A subtitler's eye view on translating from Chinese
By Nicky Harman, April 23, '13
Here is a fascinating podcast on translating and subtitling and working with Chinese directors from That's Beijing. With Brendan O'Kane and Linda Jaivin.
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
2022 and forthcoming publications:
Wake Me Up at Nine in the Morning, (《早上九点叫醒我》）, A Yi, Oneworld
The Sojourn Teashop （《暂坐》）, Jia Pingwa, co-translated with Jun Liu, Sinoist Books
Dinner for Six (《六人晚餐》), co-translated with Helen Wang, Balestier
Flight of the Bumblebee (《野蜂飞舞》）Huang Beijia, New Classic Books
Shaanxi Opera, （《秦腔》）, Jia Pingwa, co-translated with Dylan Levi King,Amazon Crossing, forthcoming 2023.
2021 publications:
I Want to be Good (《我要做好孩子》) , Huang Beijia, GBD Books India (and forthcoming UK New Classic Books)
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
Original Works
Non-fiction (1)
All Translations
Poem (27)
- Love Life
- Absurd Winter Scene
- Pain
- Growing Up Is a Mistake
- The Days of Our Lives
- Wood Work
- Summertime Window
- We Sat on the Street
- Some People Don't Like to Talk
- Bath-tub––scene of a struggle
- These Past Few Years
- In White-Tiled Brightness
- It's Foggy
- Green Tree, Red Fruit
- A Loud Noise
- A Phone Call from Dalian
- The Worker's Hand
- The Chicken-seller
- The Train
- Let Me Describe the Rainstorm
- Making a Note
- Dialogue
- News
- So Dispassionate
- Waitress
- Crossing the Lingdingyang, the Lonely Sea
- In Shenzhen, to a Group of Friends
Short story (38)
- Going to Heaven
- Pain
- Our Bones
- I Love My Mum
- The Hint
- Kidney Tonic
- The Man With the Knife
- Throwing Out the Baby
- A Gift from Bill Gates
- The Shades who Periscope Through Flowers to the Sky
- The Stone Ox That Grazed
- A Street in the Wind
- The Traveling Family
- Blessed Bodies
- Black Cat City
- Head
- January: Bridges
- Eternal Lamb
- Free!
- Who Stole the Romanian's Wallet? (with Yvette Zhu)
- That Damned Thing She Said
- Zeus
- 1923 - A Fantasy (with Pang Zhaoxia)
- The Seventies: Fragments of Memories
- This Moron is Dead
- Family Secrets
- Philosophy in the Boudoir
- Apery
- Backflow River
- Goodbye, An
- The Cry of the Deer
- Snow (with Natascha Bruce)
- Dad Your Name is Field-Keeper
- One Night on the Wharf
- Brand New World (with Helen Wang)
- Sissy Zhong
- The Amorous Centaur's Gentlemen's Club
- Old Man Xinjiang
Novella (1)
Novel (13)
- The Chilli Bean Paste Clan
- White Horse
- Broken Wings
- The Flowers of War
- I Want to To Be Good
- Flight of the Bumblebee
- Crystal Wedding
- The unbearable dreamworld of Champa the driver
- Happy
- Gold Mountain Blues
- Message from an Unknown Chinese Mother: Stories of Loss and Love
- Banished!
- K: The Art of Love (with Henry Y.H. Zhao)
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
Thought-provoking: Translator as the maker of originals?
By Nicky Harman, April 6, '13
Karen Emmerich on Words Without Borders. This link is to part 2 of her essay, follow WWB link for part 1. http://wordswithoutborders.org/dispatches/article/the-making-of-originals-the-translator-as-editor-part-2
Translation thrives on Twitter
By Nicky Harman, March 22, '13
Some of you will have noticed that the London–based China Fiction Book Club, has a thriving twitter account, @cfbcuk. Launched, serendipitously, the day of the announcement that Mo Yan had won the Nobel Prize for Literature, it's going strong and has nearly 200 followers…(198 today and counting. Several new followers arrived between yesterday and today as a result of the Dorothy Tse story which appeared in the Guardian). PLUS Helen Wang has launched 3 more Twitter accounts, all worth browsing: Story of the Stone @caoxueqin1760; Lin Yutang @lytwords; and – together with the Emerging Translators Network - Translated World, @translatedworld. These have daily posts - have a look. If you don't yet have a Twitter account, then google the @names and you can reads the tweets...
Chinese writer features in new Guardian newspaper series of water-themed stories
By Nicky Harman, March 15, '13
"Writers have long been fascinated by the wet stuff, and now we're opening the floodgates on a series of aquatic-themed short stories" says Richard Lea in the Guardian today. The Guardian has featured Chinese fiction before - five short stories translated from Chinese marked last year's London Book Fair. The current collection of "water" stories are from all around the world, some written in English, others translated. Dorothy Tse (谢晓红）wrote one in Chinese especially for this series, and it's translated by me.
Birkbeck (London) Translation Summer School 22-26 July 2013
By Nicky Harman, February 17, '13
This year, the Birkbeck (London) Translation Summer School offers Chinese to English as an option again. There will be a mixture of texts to study - from literary to technical via reportage. Dates: 22-26 July 2013. For more details see here. The workshop leader will be Nicky Harman.
The Times Stephen Spender Prize is open for entries.
By Nicky Harman, February 7, '13
Translate a poem from any language, classical or modern, into English. Three categories – Open, 18-and-under and 14-and-under – and cash prizes. Details, entry forms and free booklets of past winning entries available from the Stephen Spender Trust. Closing date Friday 24 May 2013.
Reindeers rule
By Nicky Harman, January 15, '13
Bruce Humes has been too modest to flag this up, so I will: Last Quarter of the Moon by Chi Zijian, translated by BH, is out now and Harvill Secker is gearing up with some Twitter promotion
2012 translations from Chinese - the final list!
By Nicky Harman, December 31, '12
Thanks, everyone, for your additions and corrections. Here's what we've got now:
Fiction
An Unusual Princess, by Wu Meizhen, tr. Petula Parris-Huang (Egmont UK)
Atlas: The Archaeology of an Imaginary City, by Dung Kai-cheung, tr. Dung Kai-cheung, Bonnie McDougall and Anders Hansson, Columbia University Press
Dream of Ding Village, Yan Lianke, tr. Cindy Carter (Constable)
Flowers of War, by Geling Yan, tr. Nicky Harman (Chatto & Windus)
Hanging Devils, by He Jiahong, tr. Duncan Hewitt (Penguin China/Australia)
Jackal and Wolf, by Shen Shixi, tr. Helen Wang (Egmont UK)
Lenin's Kisses by Yan Lianke tr. Carlos Rojas (Chatto & Windus)
Northern Girls, by Sheng Keyi, tr. Shelley Bryant (Penguin China/Australia)
Pai Hua Zi and the Clever Girl, by Zhang Xinxin, tr. Helen Wang (https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/pai-hua-zi-clever-girl-vol./id553372788)
Shi Cheng: Short Stories from Urban China, various authors and translators (Comma Press)
The Civil Servant’s Notebook, by Wang Xiaofang, tr. Eric Abrahamsen (Penguin China/Australia)
The Road of Others, by Anni Baobei, tr. Nicky Harman (Make Do Publishing)
This Generation: Dispatches from China's Most Popular Literary Star (and Race Car Driver) Han Han tr. Allan Barr (Simon & Schuster)
Trees Without Wind: A Novel, Li Rui, tr. John Balcom, Columbia University Press
Under the Hawthorn Tree, by Ai Mi, tr. Anna Holmwood (Virago Press)
Poetry
A Phone Call From Dalian, Han Dong, tr. Nicky Harman and others, Zephyr Press (Jintian series)
Doubled Shadows, Ouyang Jianghe, tr. Austin Woerner, Zephyr Press (Jintian series)
Jade Ladder: Contemporary Chinese Poetry, tr. W.N. Herbert, Yang Lian, Brian Holton and Qin Xiaoyu (Bloodaxe Books)
June 4th Elegies, Liu Xiaobo, tr. Jeffrey Yang, (Graywolf Press)
Notes on the Mosquito, Poems of Xi Chuan, tr. Lucas Klein (New Directions Publishing)
Stone Cell, Lo Fu, tr. John Balcom, Zephyr Press (Jintian series)
The Changing Room, Zhai Yongming, tr. Andrea Lingenfelter, Zephyr Press (Jintian series)
Wind Says, Bai Hua, tr. Fiona Sze-Lorrain, Zephyr Press (Jintian series)
2013 January, fiction
Last quarter of the Moon, Chi Zijian tr. Bruce Humes, Jan 2013 (Harvill Secker)
Sandalwood Death, Mo Yan, tr. Howard Goldblatt, Jan 2013 ( University of Oklahoma Press)
And a Happy New Year to all!
It’s been a good year for Chinese fiction in English.
By Nicky Harman, December 20, '12
I make it a total of nineteen books. OK, I’ve cheated a bit – three of the publications below are poetry, and two others come out in January 2013. Still, it’s a good haul and many times better than the annual total, say, ten years ago. (Please post a comment if I’ve missed anyone out.) I couldn’t begin to add up just how many hours of translation the whole list represents, and that’s without the extra work translators have put in, on some of these books, to get them off the ground. So, lets raise a glass to translation and all pat ourselves on the back!
In alphabetical order, this year’s publications from Chinese are:
Words Without Borders (December) non-Scandi crime issue...
By Nicky Harman, December 1, '12
... has a short story by young writer Sun Yisheng called The Shades who periscope Through Flowers to the Sky. (The title is taken from a poem When Once The Twilight Locks No Longer by Dylan Thomas, translated into Chinese by the poet Bai Hua.)
Crossing Border festival, Netherlands, invites Chinese author + translator
By Nicky Harman, November 16, '12
Check out the goings-on at the Crossing Border festival, in The Hague and Antwerp, till Monday 17th Nov, where Yan Ge and Phil Hand are among the guest writers and translators. Guest authors write daily blogs (Chronicles) which the translators translate. The rest of the fest begins this evening.
Monocle24 interviews Danny Hahn and Nicky Harman
By Nicky Harman, October 6, '12
Danny Hahn and I did a radio interview about the state of the art of translation for Monocle24 Globalist programme on Thursday 4th October. A bit nerve-wracking (for me), but they were lovely people and they gave us a decent amount of time to say what we wanted to say. You can listen here: http://www.monocle.com/monocle24/?openepisode=10600244. It's a nearly 2-hour programme, and we come at 1:29 ie practically the end, but you can download and scoot that progress bar along to the point where they start with a phone interview with David Bellos (Is that a fish in your ear). Should you be so inclined.
Good article about Ou Ning
By Nicky Harman, August 4, '12
here - he's the man behind one of our two favourite lit mags, Chutzpah aka 天南 (the other being Pathlight, of course!)
Translation of Han Dong novella - And Other Stories Reading Group
By Nicky Harman, June 19, '12
The And Other Stories Chinese Reading Group is having a lively online discussion about Han Dong's novellas. I have just translated an excerpt of one, which appears here. It can also be viewed on the And Other Stories website.
Translators and readers crowd around the table to talk Chinese fiction
By Nicky Harman, May 25, '12
Michael Rank asked me to post this piece about a get-together held in London last week. He writes: Translated fiction is notoriously hard to sell in the English-speaking world, but Chinese fiction seems to be a bit of an exception just at the moment. That was the message from a meeting of about 20 translators and readers arranged by Chinese-English translator, Nicky Harman, and Michael Sheringham of Arthur Probsthain, the venerable oriental bookshop on Great Russell Street near the British Museum.