{"id":763,"date":"2012-03-03T13:04:19","date_gmt":"2012-03-03T05:04:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=763"},"modified":"2012-03-03T13:04:19","modified_gmt":"2012-03-03T05:04:19","slug":"guardian-are-we-finally-getting-the-hang-of-foreign-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=763","title":{"rendered":"Guardian: Are we finally getting the hang of foreign fiction?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over at The Guardian<\/em> Sam Jordison has an article titled “Are we finally getting the hang of foreign fiction?<\/a>” My favorite paragraph:<\/p>\n

One thing I am wondering, however, is if we in the English-speaking world are becoming better at understanding the value of good translated literature. In that earlier article, I noted that “although around 60% of all translations are taken from the English language, English readers take only around 2-3% of their books from other languages”. I haven’t been able to find contradictory figures, but anecdotal evidence suggests that the imbalance is becoming less marked. Stieg Larsson continues to sell by the bucketload; Roberto Bola\u00f1o<\/a> is ever more revered; new imprints such as Gallic Books<\/a>, focusing exclusively on translation, are thriving. In the meantime, the exemplary New York Review Books<\/a> has brought out so many translations of such high quality that a serious reader could take in nothing else for years and still feel entirely satisfied.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The article doesn’t mention poetry–a frustrating omission–but it’s still worth a read for its sense of promise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over at The Guardian Sam Jordison has an article titled “Are we finally getting the hang of foreign fiction?” My favorite paragraph: One thing I am wondering, however, is if we in the English-speaking world are becoming better at understanding … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3,16],"tags":[397,396],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8srwF-cj","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2494,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=2494","url_meta":{"origin":763,"position":0},"title":"Farewell to Chutzpah! Lee Yew Leong interviews Austin Woerner","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"March 9, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"Ou Ning's\u00a0\u6b27\u5b81 literary journal Chutzpah! \u5929\u5357 is closing, and to commemorate it, Asymptote's Lee Yew Leong interviews its English pullout Peregrine editor Austin Woerner. Austin sez: What was unique about Chutzpah! was that it didn\u2019t see itself as a journal of Chinese literature per se, but rather as part of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Arundhati Roy\"","block_context":{"text":"Arundhati Roy","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?tag=arundhati-roy"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.asymptotejournal.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/03\/chutz2.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":940,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=940","url_meta":{"origin":763,"position":1},"title":"New Directions New Homepage","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"May 26, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"New Directions has updated their website's homepage, with my translation of Xi Chuan's Notes on the Mosquito making the display, right between a new collection of Kenneth Rexroth's writings, Thomas Merton On Eastern Meditation, and Natasha Wimmer's translation of Roberto Bola\u00f1o's first novel.","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4583,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=4583","url_meta":{"origin":763,"position":2},"title":"Sydney Review of Books interview with Bonnie McDougall","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"June 24, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Fruitful exchanges: Bonnie S. McDougall on translation The Sydney Review of Books has published an interview with Bonnie McDougall, by Jeffrey Errington, covering topics ranging from her experiences with translation and poetry and politics. The interview spends some time on her experiences getting to know Bei Dao \u5317\u5c9b, and translating\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":95,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=95","url_meta":{"origin":763,"position":3},"title":"“Is That a Fish in Your Ear” interview","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"October 16, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"One out of every five Americans is functionally bilingual \u2014 either because they are recent immigrants or they inherited it from their family or because they learned it at school or from residence abroad. That\u2019s quite a high percentage for an English-speaking country.\u00a0America isn\u2019t as monolingual as people say it\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":996,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=996","url_meta":{"origin":763,"position":4},"title":"How “International” is Poetry?","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"June 26, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"At the English Pen site, Michele Hutchison has posted an article titled \"How international is poetry?\" that looks at the kind of poetry included in international literary festivals like Rotterdam. Here's a bit of what she says: If international is taken to mean universal and accessible to all, there are\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":4516,"url":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?p=4516","url_meta":{"origin":763,"position":5},"title":"On Ha Jin on Li Bai","author":"Lucas Klein","date":"March 29, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Lauded Chinese-American novelist and poet Ha Jin \u54c8\u91d1 has written a biography of Li Bai \u674e\u767d, The Banished Immortal: A Life of Li Bai, newly published by Pantheon. Han Zhang on \"Ha Jin\u2019s Self-Revealing Study of the Chinese Poet Li Bai.\" Because it's by an award-winning author, the biography has\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Links"","block_context":{"text":"Links","link":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/?cat=3"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/media.newyorker.com\/photos\/5c50d48c36b0283b1309a055\/master\/w_727,c_limit\/Jin-Li-Bai.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=763"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":766,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/763\/revisions\/766"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=763"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=763"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xichuanpoetry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=763"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}