Latest news with #translatedliterature
South China Morning Post
19-06-2025
- Entertainment
- South China Morning Post
A new generation of translators bringing Hong Kong literature to the world
'I already knew they were at the door when the doorbell rang. It was an afternoon in plum rain season, lush mold blooming all around. May had always been punctual; I just hadn't thought the person she'd joined her body with would be the same.' Advertisement So goes the beguiling passage that opens Hong Kong writer Hon Lai-chu 's Mending Bodies, a 2010 novel that follows an unnamed narrator trying to decide whether she wishes for her body to be sewn to another – the shadowy city in which she lives encourages this procedure – as she finishes her dissertation about conjoinment. It's an unsettling read that interrogates the distance between human beings and the nature of free will, and a translation published this April by San Francisco-based Two Lines Press means the text is available in English for the first time. Hong Kong writer Hon Lai-chu, who has authored more than 10 books. Photo: Hong Kong International Literary Festival A leading writer in Hong Kong, Hon has authored more than 10 books, so it is perhaps surprising that she's only had one other book translated, The Kite Family, first published 2008 and translated from Chinese by Andrea Lingenfelter in 2015 for the now-defunct publisher Muse. But much has changed over the past 10 years: demand for translated literature is booming and acclaimed publishers are picking up more works by Chinese-language writers from Hong Kong. It is hard to determine what exactly contributed to this growing hunger for translated literature, but in 2016, Deborah Smith's translation from Korean of Han Kang's The Vegetarian marked the first time a translator has been awarded the Man Booker International Prize, the rules having been changed to split the prize between author and translator that year. 'All of a sudden, Korean literature was seen as edgy and fierce,' wrote translator Anton Hur. The popularity of Elena Ferrante 's Neapolitan Novels translated from Italian and Karl Ove Knausgaard's My Struggle series from Norwegian may have also helped. In 2023, Britain's International Booker Prize (the Man Booker International Prize having been renamed as the International Booker Prize in 2019) revealed that sales of translated fiction in the UK jumped 22 per cent in 2022 from the year before, with readers aged under 35 accounting for almost half the sales in that category. These days, from bestsellers such as Baek Se-hee's I Want to Die But I Want to Eat Tteokbokki (2018), translated from Korean by Hur in 2022, to the works of newly minted Nobel Prize winner Han Kang , translated from Korean by Smith, translations are often found on shelves in the West alongside titles originally written in English. This trend has also benefited Hong Kong literature: Britain's Fitzcarraldo Editions published Natascha Bruce's translation from Chinese of Dorothy Tse's Owlish in 2023, and last year, The New York Review of Books released Jennifer Feeley's translation from Chinese of the late Hong Kong writer Xi Xi 's semi-autobiographical Mourning a Breast. Author Han Kang (right) from South Korea and translator Deborah Smith, winners of the Man Booker International Prize 2016. Photo: EPA Previously, many translators of Hong Kong literature were academics who translated for the purpose of including a text on their syllabus, and they often hailed from elsewhere. Now, there is a generation of budding translators who were raised in the city or belong to the Cantonese diaspora, and are sometimes writers themselves. This includes May Huang, who translated Derek Chung's A Cha Chaan Teng That Does Not Exist (2023), and Fion Tse, who has translated novelist Lo Yu.
The Guardian
09-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Willkommen, bienvenue! New festival celebrates translated fiction from Cameroon to Slovakia as sales boom
A new festival of translated literature is being launched in Bristol next week amid a sales boom in translated fiction in the UK. Translated By, Bristol is the brainchild of Polly Barton, author and translator of the award-winning Butter by Asako Yuzuki, and Tom Robinson, owner of Gloucester Road Books, which is organising the festival alongside Barton and another independent Bristol bookshop, Storysmith. 'Translated fiction becoming more popular in recent years has not necessarily led to a greater appreciation for the work of translators, or much consideration of the act of translation itself,' says Robinson. 'We wanted to think about whether there was something we could do that would address both of these concerns.' The festival, which runs 12-25 May, will feature a conversation between five translators shortlisted for the International Booker prize and a 'translation duel' – in which translators debate their translations of a text in front of an audience – among other events. UK readers continue to have strong appetites for translated fiction, with Butter selling almost 250,000 copies in the UK last year. Social media buzz around particular titles has helped shift copies: Ros Schwartz's translation of Jacqueline Harpman's I Who Have Never Known Men, a favourite on 'BookTok', sold 45,000 copies last year, an elevenfold rise on 2022 sales. Festival organisers were aware of increased interest in translated literature from readers, meaning they felt the festival 'would have a breadth of appeal it might not have done, say, five years ago', says Barton. A central reason for the recent success of translated literature is the work of independent publishers such as Fitzcarraldo, Peirene and Comma, say the organisers. Those presses 'tend to be more willing to take risks', adds Robinson. One of the key aims of the festival is to showcase a 'breadth of languages and geographies, beyond the major languages and locations of Europe, which tend to occupy so much focus', says Robinson. The programme features an event on translating the work of the Cameroonian poet Jean-Claude Awono and another with Hassan Blasim, who writes in Arabic, along with his translator Jonathan Wright. The festival will also host a conversation between two prominent translators of Latin American literature, Frank Wynne and Annie McDermott. 'We also have events featuring European languages that aren't the five or so that get the most attention,' says Barton, with conversations about books translated from Slovakian (This Room Is Impossible to Eat by Nicol Hochholczerová, translated by Julia and Peter Sherwood) and Danish (Iron Lung by Kirstine Reffstrup, translated by Hunter Simpson). Barton sees this approach of 'actively looking beyond our immediate borders' as helping to 'resist the political currents promoting xenophobia, prejudice and cultural homogeneity'. The festival will also see Max Porter talking to two of his translators, Saskia van der Lingen (Dutch) and Charles Recoursé (French). It will close with the translation duel, featuring Adriana Hunter and Wynne. 'The language of the slam this year is French, and we're distributing the text to people in advance, so there's the opportunity for people with a little French knowledge to have a go themselves if they like,' says Robinson. Duels are an 'excellent way of opening up the process for people and allowing them to get a sense of how creative translation really is', adds Barton. Translated By, Bristol is on 12-25 May
