To Foreword or Not to Foreword?

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SimitIn “To foreword or not to foreword?” Turkish – French translator Canan Marasligil and Chinese – English translator Nicky Harman discuss how the translator does, should, and shouldn’t frame the translation for the reader. Here’s an excerpt from Harman’s contribution:

Let me illustrate with a further question: Why do teachers consider it necessary to explain the role of the fool in Shakespeare’s King Lear? Because the modern meaning of the word doesn’t communicate the dramatic and social importance of the role. Granted, the reader will get some idea by the time they’ve finished the play. But why expect them to run barefoot through King Lear when we could give them a pair of running shoes, by way of an introductory note?  Fundamentally, I think that expecting the reader to appreciate a book without understanding the context in which the writer was writing and, even more importantly, what he or she was trying to do, is to do the writer an injustice. This is especially true when readers are unlikely to know much about a history and a culture far removed from their own experience. For example, in a collection of Hong Kong stories I translated recently, by the writer Dorothy Tse, I felt it was very important to explain her surrealism by quoting her own words: “Contrary to mainland literature that tried to borrow languages from the working class as well as the farmers in the 50s as a way to reach the public, Hong Kong’s literature has a tradition of resistance to the language of daily life. Its highly experimental language is a strategy to distinguish a literary work from an entertaining and commercial one. In Hong Kong, writing itself is an active rejection of utilitarian society and mundane everyday life.”

Click the image above for the dialogue in full.

Middlebury College Clifford Symposium–Translation in a Global Community: Theory and Practice

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Translation in a Global Community: Theory and Practice

September 24 – 28, 2013

X-Ray BabelfishYou’re translating right now. We all do it every day —usually unconsciously—from written to oral, from images to text. Even with people we know who share our language and culture, our brains constantly finesse ways to make ourselves understood and to understand. Our increasingly interconnected planet scales up our reliance on translated messages exponentially. Whether it’s negotiating peace at a diplomatic table, reading a novel in a foreign tongue, or learning how to change a spark plug from a car owner’s manual, translators are there, building a bridge.

The 2013 Clifford Symposium invites students, faculty, staff, and the community to explore many forms of translation, and to show how translation and translators contribute to a complex cultural environment. The Symposium will feature faculty members from Middlebury College and the Monterey Institute of International Studies, authors, linguists, and artists.

Click on the image for the full schedule.

Forum on Chinese Poetic Culture

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The Forum’s primary mission is to establish an open platform for promoting the learning and teaching of Chinese poetry and poetic culture.  The Forum strives to provide a broad range of services for students, scholars, and all Chinese poetry lovers.  In particular, it shall assist with information sharing, publicity, publication, collaboration as a translator/re-writer, networking, and price discounts.
A co-sponsor of Journal of Chinese Literature and Culture (with Peking Univ. in collaboration with Duke Univ. Press), the Forum gladly extends the above-mentioned services to all other sub-fields of Chinese literature and culture.
I would be most grateful if you could take a close look at these proposed services and offer your valuable suggestions for improvement. I sincerely hope that you will endorse the mission of FCPC and decide to join us in our various endeavors.
Zong-qi Cai
Forum Host

Click on the image above or any of the links for more information.

Tinfish Press of the Month at SPD

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Tinfish Press

Tinfish Press, which published the Xi Chuan chapbook Yours Truly & Other Poems, is Press of the Month at Small Press Distribution. Click the image for 40% Off Selected Titles and more information.

More on Tinfish:

Tinfish Press publishes experimental poetry from the Pacific Region.

Tinfish has been called “one of the great small presses of the United States” (Ron Silliman). Hank Lazer notes that “Tinfish Press most definitely increases a reader’s sense of the highly specific, highly localized terms of composition.” Marie Carvalho writes that Tinfish “vibes on [a] irreverent cross-cultural mix of language, vision, viewpoint and design.”

Founded in 1995, Tinfish published 20 issues of a journal (now discontinued), as well as numerous chapbooks and full length collections. Their mission has been to inspire conversations between a diverse, far-flung group of writers.

Tinfish is particularly interested in language issues in Hawai`i and the Pacific and has published books in and including Pidgin (Hawaiian Creole English), Samoan, Tagalog, Hawaiian, and Chamorro. While Tinfish does not publish writers for their ethnic or gender identities, they have been leaders in publishing experimental work by Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, native Hawaiians, Euro-Americans from Hawai`i and others.

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.

Xue Di’s Across Borders

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The Chinese poet Xue Di 雪迪 came to the United States immediately after the Tiananmen Square Massacre in 1989 in Beijing, becoming writer-in-residence at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, and was a fellow in Brown’s Freedom to Write Program.

In his newest book, Across Borders, Xue Di writes marvelously rich prose poems on a large variety of “things”–in the sense of the French poet Francis Ponge’s Le Parti pris des choses–both specific and abstract. From highly poetic confrontations with “Shadow,” “Music,” and “Bubbles,” the poet faces very specific and contemporary concerns such as an “Eatery,” a “Gift,” and a longer work on “Blue White Water.”

Click on the image above for purchasing information & more details.

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.

Chinese Writers at the Iowa International Writing Program

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International Writing Program, The University of Iowa--1400 writers from more than 120 countriesWang Jiaxin 王家新, Tong Wei Ger 童偉格, Lee Chi-leung 李智良, and A Lai 阿来 are the Chinese-language writers taking part in this year’s International Writing Program at the University of Iowa, in poetry, fiction, and nonfiction from and about China, Taiwan, Hongkong, and Tibet.

Follow the link for the full list of participants.