Zhao Xia
Wang Hailan
In the late autumn of 2020, Zhao Xia, associate professor of the School of Culture, Creativity and Communication of Zhejiang Normal University, and Helen Wang, a well-known British translator, Asian currency researcher at the British Museum and English translator of "Bronze Sunflower", had an online dialogue on the external translation, dissemination of Chinese children's literature, and the exchange of Chinese and Western children's literature, art and criticism.
Learn from Chinese to literary translation
Zhao Xia: We first knew your name because of Bronze Sunflower. In the Chinese children's literature world, for a while, everyone seemed to be asking, who is Wang Hailan? Everyone knows that you are the translator of Bronze Sunflower, but you can't search for more information. Remember your major was archaeology, right?
Wang Hailan: My Bachelor of Arts degree is Chinese, and my Doctorate is Archaeology.
Zhao Xia: When you were studying for a bachelor's degree, were you already interested in translating Chinese literature?
Wang Hailan: I received my bachelor's degree in Chinese from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. I started learning Chinese at the age of 18 and didn't know anything about it before. The first year was in London, and the second year we were sent to Beijing to study. After that, I spent an extra year in Beijing, and then went back to my junior and senior year and completed my degree. During the study period, in order to understand chinese, we did a lot of translation work. In those days, the amount of homework was really heavy, and the work of looking up dictionaries was particularly heavy. It's not like looking up English words, you have to know the side of the Chinese character, count its strokes, you look for it, if you accidentally forget, you have to start all over again. Learning Chinese was a chore—at least at the time. The difference now is that there are many electronic tools available, but these basic tasks are still indispensable.
Zhao Xia: When do you think you became a translator yourself? I mean the official translation of a literary work.
Wang Hailan: My first translation was published in the early 1990s, and it was short stories and essays. At that time, there was little interest in it. If there is remuneration, it is also paid to the Chinese author, not the translator. After publication, there was no response, and I felt that the work was "dead" in this way. The work may not be dead, but it feels like it is dead. I had to make a living, so I started working in museums, then I became a family and got my PhD. When my children were older, I began to re-examine the matter of translation and met with some of my friends who were also engaged in translation. I think it was because I was with them, forming a small network of groups, and growing up that I was able to bring up the matter of literary translation again. I started with short stories and then stumbled into the world of children's literature.
Zhao Xia: You first translated a lot of adult literature, and then you began to translate children's literature. Was there an opportunity for a change, or was there always such an interest?
Wang Hailan: My friend and translator Nicky Harman is one of the most active translators of Chinese novels in the UK today. Nicky and I are good friends, and we set up the Chinese Novel Reading Club. It's a real book club where every six to eight weeks, people get together and talk about the books we've read. At a conference, Nikki told everyone that a publisher wanted to publish two works of Chinese children's literature, one by Shen Shixi and the other by Wu Meizhen. I thought I could give it a try and contacted the editor of the publisher. Their process of selecting translators goes like this: they invite translators to choose one of two books and submit a sample (gratuitous) translation of the first or two pages of them. They would then choose six of them to translate (paid) the first chapter of the book. Finally, they choose the translator of the entire book. Their plan was to translate the English version into seven other languages in relay translation, with a view to launching the two novels in eight different languages at the London Book Fair 2012. At that time, China will be the guest of honor of the book fair. To accomplish this, they want the translation to be fast enough. I've never translated an entire book before, so I spent a week deciding if I'd be up to the task on time. It was my first translation of a novel. The book was published and distributed in London. Then, nothing.
Zhao Xia: What does "nothing" mean?
Cover of Shen Shixi's English translation of "Red Jackal"
Wang Hailan: Nothing means that there is very little response, or almost no response. I went to the local bookstore, told them that I lived there, translated the book, and the owner bought two copies of The Red Jackal. They sit quietly on the shelves of the store. A few weeks later, I went to the bookstore and bought one. A few months later, I went back and bought another one.
Zhao Xia: Then both of these books were sold.
Wang Hailan: Yes. But you see, I'm both a referrer, a marketer, and a consumer. It's not like people usually think, everyone is lining up to snap it up.
The "association" of the translator with the work: translation of Bronze Sunflower and others
Wang: In the summer of 2013, Walker Books was looking for a translator for Bronze Sunflower. A friend recommended me to them. Walker's editor asked me if I had any qualifications, that is, recommended materials that would prove that you were a good translator. Of course, she wanted to know about the quality of my translations. She had no way of knowing from a printed English-to-English edition of The Red Jackal how much editing work it contained (in fact, very little), and at walker no one understood Chinese. For publishers, it may be risky to arrange translators without understanding the original language. Because we hadn't worked together before, I suggested that we try to translate the first chapter as much as possible according to the Chinese, and let them edit it, and then I would translate the second chapter according to their editing style. After the second chapter, they happily left me alone. We said okay, I'll leave all the questions I want to ask until last and deal with the editors.
Cover of Cao Wenxuan's English translation of Bronze Sunflower
Zhao Xia: How much time did it take to translate the entire novel?
Wang Hailan: It's hard to say. Because I work full-time in the museum, I translate in the evenings, on weekends or holidays. And, once you feel tired, you can't do it, you have to stop and sleep. I'll start with a very rough draft, basically to record the plot and sort out the position of the parts. Then start from scratch and translate in detail. When it's done, start all over again, making repeated revisions and revisions until I think I've reached my best. I then send the translation to the editor, who will check it again. This phase usually involves one or two editors. After that, we will check again if there are any other issues to deal with. It can take one to two years from the time the translation is submitted to the editor to the final print publication.
Zhao Xia: What I want to say in particular is that literary translation is risky, like an adventure, you never know what will happen in between. I always say that translation can spread literature, or it can kill it. For a work of children's literature, especially a classic in the history of children's literature, such as Bronze Sunflower, it is also a blessing to meet a translator like you. I read your translation and really feel that it is some kind of reinvention of the novel, not just using another language (English) to convey everything in the work. Here, it is not only ordinary language knowledge that is needed, but also a very deep inner literary feeling to truly touch the literary connotation of each word. Because in literature, the feeling of language is very different from the general expression of speech. This is why in the exchange of literature in different cultural contexts, translation has such a great influence, even decisive. I myself have done some translation work, and I feel that translation is a very difficult thing.
Wang Hailan: Thank you for saying that. Some people call translation a re-creation. But there are also those who hate and criticize such "re-creation". All I can say is that this is the best translation I can do right now.
Zhao Xia: I know that translation theory has different branches. Some argue that literal translation – the translator should make some form of hard copy of the original language, rather than changing anything in the original language. But I don't think it's possible. Once the translation is initiated, the language has undergone some kind of transformation that cannot be avoided. So if it's just a literal translation – actually, I don't think there's any such translation. I also do not accept this theory of literary translation. For children's literature translation, this is even worse. I think literary translators are also intrinsic writers, and they are good writers.
Reading the translation of Bronze Sunflower reminds me a lot. It's a little different from reading the Chinese version of Bronze Sunflower. That's interesting. Because this is another language system, when you are attracted to the vocabulary of this language, many feelings are associated with the experience of Western literature. Of course, the original story is still there, but many of the experiences stirred up deep inside are very different from the Chinese of reading.
Wang Hailan: The first time I read the Chinese version of Bronze Sunflower, my sister and I were in my mother's house, and my mother was dying, and we spent the last time together. At that time, I would take Bronze Sunflower to another room and read one chapter at a time. When I got back, they asked me to tell me what was going on in the story. At that time, my feeling was that every chapter seemed to have something terrible going on, and the little girl was always crying. In this little girl's life, it is one disaster after another. She was so young, all these bad things had happened to her, and crying was understandable. I remember thinking, if I were to translate this story, I would have to give it a sense of complete realism. That's what I'm trying to do. After finishing the first or second draft, I realized that the work was not about disaster, but about human nature, about connection and communication between people, about goodness—the members of this family taking care of each other. I know that Cao Wenxuan once talked about beauty, about finding beauty in suffering, about pure literature, and so on. The novel finally highlights that it is indeed human nature, so although my first impression is one disaster after another, after reading it, I began to think that it was a very cute story. In the editing and editing phases, I like it more every time I read it. For me, that's a good sign. Sometimes, after reading your translation so many times, you don't want to read it anymore and just want to walk away.
Zhao Xia: Reading your translation, you can feel that whenever the author's emotions are surging in the words, you can always sensitively capture them.
Wang Hailan: I think that as a translator, you have to make some kind of connection with the works you translate. It's a bit like reading a book for fun — you'll love a book, or have something to do with it. If I don't have anything to do with a book and don't want to relate to it, I'm afraid it's hard to translate it.
Zhao Xia: That's why I say that translators are actually intrinsic writers, and that translation is a re-creation in a sense. It's like creating a story: first you have to like it, and then you have the passion to translate it.
Wang Hailan: Sometimes I was asked by the translator, but for various reasons, I refused. Sometimes it's because I have translation work on hand and can't make time to work on another book. Sometimes it's because I think it's not commensurate that a book will be translated by me. Some books may be great, but they require certain knowledge that I don't have, or that doesn't make me feel that connection. If you had to spend months or even years of your life with a book, you would definitely want it to be a pleasant experience.
Zhao Xia: Can you give examples of those children's books that you politely rejected?
Wang Hailan: Maybe it makes sense to say it. The most recent example is Huang Beijia's "I want to be a good child". This is Chinese classic of children's literature, very famous and popular. Huang Beijia is definitely a wonderful writer, and her writing is beautiful. But the title of that book was so wrong for me. "I'm going to be a good child," my first reaction was that no one in the UK would buy a book like this.
Zhao Xia: It was published more than 20 years ago.
Wang Hailan: When I think of translating such a book, I may have to change the title of a well-known work, because just by looking at the title, my desire to read is not strong. In retrospect, it was a bad decision because Huang Wasjia was a very good writer, but the good news is that Nicky Harman has now translated the book.
Zhao Xia: Maybe they have to change the title of the book.
Wang Hailan: Nikki insisted that the publisher consider changing the title, and they did. But I couldn't afford to invest in a huge translation effort when I wasn't sure if the work would be accepted in the UK, from the title to the subject, to the point. But my ideas are also full of contradictions, because Huang Beijia is indeed a great writer.
Zhao Xia: Huang Beijia is not only a children's literature writer, she also writes adult literature. Her children's literature is quite literary in terms of language and story, as well as the level of life experience she writes.
Wang Hailan: Nikki has now translated two of Huang Beijia's novels, the other being "Wild Bees Flying".
Zhao Xia: This is her recent work, the theme of war. We had a workshop on Wild Bees Flying. Over the past decade, Fang Weiping has presided over a series of seminars on new works of Chinese children's literature, advocating that everyone sit down and frankly discuss the new works of children's literature by some well-known writers. At the seminar, everyone expressed their opinions on the works, especially the opinions of criticism, and regarded criticism as criticism, not praise and publicity. These critical opinions, perhaps where the work can be done better, may be important issues related to the author and to the creation of the moment, and they need to be paid urgent attention.
Wang Hailan: I haven't read this novel yet, and Nikki said it was great. I translated a short story by Huang Beijia, which was published on the website of the University of Leeds Centre for Contemporary Chinese Literature Studies.
The difficulties and challenges of literary translation
Zhao Xia: In the process of translating Chinese children's literature, what is the biggest challenge you feel? Or maybe you don't find it difficult at all, just enjoy the process?
Wang Hailan: I really enjoy it. But there are also difficult times. The first is to try to understand what the writer wants to do and say in the story. I will never have the same life experience as the writer I am translating. It's like looking at a painting, even if we look at the same painting, what we see is different, because it is integrated into our own personal experience, and our knowledge and ignorance are reflected here. So, I worked hard to translate the words that I saw on paper. If I overdo it, I might go wrong. So I started translating the story as it was on paper, which can be tricky at times. In order to find the right word, I had to look up the dictionary countless times to make sure that certain words were specific expressions of a particular region, or a particular language, or something else I needed to know. For example, when I translated Cao Wenxuan, because he used a lot of poetic language, I had to look it up to see if they were well known to Chinese readers in Chinese literature or in allusions. Sometimes there are many names of animals and plants in the book, and their names are not widely known in my language, and I have to spend a lot of time online looking at pictures of these plants and animals to find their Latin names. Usually they will have an international scientific term, and then find the corresponding English name according to it. For example, if the English name I find is "Chinese spider", I usually can't use that name in translation because it sounds discordant. The Chinese author would not call it a Chinese spider, he would certainly use another name. I had to check if there were any other names, perhaps regional names or nicknames. If the spider didn't actually have an English name, maybe I would use Chinese name, or give it a name, or give it its main features. But I don't want to get too much attention from the reader on this word and thus ruin the rhythm of the story.
Recently I was reading Because of Daddy (I intended to translate the book). I wondered what it would look like when presented in English. One of the chapters has many Names of Nanjing's dishes. I've never tasted these dishes, so I went online to see if they all had English names. If I don't have a ready-made name, I find pictures of each dish (in fact, every dish has many pictures) so I know what they look like. Then I looked at the specific recipes to see how they were cooked and what people said about them. In the end, I had to decide how to call them in English. The name of the dish is so difficult to translate, it's no wonder there are so many errors and jokes on the restaurant's menu.
Zhao Xia: Even if you taste all these dishes, it is still difficult to translate.
Wang Hailan: I was thinking that if I were to translate this book, I would have to find a name for each dish. I can't write a whole paragraph to describe the dish, it has to be a short name. I had to find out the typical features of this dish and express it in English so that the reader could read it. The process is very interesting, but also very time-consuming.
Zhao Xia: Fully understood. In Chinese literature, food depictions are also a phenomenon. many of the names of Chinese dishes are four-character, and they have a certain rhythm and rhythm when they are read, and there is a sense of beauty in form. It can be said that the name of the dish is not only a description of it, but also a game of language that can bring special reading enjoyment. Reading is an activity of the mind, but when we read the names of these dishes, our bodies respond in a different way. It's an interesting literary phenomenon, but it's really hard for translators.
Reception, creation and translation of contemporary Chinese children's literature
Zhao Xia: I once heard Ms. Lucia Obi of the International Youth Library in Munich say that it was only after Cao Wenxuan won the Hans Christian Andersen Prize that his works began to be translated into German. Can you talk about the influence and reception of Chinese children's literature in the English-speaking world?
Cover of the English translation of Cao Wenxuan's Dragonfly Eyes
Wang Hailan: I think this kind of acceptance and the situation related to acceptance are difficult to measure. Because once the book is published, unless someone comments on it or something, it's just there. Some things take some time to manifest. Cao Wenxuan's Dragonfly Eyes was also translated into English and published. In addition, some of his picture books have been translated and published. But for the prolific writer, these translated works are only a small part of it. One of the difficulties we face is how to make these books visible. Ordinary people (non-professionals) can only see these books in bookstores, libraries, schools, and sometimes even supermarkets. Unless people start paying attention to children's books to see which books have won awards and which have been reviewed, the visibility of these books is very low. It's usually adults who read children's book reviews, not children. If children can neither see nor know these books, they will not choose these books themselves. The popular books are highly exposed. It may be spread through reviews, advertising, marketing, and word of mouth. If children like which books, they will read and buy, and the scale of dissemination will become larger and larger. But where does the subsequent growth come from without initial visibility? So what Frances Weightman and Sarah Dodd did at the University of Leeds is very important. They work with the school and do a lot of work.
Zhao Xia: Compared with other readers or researchers in the English-speaking world who are interested in Chinese children's literature, you have a lot of communication with the Chinese children's literature community. I think you know a lot about Chinese children's literature, and you know it as a reader, translator and researcher at the same time. What do you think of contemporary Chinese children's literature? Or, in other words, what personal impression do you have about contemporary Chinese children's literature? Over the years, you've also translated a lot of children's picture books. I feel that your involvement in the field of children's books in China is getting deeper and deeper.
Wang Hailan: Speaking of picture books, there have indeed been some great works over the years. I remember when my kids were young, I used to try to buy Chinese picture books for them to read. That was in the 1990s and early 2000s. The picture books I bought home were hard to deal with. For English readers, they sometimes form a strange combination of violence and sweetness. On the one hand, there is a childish sweetness in it; but even in the same book, there is violence. It made me feel very uncomfortable because I didn't know what to do with it. But that was almost twenty years ago. The most recent book that made me feel this way is Bai Bing's "The Flight of a Bullet." When I got the book, I felt the same way. I don't know what to do with it, how to look at it.
Zhao Xia: "The Flight of a Bullet" was also selected into the White Crow Bibliography of the International Youth Library in Munich. Its subject matter is very special— I call these picture books pictures about philosophy or ideas. It tries to convey an idea rather than depicting real life. The author attempts to explore violence, in which the bullet is a symbol of the violence of killing (and perhaps war). At the same time, it adopts a fairytale approach, which is a special mixture of these two aspects.
Wang Hailan: This book not only confused me, but also made me feel troubled. I racked my brains and still didn't know what to do with it. I showed the book to my family and some friends, and they opened it as an interesting new book, but as they turned it over, they put it aside and talked about something else, because they didn't know how to talk about the book. A colleague came back after an hour of reading and told me that this was a great book. The next day, she talked to her adult son about the book, and her son firmly said that we needed more of these children's books, and we were fed up with the fluffy and soft children's books, which should explain the world and represent real life in a way that people can understand. Around how to look at such a book, it has stimulated a lot of interesting conversations and good discussions.
Zhao Xia: Did you read the Chinese version of the book with your colleagues, friends, and family?
Wang Hailan: It doesn't have an English version yet, so I showed them Chinese version and told them what happened in the story. I first saw the introduction to this book on the Internet and was very interested, so I went to Guanghua Bookstore to order a copy. About six weeks later, I received the book. I've been thinking about it since I first opened the book because it prompted me to think differently.
Cover of the English translation of Qin Wenjun's "I Am Mulan"
Zhao Xia: You also translated "I Am Mulan" and "Cloud-like Mynah". What do you think of these two books?
Wang Hailan: "Brother Starling" is a cute book, and Yu Rong's illustrations are also very cute. Mulan is a classic story, and now it's also very international, thanks to Disney. No matter what you say about the movie, people always know the name and her story. Qin Wenjun's handling of the story is also very interesting. She is also a prolific writer. Her works are numerous and well-known in China, but few have been translated into English.
Zhao Xia: Qin Wenjun is an excellent Chinese children's literature writer, and his works are also very prolific. Her best-known masterpiece is "Boy Jarry". The work was first published in the 1990s. In my opinion, she is one of the most representative children's fiction writers who express the childhood life of contemporary Chinese cities. In the past, we read a lot of stories about rural children and childhood. It is a tradition of literary writing. In China, urbanization is a process. At that time, it was difficult for us to imagine a child living in a typical modern city from birth. The urban children in "Boy Jari" are not the kind of children who move from the countryside to the city and try to find a way to adapt to urban life. Her children come from urban middle-class families, enjoy a relatively abundant material life, and are cared for by their parents. As a result, they begin to have a certain awareness and ability to push boundaries, rather than being strictly disciplined and limited, as many children in past novels have done. In this current of contemporary writing, Qin Wenjun is an important writer who depicts this form of Chinese childhood and provides a certain image model for this type of child protagonist (China's modern urban children). She went on to write a series of children's novels about urban childhood life, but I still think that "Boy Jarry" from the late 1990s is her most iconic work of children's literature.
Wang Hailan: You just mentioned the issue of acceptance. I sometimes think about how today's children understand China – the Beijing Olympics, advanced science and technology, and the way China is fighting COVID-19. The China they read about in the news is completely different from the traditional China they read in books. For them, China's landmarks may be the Oriental Pearl of Shanghai, but the books they read at school may still be ancient pagodas and temples. It's completely different, and I don't know how they connect city life and traditional China. Today's China seems to place a strong emphasis on the celebration of traditional life, history, and achievements (the splendors of the Tang Dynasty and other dynasties). It is a challenge for children to learn all this while recognizing that China is a modern country with astonishing technological progress.
Zhao Xia: I especially expect Western readers to read not only stories of local childhood in Chinese children's literature, which is often poor and difficult, but also about modern urban childhood, where children are full of joy and creativity, bold and rebellious spirit. I think this spirit may be influenced in some way by Western children's literature, such as Pippi Longstocking, which makes us feel that childhood is still hopeful even under all kinds of oppression. I mean, under the pressure of today's various environments (including educational environments), it is really not easy for children to survive, but we can still see this kind of childhood spirit, there is nothing terrible in this world, and the child can dissolve these burdens in his/her own way. This is surprising when you think about it. I think that's a very important aspect of childhood. In many children's stories with vernacular themes, we often see children becoming adults at a very young age. They are still children, but they are always worried about survival, how to make money, how to get food for the family, how to share the burden of the family. They do and think like adults. In children's fiction with urban themes, we may feel that children are more like what we imagine children should be. Taken together, these two types of writing constitute a more complete landscape of Chinese children's literature and childhood.
Wang Hailan: China is a big country. Even in a small country like the UK, urban children don't always want to know about the lives of rural children, and vice versa. So there are more books for children to choose from, which will make their spiritual world richer and more interesting than that.