Readers in the English-speaking world have long enjoyed translations of the cream of French, German and Russian literature. Only in the past few decades, however, have English-language editions of the best fiction written in Taiwan become available.
In the 1980s, Indiana University Press published translations of short-story collections by Huang Chun-ming and Kenneth Pai Hsien-yung as part of its Chinese Literature in Translation series. In 1998, Columbia University Press launched its Modern Chinese Literature in Taiwan series with Wang Chen-ho's “Rose, Rose I Love You,” a novel first published in Chinese in 1984.
Of the 18 titles in the series, with two more in the pipeline, the best-seller so far has been Chu Tien-wen's “Notes of a Desolate Man,” said Jennifer Crewe, CUP's editorial director.
Print runs are usually small, however, about 1,000 copies on average, said Crewe.
“We do not make a profit on these books. In fact we lose money on some of them. The financials would not work for us without the help we receive from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange,” she explained.
The CCKF is a private not-for-profit organization based in Taiwan that supports Greater China-related research projects throughout the world.
“Recent [publishing subsidy] projects are normally within the range of US$5,000 to US$10,000,” said Lee Hsing-wei of CCKF's North American Office. Lee pointed out that the foundation does not play any part in choosing which books CUP publishes.
Proposals to expand the CUP series go first to David Der-wei Wang, Edward C. Henderson Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Harvard University and coordinator of CUP's editorial board.
“If he agrees they might be worth considering, I send the manuscripts out to two scholars of modern Chinese literature and ask them a series of questions about the overall quality of the novel, its readability, and so on,” said Crewe.
“But my main concern is: Is the novelist known and respected by people in the field in the U.S., and do they think the work is a lasting contribution to literature,” she explained. “Perhaps most important, would they recommend that students read the novel in translation or would they assign the book in a modern Chinese literature course?”
CUP is not drawn to best-sellers, Crewe said, “because often those books are not going to be considered lasting contributions to literature. And we are not primarily a fiction publisher—our main audience is people in the academy, either faculty or students.”
If the reviewing scholars are enthusiastic, Crewe takes the book to two internal approval boards.
“The first is an in-house editorial/marketing committee. At that meeting we decide whether to go ahead with the book. We look at a preliminary financial analysis, determine how many copies we are likely to sell, and what price we must put on the book.”
“If the book is approved by our in-house committee, then it goes on to the faculty publication committee. No book can be published by CUP without the approval of the faculty board. They read the peer reviews and make the final decision.”
Titles of translated works are usually “more or less the same title as the original,” said Crewe, adding that “If for some reason we don't think the title will work in the American market we will suggest something different. If the author and translator are okay with it, we'll go with that.”
Translations of Taiwan literature also appeas in periodicals.
Taiwan Literature: English Translation Series, a biannual journal published by the Center for Taiwan Studies in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, University of California at Santa Barbara, features fiction and critiques.
The Taipei Chinese PEN is the quarterly bilingual publication of the Taiwan chapter of International PEN, the worldwide grouping of writers.
Darryl Sterk, a Canadian translator based in Edmonton, Alberta, has done translations for both periodicals. “It's interesting stuff. I do the best work I can and I'm hoping to translate a novel someday soon,” said Sterk, who has been working with Taipei Chinese PEN since 2007.
Sterk said that compared to other kinds of translation work, translating literature from Chinese to English, “is more of a learning experience. You need to check everything, etymologies especially, in both languages. You need to have a sociolinguistic sense of everything in the story or essay and find a way to carry that over into English. You've got to consider the poetic aspects of what you're translating, the rhythm and rhyme.
“I would also really like to translate aboriginal literature, perhaps Badai, an author who has kept at it for several decades and who keeps getting better and better,” said Sterk. “Also, I like Zhang Yuan, who writes about the lifestyle of Taiwanese in China.”
According to Michelle Yeh—who has translated poems by Taiwan's Yang Mu into English, and Nobel laureate Derek Walcott's poetry from English to Chinese—translating Chinese to English is just as challenging as translating in the other direction.
“Because English and Chinese are vastly different languages in terms of syntax and idioms, the translator has to find the right sentence structure and the right word,” said Yeh, who has been teaching in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of California-Davis since 1988.
“Moreover, images and symbols with cultural meanings are not always translatable. What is 'poetic' in one culture may be incomprehensible or ludicrous in another. In short, translatability is probably the most important consideration,” commented the Taiwan-born and raised Yeh.
Michael S. Berry, associate professor of Contemporary Chinese Cultural Studies in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of California Santa Barbara, explained why an excellent grasp of Mandarin Chinese is not by itself enough when translating Taiwan literature into English.
“While the majority of work is still written in standard Chinese, it is quite common to find contemporary literary works liberally borrowing from Japanese, English, and especially Taiwanese and other local dialects,” said Berry. “This type of linguistic diversity can be a challenge not only for translators grappling with basic meaning, but also then the often more tricky question of how to render this spectrum of languages and dialects into the target language in a way that still captures the diversity of the original.”
“I think it is crucial to have personal experience of Taiwan, so as to provide a larger historical, cultural, and linguistic contextualization for a given translation,” said Berry, who served as a jury member at the 2010 Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival.
As Berry pointed out, the official languages of Taiwan and mainland China are not precisely the same, so “having a good sense of these differences is crucial to producing an accurate translation that can capture the spirit of the original.”
Berry said the most enjoyable project he worked on was Chang Ta-chun's “Wild Kids: Two Novels About Growing Up” (CUP, 2000). “It was among my first major translation projects, so there was still the excitement of discovery and all kinds of literary riddles to solve,” he recalled.
“It was a journey that took me beyond the text and led to a long series of correspondences with the author, online chat-rooms in Papua New Guinea to track down proper names of tribes, and to university and church libraries. I especially enjoyed the challenges of capturing the book's playful, youthful satiric tone and getting the humor right, as translating jokes and puns can often be one of the most challenging aspects of translation.
“The most difficult has been a novel I am now completing, ‘Remains of Life’ by Wu He,” said Berry. In 2008, he received a grant from the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities to translate this award-winning novel.
Berry said the book's structure makes it especially challenging. “It's a full-length novel with no paragraph breaks, only a few dozen periods, and various shifts in time and the implied tense.”
The English-language edition of “Remains of Life” will be published in the near future.
—Steven Crook is a freelance writer based in Tainan. Copyright © 2011 by Steven Crook
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