Literary and Non-Literary Translation: Studying Translation and a Little Work Experience

One of the best things about the UEA's MA in Literary Translation course, and there are many good things about it, is actually what's not on the course. What I mean is that the lecturers on the course and the staff at the university work very hard, and are very helpful, when it comes to getting students involved in translation related activities outside of class. Internships at the BCLT, the BCLT Summer School, a publishing internship, translation editing workshops in a coffee shop, public lectures with award winning translators, attending conferences, attending the London Book Fair, an award ceremony, talks on comic-book translation in a pub and going to professional networking events are just some of the activites and schemes that have been on offer. It was at the last one – a networking event encouraging UEA students to think about using their language skills in their futures – that I met representatives of a Norwich based data capture company. I then ended up working for them on an interesting translation project for a supermarket in China. I want to say a few things about it here because it's made me think a bit about what do you do as a 'Literary Translator', and what's the difference between translating Literature, and something like a brand of toothbrushes?

So, first of all, what do you as a 'Literary Translator'? Well, I don't feel that I can answer this with any great authority as I'm not published, but it's still an interesting question for me, as it's something I want to pursue. I get the impression that, from a fascinating talk from the Translators in Residence at the Free Word Centre during the LBF, literary translators do a lot. A surprising amount, actually. They teach, write articles, organise games, take part in 'Translation Slams', edit, travel, translate words and, of course, translate literature. In this past year it's been wonderful to see so many literary translators, including teachers at the UEA and translators in London, being involved in different projects linked to their communities. It seems like a major part of literary translation is actually using language skills, critical thinking and decision making skills to work in other areas and fields of study. My experience of working outside of literary translation has been with this company in Norwich. The job involved translating and writing product descriptions for 'everyday' items. In fact, it was more like everyday items in China; some of the names for such items had never been translated into English, and many of the items are rarely seen in the UK. I was challenged by having to translate such words casually appearing on packaging as 阿胶, 牛皮糖, 蛇胆 and 灌肠,  (a quick google translate will let you know why these words might be problematic, and give you a few giggles too!) Being faced with such oddities made me realise that decision making and arguing your case are important parts of being a translator – arguments of whether 牛皮糖 should be 'Chewy Sweets' or 'Leather Sugar' went on for a while – and I think that literary translators develop such skills and apply them to many parts of their working life. I also feel that studying translation has better equipped me with such skills (although I do have room to improve and will keep trying to do so).

Having looked back at a few of my translation problems outside of literary translation has made me think about the difference between literary and non-literary translation. In terms of translating Chinese to English, and this may be true of many other languages including translating from French and Spanish, I don't think there's much difference in the actual process, but there is a difference in the product. Chinese works so differently to English that translating it involves changing almost everything; adding articles, reorganizing sentences, deleting measure words, deciding on tenses and so on. These processes were pretty much the same between my prose translations and the translations for the supermarket. With the supermarket translations, however, the translations had to fit the company's strict guidelines; limited character numbers, information order, use of particular measure words and so on. I've found that with literary translation there is a stronger emphasis on the feel and the style of a text. A lot of the work of other Chinese to English translators, such as Howard Goldblatt, have a distinctive literary feel, and I would also argue, the style of the translator. For example, some Chinese to English translators like to use pinyin to translate the story's characters' names, whilst others prefer to translate the meanings of the names. Goldblatt's translation of Su Tong's Rice(米) included characters like Old Six and Five Dragons, and I think that the decision to do this give the text a particular style, which allowed the translator to put themselves into the text. The freedom to make such decisions about influencing the style of a translated text is at least sometimes the difference between literary and non-literary translation. At least it was in my experience, although this might not be the case in other types of non-literary translation, as there are a lot of types of text out there that need translating. The main thing is that the process of making decisions about changing the text is in many ways the same, even if the product of the translation is not.

Now I'm wondering why I'm talking about non-literary translation on a literary translation blog. Well, I want to say literary and non-literary translation are both very close; literary translators often work on non-literary translation, and they do lots of things to engage people with literature outside of their own work. The UEA's Literary Translation course is well integrated with other areas of translation, and it's given me the opportunity to experience professional non-literary translation. The experience has given me an awareness of some of the skills I have gained on the course, and has taught me a bit about the relationship between literary and non-literary translation. I think both areas work well together, and I'm glad to have had the chance to take part in both (even if just a little). I also think that one of the possible benefits of translators doing so much outside of their 'work', is that this might not only raise awareness of translators and what they do, but also an awareness of foreign literature.

I just want to say something (and feel it important as someone interested in Chinese to English translation) about contemporary Chinese literature. Brendan O'Kane, a great translator of Chinese and blogger, said in a recent interview that 'The more we can do to demystify it [China], through journalism or writing or documentaries, or through Pathlight to introduce people to the idea that there are young Chinese writers working through the same issues that they are – to get people used to the idea that China’s just a place like any other, and not that special. I think that’s a very worthwhile thing to work towards' (theanthill.org 2013:np). I agree with pursuing a 'demystified' view of China and its literature. I think that the brilliant work of translators to intergrate their work with other projects and fields of study can all help with this pursuit. China and Chinese are, for many people I know, still both a far off place and a mysterious language. The problem with such a distance in people's minds is that it can lead to misunderstandings. Working towards clarity can often be, in my opinion, for the best. I hope that brilliant work coming from Chinese to English translators, through routes such as Pathlight, keep up, and that the English language readership will become more and more familiar with great writers such as Qian Zhongshu (钱钟书), Bing Xin (冰心), Bei Dao (北岛), Can Xue, (残雪), Jin Yong (金庸), Yu Hua (余华), Zhang Yueran (张悦然), Liu Cixin (刘慈欣), Ling Chen (凌晨), and many, many, many, more.

Now, unlike Brendan O'Kane who is leaving China, I'm soon going to be off to China to keep reading up on (and perhaps even try my hand at translating) some of the new talent emerging from China.

 

Thomas Newell translates from Chinese into English, and is currently studying for an MA in Literary Translation at the UEA as well as interning for Arc Publications. Contact him at thomashenrynewell@gmail.com.

Chinese Children's Literature

 

China has lots of stories. There are all sorts of fantastic tales, about monsters, warriors, ghosts and heroes. It's got the one about the naughty Monkey, who goes on a great journey and fights all the time. It's got the one about the cowherd who falls in love with a goddess. There's a festival in China that celebrates their love. There's the one about a lady who lives forever on the moon, with a rabbit and a lumberjack who can't chop down the cinnamon tree. The stories capture the imagination of children across China.  I remember wanting to read about them when I was at school. But these are old stories. They're really more like folk-tales. You can read them in English, some I did, but they aren't so much translated into English as being written as an English 'version'. There are lots of new ones in China that are popular with children too, but what I want to know is whether or not they can be read in English. Can they excite children who read English in the same way?

 

Over the last few months I have been investigating translated children's literature from mainland China. It hasn't been easy. I know that there is a lot of it in mainland China; the four classics (三国演义-San Guo Yan Yi，水浒传-Shui Hu Zhuan，西游记-Xi You Ji，红楼梦-Hong Lou Meng) all have numerous children's versions and picture books, readily available in book shops, supermarkets and street markets. Writers such as  Bing Xin, Zhang Tianyi, Sun Youjun, Sheng Ye, Zheng Yuanjie, Zhou Rui and many more besides are familiar names in China as children's literature writers. There is also a wealth of online Chinese literature aimed at young adults; if you look them up on book.kanunu.org you will find they are added regularly, and there are plenty of sites that you can find through Baidu (百度一下您就知道). The problem is – an this could be because I haven't looked in the right place – that I can't find much of it in English translation (I think only Sun Youjian has some of his works translated and published that you can find on Amazon...).

 

One  children's story that I have found from mainland China and translated into English is in a collection of Ye Shengtao's works. It's perhaps pertinent to note that Ye is  one of the founders of children's literature in China, or 童话-tonghua, which up until the 1920s did not exist. Children read literature before this, of course, but they read the same literature as adults. Tonghua came about when China was trying to adapt to new ideas from foreign countries. The notion that children were different from, and had different needs to, adults was one of these ideas (for more on this see Dr Ho Laino's essay 'Children's Literature -Then and Now, 1997). This idea seems to have stuck, as there are lots of stories and books published in China, in Chinese, with children in mind. But what I want to know is why does it seem like hardly any of it, if any at all, has been translated for children in English?

 

I've been looking to the translation of Ye's '稻草人’ - Dao Cao Ren – to find out more, as it is arguably his most famous children's story. The translation by Ying Yishi was published in 1987. I've got to admit, the story is an odd one for a children's story, and I'm not sure it's the most likeable one I've ever read. I don't think that as a child (spoiler alert) that I'd like to have read about a girl who gets sold by her alcoholic father and commits suicide, and about a sweet old lady whose husband and son have died tragically, who's lost her money and whose crops are destroyed. Even the helpful scarecrow of the story can do nothing, and in despair drops down in the dirt of the field. It's a bleak tale, and the translation doesn't sugar-coat it.

 

But the translation is interesting. It captures the tone of the original, that of a children's tale, very well. The issue that I have with it is that it was put into a collection with Ye's adult literature – How Mr Pan Weathered the Storm. Its publication like this suggests to me that the translation was more about preserving Chinese 'Literature' in English than about translating a Chinese children's story for children to read. The translation also omits a religious reference from the original, which is perhaps politically motivated, and the scarecrow talks of how he wants to cook up something nutritious, which is translated in a way that would not sound very delicious to a child in English (grub guts and gruel anyone?). I get the impression that although the original was written with children in mind at the time, its translation in 1987 did not share this aim.

 

Because of its  content, it seems like an odd story to translate for children. But why is it one of the only Chinese children's stories in English translation? Julia Lovell, in her article last February for Prospect magazine, noted that anglophone publishers were generally only interested in publishing something which incites controversy -'either sex or politics; and ideally both'. It could be that these publishers think this way because it is what readers want; sex and politics. I've been exploring translating children's literature in terms of Gideon Toury's norms theory, and perhaps such desires are the stronger literary norms in anglophone cultures.  Maybe chinese literature, and even more so for its sub-genres, is marginalised in English. If this is the case, then I see very little hope for literature which is both 'Chinese' and 'children's literature' being translated into English and published.

 

I am, however, willing to think otherwise. There might be a cornicopia of children's literature translated into English out there, and perhaps I just haven't come across it yet. If so, I would love to hear about it and I would love to read some of it. I hope that there is lots out there, and that there is lots more on the way. The sheer size of the country suggests that China has all sorts of interesting people with interesting things to say, and with all sorts of interesting ways of saying them. I know that China has lots of stories to tell, and lots of children's stories that can capture the imagination, and I want to read more of them.

 

Thomas Newell translates from Chinese into English, and is currently a studying for an MA in Literary Translation at the UEA as well as an interning for Arc Publications. Contact thomashenrynewell@gmail.com

Sorry, What Was Your Name? Translation Theory and the Translation of Chinese Names to English.

Chinese names are problematic in English literature. They often have meanings that are easily identifyable to the Chinese reader, whereas this does not occur so much with English names. They can also be difficult to pronounce for those who are not familiar with pinyin. They then present an even larger issue for literary translation as they get repeated so much, and can be connected to other elements of narratives such as naming ceremonies or word plays. Looking at Cognitive stylistics on the MA in Literary Translation course at the UEA, has helped me see how the translation of names may work, in theory.

When aproaching the theory and practice of translating literature, one idea strikes me as particularily crucial to understanding what happens. This was put forward by Roman Jakobson, and it is the idea that 'languages differs essentially in what they must convey and not in what they may convey.' This is a haunting idea in terms of translating languages. I work on translating Chinese literature into English, and this idea haunts the decisions which I must make about how to express exciting literary features of a Chinese text in English. Chinese does not have articles, gerunds, plural noun forms or tenses displayed through verb forms, but English does. Whilst a Chinese text may convey the meanings of such grammatical structures, it often doesn't need to, whereas in English the text must explicate these aspects. Most of the time the situation of the text, especially in prose texts,  gives an indication of what tense or article should be used. However, the translation of names presents another issue of what is explicated in the Chinese, but what is not obvious to the readers of English from the sound of the Chinese names.

《射雕英雄传》(She Diao Ying Xiong Zhuan -The Eagle Shooting Heroes/ The Legend of the Condor Heroes) Is a Kung Fu classic in Chinese literature. It is currently being translated online, and I recommend anyone take a look at it. It is an exciting novel about the interweaving and action-packed lives of kung fu masters in ancient China, and to me the online translation project of it is just as exciting. The issues of the translation of character names, though, is an interesting one in terms of Chinese-English translation. Even translating the Author is interesting; should I use the English 'Louis Cha' or pinyin 'Jin Yong'? The meaning of Chinese names is often a lot more obvious than it is in English names. Therefore linguistically, one must consider for the purpose of translation what 'must' the names say, and what 'may' the names say. Below is an example in which a key character is introduced in the novel;

这位是杨铁心杨兄弟。

Zhe wei shi Yang Tie Xin Yang xiong di.

This is Yang Tiexin, brother Yang.

The Chinese character's name is Yang Tie Xin, in Chinese, but will this do in English? The literal meaning of the name is 杨 (poplar) 铁 (Iron) 心 (heart). This meaning of these characters in this character's name is available clearly to the reader of the Chinese, so it can be argued that the names should be translated by meaning. One way of looking at this issue, and perhaps trying to solve the problem, is to consider the notions of foreignisation and domestication, as explored by Lawrence Venuti, and make a decision according to the principles of the translator. This is problematic as both translations of 'Yang Tiexin' and 'Poplar Ironheart' are perhaps so unusual as English language names, that they would be foreignising (calling attention to the foreign elements of the text within the target language). I believe, however, that the way to look at this problem, and the way which is perhaps more useful to allow communication between the two drastically different languages of Chinese and English, is to consider the cognitive effects of the style of the text, and in this instance the names.

The arguments about the cognitive effects of language on the reader, as explored by Ernst Gutt, suggests that when translating areas such as this, it is important to consider the processing cost of the target language, in this case the way that the names are written in English. Keeping the names with the pinyin would make the words clear as names, therefore the reader would not need to connect the words deeply to their understanding of their names in reference to English lexis, so this would involve a relatively low processing cost. However, if the character's name were to be translated as 'Poplar Ironheart', then the name would involve the reader in the process of associating the character with the elements and images related to the English language.So this would involve a relatively high processing cost.

Looking at such translation issues in this way allows the translator to think of what the processing cost will be to the reader of the target text; so that they can translate according to what they believe will be the processing cost of the target text in comparison to the processing cost of the source text. As the name in translation of 'Yang Tiexin' involves a relatively low processing cost, which it would to the Chinese reader as it would be taken as a name first before a series of connected meanings, and as the novel is wide spread in popular culture, so demanding a high processing cost over the reading of a name would be antagonist to the source text's popularity, it is perhaps the better choice of translation. Throughout this process the reader is then haunted with this idea; What is the name saying in Chinese, that I 'may' say in English, and what is it saying that I 'must' say? This idea is perhaps so haunting, at least to me, because maintaining the style, in cognitive terms, often means obscuring some of the interesting lexis from the target text. Translating often involves such an engagement with the source text that, as a translator, my instinct is  to celebrate its complex lexis, and even interesting functional language, and favouring one thing over another is often frustrating. However, by understanding more about these theories of translation, I can see that the translation of names, especially from Chinese to English, is no simple matter. And the pronounciation of Chinese names for non-reader or speakers of Chinese pinyin, is also not easy, but I shall leave it there. What was the man's name again...? Yang...?

Thomas Newell translates from Chinese into English, and is currently a studying for an MA in Literary Translation at the UEA as well as an interning for Arc Publications. Contact thomashenrynewell@gmail.com