Chinese content for Paper Republic’s next edition of Pathlight: New Chinese Writing has been set in soap, and is set to include far more poetry than previous issues.

Faced with an abundance of work and a dearth of talented contacts, the editors are calling for motivated, experienced translators of Chinese poetry to establish a relationship with the magazine.

To be featured are Zhu Ling (朱零), Ou Ning (欧宁), Yao Feng (姚风), Wang Yin (王寅), Wang Xiaolong (王小龙), Yang Zi (杨子), Huang Jinming (黄金明), Liao Weitang (廖伟棠) and Yang Xiaobin (杨小滨).

The editors will do their best to assign poems based on their relationship with the translator, and first drafts will be due in mid-September. Compensation is – the editors say – exceptional for poetry.

Those interested should write to canaan@paper-republic.org or westrunningbrook@mac.com.

CALLING ALL YOUNG TRANSLATORS

British publisher Harvill Secker has announced that Chinese will be the language of focus of their third annual Harvill Secker Young Translators´ Prize. Young translators are invited to enter the competition by submitting their English translation of Han Dong’s story ‘The Wig’. All entries must be submitted by Friday 27^th July 2012. The winner will be announced on October, 5^th, and will take part in Crossing Border’s writers and translators in residence project The Chronicles in November. Details below:

In 2005, when Penguin opened their first China office, there were no other foreign trade publishers in the country. Books had never been branded, good literary translators were scarce, and the government maintained a tight control on the publishing industry. This was unfamiliar territory for a Western publisher, and those seeking to get a foothold would need a careful and unconventional approach.

Jo Lusby was Penguin’s appointed scout, employed initially for a scoping mission and later to run the Penguin China office. Lusby’s first move was to publish the Chinese bestseller, Wolf Totem by Jiang Rong in English, a book that went on to win the Man Asia Literary Prize and earn Penguin China a reputation both within China and internationally.

Since then, Lusby has made Penguin China an integral part of China’s publishing industry, building the relationships and making the investments necessary to make joint-publishing with China viable. While last week’s post looked at the globalisation of Chinese literature, this week’s looks at the globalisation of its publishing industry, in an interview with a pioneer.

The Boat to Redemption, by
Su Tong, published by Doubleday

What is the status of contemporary Chinese literature within world literature as a whole? Should contemporary writers look towards the world or to local traditions for inspiration? And how to account for the apparent mismatch between China’s economic power in the 21st century and its cultural influence in the world? Around 50 speakers and another 250 listeners addressed these and other questions at the International Conference on the Global Significance of Contemporary Chinese Writing, held 29-30 October 2010 in Beijing.

Bonnie S. McDougall, eminent scholar and translator, attended the conference and has provided a report for Artspace China. This piece gives a broad overview of the themes and debates currently defining China’s literary scene, and of the authors engaged in these discussions. Many of these names and arguments will be picked up on in future posts, but you can start here for a lay of the land.
Apologies that I can’t provide links for more of these authors and scholars – the English language websites often just don’t exist. It’s a sign of how small a percentage of this literature and intellectual discussion is available in the English language, i.e. to a global audience.

Bonnie S. McDougall is Visiting Professor in the Department of Chinese Studies at the University of Sydney. A former student and lecturer at Sydney, she also taught at Harvard, the College of Foreign Affairs in Beijing, and Oslo University before being appointed founding Professor of Chinese at the University of Edinburgh. After retiring from Edinburgh in 2005, she was also Visiting Professor at the Chinese University and City University in Hong Kong. Many thanks to Professor McDougall for her account.

English, by Wang Gang, Penguin Books

English-language publishers have been trying to crack the big Chinese book since Jung Chang’s Wild Swans made it big in the early 1990s, hoping to kick-start a fad in contemporary Chinese literature. It hasn’t been easy, though, and twenty years later Chinese writing is still a grey area in the Western literary consciousness.

There are various explanations suggested for this, related mostly to the difficulty of translating Chinese literature into English and the lack of working relationships between the Chinese and international publishing industries. There’s a gap here that needs to be filled, but even in this era of intense globalisation few have the language skills, commitment to literature and publishing industry connections required.

Enter Paper Republic, a group of China-based translators working with both international editors and academic networks to promote contemporary Chinese literature abroad. Translators par excellence, they are interpreting industry conventions as much as languages, introducing the Chinese literary scene to Western publishers in a way they can understand. Paper Republic was co-founded by Eric Abrahamsen, my conversation partner for this week’s post.