Category Archives: Ruminations

SCMP Runs Another Lame Review

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Clouds of Dust

In February the South China Morning Post ran a review I called “horribly written” and said made me feel “embarrassed to say I like the translations in a book that could inspire such homely homilies.”

Here’s another stupid review of contemporary Chinese poetry in the SCMP, of I Can Almost See the Clouds of Dust 我几乎看到滚滚尘埃 by Yu Xiang 宇向, translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain. It starts badly:

I Can Almost See the Clouds of Dust differs from other poetry anthologies due to its simplicity. However, that doesn’t mean this collection is easy to understand.

(The book is not an “anthology,” it’s a collection; the interest of the poetry is not whether it’s easily understandable; simplicity is not a rare feature of poetry collections…). It continues with ignorant and sexist remarks:

This doesn’t follow traditional poetic rhythms or even the cadences of normal conversations; it’s like reading a woman’s tangled thoughts.

And concludes with platitudes, clichés, and mixed metaphors all at once!

This anthology is a refreshing breeze that highlights the little details of our daily lives.

It can be helpful to address a non-poetry-reading audience in a poetry review–especially in a newspaper in a place such as Hongkong. But I hope this is the last time the SCMP runs a poetry review by someone who hasn’t read a poem since middle school.

In Memoriam Prof. Martha Cheung

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Martha Cheungfrom The Centre for Translation at HKBU

In Memoriam Prof. Martha Cheung 張佩瑤

10 September 2013 saw the sad passing of our distinguished and beloved colleague, Prof. Martha Cheung. Prof. Cheung was both a leading scholar in her field and a superb and much-respected teacher, and had served Hong Kong Baptist University at many levels – as Head of the Translation Programme, Head of the Centre for Translation, and Associate Vice-President, to name only some of her roles. Her passing is a tremendous loss to the University, to her academic discipline, and to the broader scholarly community, as well as to all who have known and loved her.

Prof. Cheung was one of the premier translation scholars in the world. In particular, she was at the forefront of what has become known as the “international turn”, the drive to bring to the discipline insights beyond Western-oriented conceptualizations of translation through the exploration of non-Western approaches. Concerned to be inclusive in this endeavour, she strove to make available to non-Chinese scholars the full panoply of traditional Chinese writings on translation, and indeed other writings that might implicitly be of use to translation scholars. The result was her 300-page groundbreaking Anthology of Chinese Discourse on Translation, volume 1 of which, titled From Earliest Times to the Buddhist Project, was variously hailed as “awe-inspiring”, “superb” and “meticulously presented”. Such innovative work made her a much sought-after speaker on the international conference circuit, and at prestigious doctoral research training programmes such as that at CETRA in Leuven, Belgium, and the Nida School in Misano, Italy. Prof. Cheung continued work on volume 2 of her Chinese Discourse project even through her illness.

As a teacher, Prof. Cheung combined the same exacting standards with a genuine desire to help her students achieve more. She was fully capable of letting a student know if they were not doing as expected, and she believed strongly in pointing out directly what could be improved. Yet such directness was always done with the student’s best interests at heart, and was combined with a deep sense of kindness and care.

As a colleague, too, she showed the same deep caring attention to both excellence and emotional support. Asked to glance through a prospective paper by a colleague, she would come back with pages of detailed written feedback consisting mainly of sharply-worded queries, yet all prefaced with the injunction to “take the following in the spirit of a friend”; many a problematic paper was thus saved, the writer considerably the wiser for Prof. Cheung’s insights. No doubt many scholars benefited from such assistance without even knowing their reviewer, for her peer reviews were always thoroughgoing and designed to provide maximum help: she would never allow herself to write a few perfunctory lines. Such demonstrations of complete commitment to the cause of cultivating up-and-coming scholars were part of a philosophy that sought always to nurture the positive in people. She once observed that young scholars were not praised enough for research well done, and that far more such encouragement should be given.

Prof. Cheung loved teaching and scholarship far more than administrative duties, but she always believed in serving the institution she loved, and not only accepted important administrative roles—including Associate Vice President—but brought to her tasks in those roles the same broad humanistic focus on whole people and the big picture, while still paying the closest possible attention to minute details. Even when she did not have an official administrative role to play, she was always an academic leader, because she invariably exuded an influence that was at once stabilizing and inspiring. She was loved and respected by everyone at HKBU who had the good fortune of working with her.

Above all, Prof. Cheung was someone who lived life with a tremendous energy, throwing herself into whatever new possibilities presented themselves. The enthusiasm, good humour, and sheer zest with which she approached her work and life in general were infectious, and a crucial motivating force for achieving new goals, for inspiring colleagues and students, and for building the Translation Programme that she loved into one of the most respected translation programmes in the region. Her inspired leadership in that programme, as well as in the Centre for Translation and the Translation Research Summer School, has established Hong Kong Baptist University as an internationally renowned centre for translation studies.

Her passing came far, far too soon. But the commitment, positive energy, kindness and meticulous care with she worked and lived are a legacy that shall not fade.

A memorial service will be held at the University on Saturday 5 October from 10:30 to 12:30 a.m. to honour the memory of this dear and much-missed friend and colleague. More details of the event will be sent later.

Nin Andrews in Conversation with James Kates of Zephyr Press

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Zephyr logo-1

NA:  You translate poetry from around the world including a Chinese, Russian, and Polish series. How do you pick your nationality?

JK: Again, one thing led to another. One of the editors working on an anthology of Polish poetry came to me for advice, based on my experience with the Russian. She thought she had a publisher already for her book; but, when that opportunity fell through, Zephyr picked up the book, Carnivorous Boy Carnivorous Bird, which in turn led to a spin-off of Polish poetry books initially based on the anthology.

Meanwhile, our new managing editor, Cris Mattison, brought with him to Zephyr a knowledge of both Russian and Chinese. His acquaintance with the Chinese poet Bei Dao led us to issue first Fissures, an anthology of contributions to the Chinese journal Jintian; and then a collection of Bei Dao’s essays, Blue House. More Chinese books followed; and, for the past couple of years, Cris has been living in Hong Kong, working with the Jintian Foundation, and finding more Chinese poets for us.

Click the image above for the full interview.

Yu Xiang reviewed on Words Without Borders

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Image of Yu Xiang’s “I Can Almost See the Clouds of Dust” I Can Almost See the Clouds of Dust, the new poetry collection by Yu Xiang 宇向 translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain, has been reviewed on Words Without Borders by Naomi Long Eagleson. Here’s how it begins:

Yu Xiang’s poems are the poetic equivalent of shoegazer rock. She takes the mundane—a whiff of cigarette smoke, a falling leaf, a housefly—and stares at it so intently that it splits open to reveal something unexpected. In the introduction to I Can Almost See the Clouds of Dust, the translator Fiona Sze-Lorrain writes that Yu “is adamant that a mundane life does not lack poetry. Rather, it lacks being discovered.” And indeed, throughout this bilingual collection the everydayness of life is keenly observed, giving rise to poems that reveal as much about the self as they do the world.

Click on the image above for the full review.

The Translators behind In Translation: A Conversation with Esther Allen and Susan Bernofsky

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Esther Allen and Susan Bernofsky

Translators in the anglophone world are sometimes perceived as being on a “lower rung.” The essays in our book certainly don’t subscribe to that view. Would we say that an actor is on a lower rung than the screenwriter who wrote the lines the actor delivers? Or that the literary critic is on a lower rung than the writers whose works she analyzes? The contributors to our book all write and translate and have made careers that conjoin the two practices—that conjoining is what many of the essays we’ve included are fundamentally about.

Click the image above for the full interview.

Fiona Sze-Lorrain featured in China Daily

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Solving a riddle with a harp and the magic of words

“Solving a riddle with a harp and the magic of words”

As a student at Columbia University, she dabbled in theater, writing and East Asian studies, and came to realize that there was more to be understood in the space between words and cultures, she said. Studying her own heritage from an intellectual perspective allowed for an ambivalence she had never indulged, and poetry provided an outlet for evolving views.

When she struggled with writing, she found solace in source material and the writing of other poets; from there, she discovered the pleasure of translating Chinese works. She has since translated books by the poets Yu Xiang, Bai Hua and Yi Liu, among others.

Click on the image for the full article.

 

Xi Murong: Poets and poetry never die

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Sometimes I hate how poetry gets covered in the press.

At the annual Hong Kong Book Fair some readers admit they rarely read poems, though they like poetry.

College student Miss Chen shares why she thinks poetry is fading from contemporary culture.

“In our society, people, in most of the cases, live a fast-paced life, thus, there isn’t much space available for them to meditate. People who want to write poems might not be able to afford the time to organize their thoughts. People who want to read poem might not have the luxury to relax and enjoy a good poem.”

Another reader, 71-year-old Miss Wang, blames education for people’s diminishing interest in poetry.

“I think it’s about education. The current education focuses on making money, and has forgotten about literature. There’s no soil for poets to grow.”

But the question remains, do we still need poems? Many readers at the book fair agree that poetry, like other literature forms, is a comfort to people’s minds, and shouldn’t be abandoned.

“I think we need poems. They can appease us.”

None of this has anything to do with Xi Murong 席慕蓉, the ostensible subject of the People Daily life & culture feature. Also, she was born in 1943–was that really so long ago that it’s appropriate to headline an article about her “poets never die”?

A Closer Look at Yunte Huang’s SHI

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Gina Elia: A Closer Look at Yunte Huang’s SHI

Huang’s book of translations, SHI: A Radical Reading of Chinese Poetry, clearly identifies itself as, in part, a response to the Fenollosa/Pound argument concerning Chinese poetry and its proper translation. However, the primary purpose of the work, as Huang states in his introduction, is to deal “with…the often-invisible face of translation…brought to the foreground of poetic texture and the traces of translation’s needle work…exposed to the reader’s view.” The translations reveal the difficulties and problematics of ripping a literary work from its cultural and linguistic context, a process that is too often smoothed over in editions that aim to hide the invisible, yet irrevocable changes committed by translation’s hand.

Asymptote Reviews Bai Hua’s Wind Says

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The new issue of Asymptote features Henry Leung’s review of Wind Says 风在说, poems by Bai Hua 柏桦 translated by Fiona Sze-Lorrain. Here’s what he has to say on the poetry and translation:

Beginning especially with the “Hand Notes on Mountain and Water” section in Wind Says, his poems become more staccato, numbered, and jagged, pinballing from image to image—freeing up the range of movement. One of my favorite lines is section 4 in “Hand Notes,” which reads in its entirety: “He has a dawn-like spirit, but his punctuality expresses his sadness.” And the poem ends with a rhyme of action that would not be so poignant or direct without the sharp cuts of white space around each line:

26
He smashes ants with a hammer.
27
That maid picks up and walks away with two pieces of dog shit.
That old man rubs two peaches like rubbing two testicles.

These are uninflected juxtapositions of images. They don’t require explanation or rhetoric; the images spin a vitality out of their own mysteries.
Sometimes I wonder if certain lines that fall flat—such as “infinitely, infinitely …” in “Character Sketches,” a line so poor compared to its succeeding line with the same function, “fiddling with an eternal bell on a bike”—are flaws of the original, or of the translation, or simply of the incapacity of English to carry abstractions the way Chinese can. On the translation itself, I must note some occasional awkwardness that is misdirecting more than productive—”Opposite windows open” is a mistranslation of what would mean “the windows opposite”; “The third story (can’t help but) begin(s) from romance” is an overcomplication of the original parenthetical; and so on—but overall the translation is admirable. Sometimes Sze-Lorrain even improves on the original, as in the exquisite cadence of “who blows now / who is fire / who is the convulsing arm of a new flower” in “Beauty.” And by no means can I fault a translator who can bring us this couplet from “Fish”:

Born as metaphor to clarify a fact:
the throat where ambiguous pain begins

Interesting, though, that amidst a discussion of translation, Leung would focus on the line “That old man rubs two peaches like rubbing two testicles” without mentioning that this is, in fact, a mistranslation: the line in Chinese is 那老人搓着两个核桃若搓着两个睾丸, so the old man is rubbing walnuts, not peaches.