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Guardian Newspaper (UK) wants your hot tips

By Nicky Harman, May 9, '11

The Guardian Online Arts section runs a World literature tour on the site, and it's heading to China ... go online and add your ideas...



China Fiction Book Club in London

By Nicky Harman, February 25, '11

By Yu Yan Chen

China Fiction Book Club is a gathering of kindred spirits bonded together by the love for Chinese language and literature. Over tea and snacks, members meet about once every two months to translate a piece of contemporary Chinese literature into English. Our first meeting in autumn 2010 took place at an elegant café near SOAS, but our next meeting on 16 March from 6:00 to 8:00 will be held at RADA.


Quality Non–Fiction in the Digital Age, Amsterdam Conference 2011

By Nicky Harman, February 1, '11

Fish out of water? Lone voice crying in the wilderness? (well, alright, in the Quality Non–Fiction in the Digital Age conference). At the start, I was a little unsure about what role I, as the sole translator–speaker, was going to play at a conference largely attended by international publishers. Though I wasn’t the only one of a kind. There was a philosopher, Jos de Mul, reminding us that the invention of writing in the New Stone Age was just a way of outsourcing memory! And computers in the New New Stone Age (that’s now) are a way of outsourcing thinking…


Shi Tiesheng dies at 59

By Nicky Harman, January 4, '11

Shi Tiesheng dies of a brain hemorrage at 59. Wikipedia entry here


Manchester LitFest invites Ding Liying

By Nicky Harman, October 28, '10


How to make your new book headline news

By Nicky Harman, October 4, '10

Jonathan Franzen's book Freedom suffers UK recall: More than 8,000 copies of the American author's latest opus have been recalled due to hundreds of typesetting errors. This has been headline news in the UK for the past two days. That's unheard-of for any novel except perhaps Harry Potter. Now how about this for a great way to launch one of those translations some of us are busy working on: ooops, it comes out only half-translated, or with an eye-catching English cover and all in Chinese inside?! OK, I was just joking. But then again........


Han Han …listed as a global figure

By Nicky Harman, September 28, '10

New Statesman, the British socialist weekly magazine, includes Han Han, writer, racing–driver and blogger, at number 48 in its list this week of 50 People who matter 2010. The rest are an eclectic group of the world’s great, the good and the not so good…About a quarter of them are women, only one of whom, Angela Merkel, is in the top ten. There’s one other Chinese, Xi Jinping, at number 4 (up from 10 last year).


International Translation Day events in London, UK, 30 September 2010

By Nicky Harman, September 14, '10

Diary date for anyone within striking distance of London, UK.

On Thursday 30th September, join English PEN and other leading translation organisations for a full day of events focused on the future of literary translation, organised by FLOW The Free Word Festival. Visit their website or download the flyer here


Mentoring scheme for literary translators hits the ground running

By Nicky Harman, August 17, '10

from Danny Hahn, Translators Association, London

For some time those of us at the (British) Translators Association have been discussing the possibility of setting up a mentoring scheme, as a way of allowing emerging translators to benefit from the experience of their more experienced colleagues. Mentoring does of course happen informally all the time – translators are a benign, helpful bunch on the whole, after all – but we wanted something more formal, something that the emerging translator could rely on for a set period of time, and which would also involve a modest fee to recognise the mentor’s time. And thanks to the generosity of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation we are delighted to have secured funds to make this happen at last.


Eric Abrahamsen to translate Gongwuyuan Biji/Notes of a civil servant

By Nicky Harman, July 28, '10


Julia Lovell on Lu Xun

By Nicky Harman, June 13, '10

"With the PRC now in its swaggering 60s, I would prescribe – to counter the excesses of Beijing bombast – a stiff dose of Lu Xun", Julia concludes in this June 12th 2010 article on the relevance of Lu Xun to contemporary China, in the (UK) Guardian newspaper.


Thinking Chinese translation - useful new reference/teaching book

By Nicky Harman, June 10, '10


Scatological humour in Zhu Wen and Han Dong

By Nicky Harman, June 2, '10

Pamela Hunt writes: Why are there so many modern Chinese novels in which, as Cindy Carter put it so nicely in an earlier post, ‘faeces play a starring role’? Any reader of contemporary Chinese fiction will tell you that you don’t have to look very far to find a joke about bodily functions. But at the same time humour is rarely discussed in academic writing on Chinese literature, let alone humour that centres around the toilet. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed a shame, which is why I decided to tackle the subject myself in a recent essay for the MA in Modern Chinese Literature at SOAS, University of London, focusing on the work of two authors much discussed on the pages of Paper Republic, Han Dong and Zhu Wen.


Literary translators' rates officially "catastrophic"

By Nicky Harman, May 18, '10

The CEATL (Conseil Européen des Associations de Traducteurs Littéraires) has recently published a report on literary translators' rates and working conditions. The report can be downloaded from here


Han Dong’s new novel: book launch Chengdu-style

By Nicky Harman, April 26, '10

It was a first for Hua Cheng publishers, for the author, and certainly for me – though perhaps not for the Bai Ye, a bar which hosts regular literary events in Chengdu’s Kuan Zhai Xiangzi district. This book launch provided non-stop entertainment for at least two hours in a packed space where people at the back carried on talking noisily regardless but the mike was so powerful that you could hear the speakers from the street. Han Dong's fourth novel was launched on 24 February 2010. Now called 《知青变形记》[Metamorphosis of an Educated Youth], it had the original, much ruder, working title 《日》(and at least one purchaser asked for “日” to be inscribed above Han Dong’s signature!) An extract appears in translation on Paper Republic under the English title Screwed.

Anyway, titles notwithstanding, the evening was a great deal more fun that any book launch I’ve been to in London (normal format: speech from publisher, reading by author, and too much wine on an empty stomach). There was, true, the obligatory and slightly over-long speech by the publisher, followed by a reading by the author, but thereafter it all became much more lively. Han Dong gave an impromptu speech in which he said he turned to writing novels when he figured he would never write poetry as good as that of his favourite poets, Yu Xiaowei and Xiao An, so thought he had better try something different. The presenter interviewed him on stage about the book; there were also readings of some of Han Dong’s poems – some read in Chengdu dialect and other dialects/languages – and I read a few pages of my translation. A woman played the pi-pa, including a modern arrangement with a backing track that had at least some of the audience dancing, the 200 copies brought by Hua Cheng publishers sold out… and the beer flowed generously.

Hey, you book launch organisers! A model to follow for future events?