And we’re back! I know you’re all thinking it, 浪子回头金不换, the prodigal newsletter has returned and there’s nothing sweeter. Well I hope that we can deliver with this, the first instalment in a year and a half.
But first, the annual, start-of-the-year reminder to any aspiring or experienced Chinese-English translators that registration for both Bristol Translates & BCLT Summer School is currently open. Both are online this time around, and while there is some time before the application window for Bristol closes, you only have until Sunday 14 April to apply for Multilingual Prose, Multilingual Poetry, Multilingual Theatre or Training the Trainer at BCLT, if Chinese is your language of choice. Please do spread the word. And if you yourself are interested, then I highly recommend signing up for either for how valuable an opportunity this is to start building your translation network and toolbox.
Now, onto the news:
Extracts, stories and poems:
- Spittoon Magazine has a whole new selection of stories online, both in their original language and in English translation, for your enjoyment. I also believe the collective has some exciting news coming up in the next year or so, so if you’re not familiar with its work, now is the time to get familiar!
- A new Shen Dacheng translation is available to read on the Clarkesworld website, in the form of her short story “The Rambler”, tr. Cara Healey. Dacheng’s body of work is a personal favourite of mine so it’s wonderful to see more of it out there in English for all to read
- Poet Bei Dao’s first collection in over a decade is coming out next month in Jeffrey Yang’s translation and you can read poems from the collection here and here
- Another book that’s out next month, and is well worth picking up, is Lin Yi-Han’s tragic semi-autobiographical Fang Si-Chi’s First Love Paradise, tr. Jenna Tang. So you know what you’re in for, the author-translator pair has two pieces online, here and here
- This month’s author of the month at the Centre for New Chinese Writing is Lu Min. There’s an excerpt on the site from her latest novel Golden River available to read in both Chinese and English
- And to round out this frankly star-studded line up, we have pieces from no other than Yu Hua, three of them tr. Michael Berry, an interview, a list of recommended readings for students of literature and the author on why young Chinese no longer want to work for private firms
News:
- Tahir Hamut Izgil was awarded the John Leonard Prize for Waiting to Be Arrested at Night: a Uyghur Poet’s Memoir of China’s Genocide, tr. Joshua L. Freeman
- Translator & writer Jeremy Tiang will be running an advanced workshop for the translation and pitching of Taiwan literature in November
- This year’s Hugo Award Finalists have been announced, as have today the PEN America award longlists for poetry in translation and prose in translation, with The Poetic Garden of Liu Zongyuan, tr. Nathaniel Dolton-Thornton & Yu Yuanyuan, and Owlish by Dorothy Tse, tr. Natascha Bruce, featuring respectively
- You’ll have to excuse some shameless self-promotion here. Apologies. The PEN Translates winners were announced for the last round of applications and there are two books from the Chinese, Tongueless by Hong Kong writer Lau Yee-Wa, tr. Jennifer Feeley, which is out this year, and A Submarine in the Night by Mainland writer Chen Chuncheng, tr. Jack Hargreaves, which is set for release in 2025
- Also, PEN/Heim grants have been awarded to Dong Li, for his translation of The Ruins by Ye Hui, and Jack Hargreaves, for his translation of A Time No More by Chiang-sheng Kuo
- Last news item: Paper Republic has a new series of translations coming out in the next couple months on the theme of HOME, so watch this space!
Reviews and releases:
We have three big name releases this time and one really fascinating take on a poetry collection translation:
- Hao Jingfang with Jumpnauts, tr. Ken Liu, reviewed here, here, here and here
- A View From the Stars by Liu Cixin, tr. various translators, reviewed here, here and here
- Mai Jia’s The Colonel and the Eunuch, tr. Dylan Levi-King, which I’m sure we’ll hear a lot more about in the coming months
- And then The Lantern and the Night Moths, a collection of poems from five modern and contemporary Chinese poets, translated and curated by Yilin Wang whose essay on the book you can read here alongside one of the poems
- P.S. there’s another release out May 1 but I can’t find anything other than a Twitter post, so here is Murder in the Maloo, tr. Paul Bevan
Media:
- For your media fill this time around, I’m just going to direct your attention to the China Books Review website, where you can find regular editorials and columns covering a lot of the latest trends in China and across the Sinosphere. Like this profile on writer Yiyun Li, and these lists of the latest books making waves on the Mainland and of the best literary works translated from the Chinese. Keep your eyes peeled for more columns and articles coming later this month!
Latest reads
- Here’s where I thought it might be nice to try something new, for those of you who can read Chinese or are interested in what’s happening in Chinese literature right now but is yet to be translated (for more of this ilk, see writer and translator Na Zhong’s column here). My recommendations this time around are two books/stories with “peacock” in the name, both of them by debut Yunnan authors. Peacock Bodhi《孔雀菩提》 is the debut short story collection by Jiao Dian 焦典 which comes highly recommended by her teacher, Mo Yan himself, and transports readers into the rainforests of southwest China, a mystical place closed off from outside notions of time and priority. The book ranked fifth in Douban’s Top 10 Chinese fiction list for 2023. The Smallest Ocean 《最小的海》 by Ye Xinyun 叶昕昀 is another short story collection out late last year (yes, I’m a big reader of short story collections and it’s a mighty shame that more aren’t published in Anglophone markets, in translation and otherwise). It was the book’s first story, “Peacock” 《孔雀》, that quickly put the author on everybody’s radar and earned her nods from Yu Hua, Su Tong and, again, Mo Yan. Her stories pay tribute to the quiet moments of warmth between people brought together by unexpected circumstances
