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World literary translators gather at Beijing forum

Author  :  Bai Le     Source  :    Chinese Social Sciences Today     2015-08-28

At a major event of the 2015 Sino-Foreign Literature Translation and Publishing Workshop (2015 SFLTP), winners of this year’s Special Book Award of China exchange their ideas on literary translation. (Bai Le/CSST)

The 2015 Sino-Foreign Literature Translation and Publishing Workshop (2015 SFLTP), which opened in Beijing on Aug. 26, gathered more than 50 renowned literary translators, writers and publishers from over 30 countries, such as Argentina, the United States, Britain, Egypt, Brazil, France, Germany, and India.

“I am particularly interested in Chinese poetry,” said Miguel Angel Petrecca, a Sinologist from Argentina at the workshop’s opening forum. “After I read the English and French versions of Du Fu and Li Bai’s poems, I decided to have a read of the originals. That was how I was motivated to learn Chinese.”

The workshop was jointly hosted by the Ministry of Culture of China and the Chinese Writers Association, and was co-organized by China Publishing Group and Lu Xun Literature Academy. 

A range of activities will be held until Aug. 29, including academic lectures, reading salons and custom folk experience trips centered on the theme of literary translation.

In addressing the opening forum, Ding Wei, Chinese vice-minister of culture, said, “exceptional savvy and extraordinary conviction is what literary translators have.”

Ding compared literary translators to humble craftsmen of porcelain who dedicate their lives to exquisite literary work.

“Some Sinologists’ and translators’ understanding of Chinese literature is confined to a mere familiarity with several Chinese writers. In fact, the environment of contemporary Chinese literature is complex and vibrant, characterized by emerging literary talents and forms,” said Li Jingze, vice-president of the China Writers Association.

After the opening ceremony, winners of this year’s Special Book Award of China, the highest award recognizing the contributions of foreign translators, writers and publishers to Chinese culture, expressed their views on literary translation and the publishing translations.

“There is a saying that translators are traitors,” said the notable American Sinologist Guy Salvatore Alitto, “To me, some nuances of expression like humor, puns are untranslatable. Some wisecrack, if translated, might not be funny at all.”

French Sinologist Joël Bellassen expressed his concern about contemporary literary translation in another major event: “Apart from the quality of works, publishing channels, media publicity and marketing strategy are important factors that may affect whether the works of translation will be popular in sale. Some excellent works, due to an inability to find reliable publishing houses, have to be sunk into oblivion in the flood of books.”

Bellassen said scholars of contemporary literary translation need to recognize the importance of this issue.

 

 

 

 

 

Editor: Chen Mirong

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