January 27, '19
For interested readers, here's an online newsletter, launched May 2018 and now twice-monthly. They feature Chinese longform in translation and also some original English submissions by Chinese authors. The founder and publisher is Colum Murphy, a veteran Asia-based journalist, and Min Lee is the current editor and lead translator. They would love to hear from the translation community, be it comments, suggestions or story ideas.
By Nicky Harman, January 17, '19
The Guanghwa Bookshop (Shaftesbury Avenue, London) was packed for our "[Un]Happy Family" event with Yan Ge and translator Nicky Harman last night. We talked about Yan Ge's novel The Chilli Bean Paste Clan (in Chinese《我们家》), its complicated characters, and what was in Yan Ge's mind when she created her middle-aged male [anti]hero, when she herself was in her mid-twenties. And we talked about the challenges of translating colourful Pixian Town obscenities into English, a language where swearing is kind of pale by comparison...and much much more. Thank you all for coming!
By Nicky Harman, December 10, '18
The brilliant Charlotte Collins has chosen at least one great translation for each of the last 60 years. Read about them here or on Twitter #TA60, or on Charlotte's Facebook page. And keep following until next June, and like and share, of course. She has unearthed some fascinating nuggets of information about some classic novels.
By Nicky Harman, December 9, '18
We say this every year, but this really is a bumper crop. From classics to contemporary literature, poetry to scifi to short stories and a beautiful graphic memoir (Rao Pingru), our list this year has nearly forty novels or other book-length works, and six poetry collections.
And some of last year's books have won or been listed for prestigious prizes:
Remains of Life by Wu He, tr. Michael Berry (Columbia University Press), 2017, was shortlisted for the Best Translated Book Award 2018.
Notes of a Crocodile, Qiu Miaojin, tr. Bonnie Huie (New York Review Books), was longlisted for the 2018 PEN Translation Prize and won the 2018 Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize.
The Stolen Bicycle, by Wu Ming-yi, tr. Darryl Sterk (Text Publishing Company), was longlisted for The Man Booker International Prize.
Click Roll-call of Book Translations from Chinese in 2018 for the full list.
And finally, our previous years' lists start here.
By Nicky Harman, December 3, '18
Paper Republic has produced some new resources, for general readers and for librarians. Resources for readers provides guidelines, links and suggestions, all on one page. The resources for Librarians, intended especially for librarians in schools and community groups, has two sections: Stories in the Original Chinese for Schools and Libraries and Chinese Books in English for Schools and Libraries. Check out the clickable links on the left-hand side of this page, under Resources
