“Missteps, Errata, Discoveries: A Translation Forum” features literary translators Nick Admussen, Eileen Chow, Brian Holton, Joanna Krenz, Chris Song, and Matt Turner, who will talk about how mistranslations might also be ‘portals to discovery’, as Stephen Dedalus put it. There will be a short Q&A session as well.
This discussion will take place online and people from all over the world are welcome to listen in. Moderated by Cha’s Co-editor Tammy Lai-Ming Ho and Cha’s Translation Editor Lucas Klein.
Date: Saturday 21 November 2020
Time: 10:00 – 11:45 p.m. (HK) [Find out what time it will be where you are]
Platform: Zoom (Meeting ID: 931 7624 26950)
Language: English
Speakers: Nick Admussen, Eileen Chow, Brian Holton, Joanna Krenz, Chris Song, and Matt Turner.
Moderators: Tammy Lai-Ming Ho and Lucas Klein
BIOS—Speakers:
◒ NICK ADMUSSEN (speaker)
Nick Admussen is an associate professor of Chinese literature and culture at Cornell University. He is the author of Recite and Refuse: Contemporary Chinese Prose Poetry, the translator of Ya Shi’s 哑石 poetry collection Floral Mutter, and a poet whose most recent chapbook is titled Stand Back, Don’t Fear the Change. He was the recipient of a 2017 grant from the PEN/Heim fund for translation, has been anthologized in Best New Poets 2018 and Best Short Fictions 2017, and was a 2018 National Poetry Series finalist.
◒ BRIAN HOLTON (speaker)
Brian Holton translates poetry and prose from modern and classical Chinese into English and Scots. He has published many books of Yang Lian’s 杨炼 work, most recently, Anniversary Snow (Shearsman Books, 2019), Venice Elegy (Edizioni Damocle, 2019), and Narrative Poem (Bloodaxe Books, 2017). His collection of classical poetry in Scots, Staunin Ma Lane, was published by Shearsman Books in 2016, and his Hard Roads An Cauld Hairst Winds: Li Bai an Du Fu in Scots will be published by Taproot Press in 2021. Brian makes regular appearances at conferences and literary festivals, and has lectured at universities in the UK, Europe, the USA, New Zealand, China, and elsewhere. He has won prizes for his translations and his own original poetry. He is currently recording Hassan’s Dream, his first solo album.
◒ JOANNA KRENZ (speaker)
Joanna Krenz is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Oriental Studies of Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. Her research focuses on contemporary literature in a comparative perspective, in particular literature’s connections with science, technology, and philosophy. She is also an active translator of Chinese poetry and prose into Polish, her recent translations include Yan Lianke’s 阎连科 novels Dream of Ding Village (Sen wioski Ding, 2019) and Explosion Chronicles (Kroniki Eksplozji, 2019). Currently, she is working on two projects: In Search of Singularity: Polish and Chinese Poetry Since 1989 and The World Re-versed: New Phenomena in Chinese Poetry as a Challenge and Inspiration to Literary Studies.
◒ CHRIS SONG 宋子江 (speaker)
Chris Song is a poet, translator, and editor based in Hong Kong. He has published four collections of poetry and many volumes of poetry in translation. He received an “Extraordinary Mention” at Italy’s UNESCO-recognised Nosside World Poetry Prize 2013 and the Young Artist Award at the 2017 Hong Kong Arts Development Awards. In 2018 he obtained a PhD in Translation Studies from Lingnan University. More recently he won the Haizi Poetry Award in 2019. Chris is now Executive Director of the International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong 香港國際詩歌之夜 and Editor-in-Chief of Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine 聲韻詩刊.
◒ MATT TURNER (speaker)
Matt Turner is the author of Not Moving (2019, Broken Sleep Books) and Wave 9: Collages (2021, Flying Island Books), and is the translator of Lu Xun’s 魯迅 Weeds 野草 (2019, Seaweed Salad Editions). With Weng Haiying he is co-translator of works by Yan Jun, Ou Ning, Hu Jiujiu and others. His essays and reviews have been published in Heichi, Cha, Music & Literature and many other journals. He lives in New York City, where he works as a freelance translator and editor.
BIOS—Moderators:
◒ TAMMY LAI-MING HO (moderator)
Tammy Lai-Ming Ho is the founding co-editor of the first Hong Kong-based international Asia-focused journal, Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, an editor of the academic journals Victorian Network and Hong Kong Studies, and the first English-language Editor of Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine 聲韻詩刊. She is an Associate Professor at Hong Kong Baptist University, where she teaches poetics, fiction, and modern drama. She is also the President of PEN Hong Kong, a Junior Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of the Humanities, an advisor to the Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing, and an Associate Director of One City One Book Hong Kong. Tammy’s first collection of poetry is Hula Hooping (Chameleon 2015), for which she won the Young Artist Award in Literary Arts from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council. Her first short story collection Her Name Upon The Strand (Delere Press), her second poetry collection Too Too Too Too (Math Paper Press) and chapbook An Extraterrestrial in Hong Kong (Musical Stone) were published in 2018. Her first academic book is Neo-Victorian Cannibalism (Palgrave, 2019). Tammy edited or co-edited seven literary volumes having a strong focus on Hong Kong, the most recent one being Twin Cities: An Anthology of Twin Cinema from Singapore and Hong Kong (Landmark Books, 2017). She guest-edited a Hong Kong Feature for World Literature Today (Spring 2019), the Hong Kong special issue of Svenska PEN’s PEN/Opp (formerly “The Dissident Blog”), and an e-chapbook of Hong Kong poetry published by Cordite Publishing. She is currently co-editing 2020: A Bilingual Anthology of Hong Kong Poetry with Chris Song. Tammy is also a translator and her literary translations can be found in World Literature Today, Chinese Literature Today, Pathlight: New Chinese Writing, among other places, and International Poetry Nights in Hong Kong (香港國際詩歌之夜) volumes (2015, 2017 and 2019). Her own poems have been translated into a number of languages, including Chinese, French, German, Latvian and Vietnamese.
◒ LUCAS KLEIN (moderator)
Lucas Klein (PhD Yale) is a father, writer, and translator. Executive editor of the Hsu-Tang Library of Classical Chinese Literature from Oxford University Press, his scholarship and criticismhave appeared in the monograph The Organization of Distance: Poetry, Translation, Chineseness (Brill, 2018) and in Chinese Poetry and Translation: Rights and Wrongs (2019), co-edited with Maghiel van Crevel (downloadable for free from Amsterdam University Press), as well as in Comparative Literature Studies, LARB, Jacket, CLEAR, PMLA, and other journals. His translation Notes on the Mosquito: Selected Poems of Xi Chuan (New Directions, 2012) won the 2013 Lucien Stryk Prize; other translations include the poetry of Mang Ke, October Dedications (Zephyr and Chinese University Press, 2018), and contributions to Li Shangyin (New York Review Books, 2018). His translations of the poetry of Duo Duo, forthcoming from Yale University Press, won a PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant. He is an associate professor in the School of Chinese at the University of Hong Kong and the Translation Editor of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal.