Hey guys! This is an auto-generated transcript for Episode 8, my interview with Dylan Levi King. I haven’t taken the time to tidy it, so bewarned: it’s messy and will absolutely mangle almost every Chinese word spoken!
One day, somewhere over the rainbow, I’ll tidy it up manually.
[music]
You’re listening to the translated Chinese fiction podcast. I’m your host, Angus Stewart, and we have a guest today. He’s not here right now already done the interview. But this show is going to be an interview with villain Levi king, a really awesome translator. So who is he? Well, he is lived and worked in the People’s Republic of China, including stints in Guangzhou, Nanjing and Dalian. He once spent months in a detention facility and at home and weeks at the Four Seasons in Shenzhen. So the highs and the lows now he lives in the tidy doll neighbourhood in central Tokyo where he spends his days eating convenience store curry chain smoking Marlboro Morrow odier Marlboro menthol Ultra lights, reading warm water or attempting to learn Japanese, his translation of Dong Xi’s record of regret is available at Amazon. And you can read reviews more of his writing on medium. Yes, I did just read that off of China channel.org. But it was a great chat that myself and Dylan had before I launch into it. Here’s the plugs. So what you need to know you need to follow our Instagram true Chia Fick, on Instagram to get latest updates on what’s coming up on the show. You don’t need to but you certainly could give a monthly recurring donation to the show on Patreon that will help cover the SoundCloud hosting fees or for one off we now have a profile on Get me a coffee.com Links to all that will be in the show notes. There’s also going to be a link to Dylan Levi kings article on floating city is possibly his favourite untranslated Chinese novel a piece of 90s Chinese sci fi that sounds superduper Interesting. Okay, plugs done. Let’s get on with the show.
// INTERVIEW BEGINS //
So now on the show, we’ve got a wee interview with Dylan Levi King, he’s a translator of more than one work from Chinese. So without me fumbling an introduction. Would you just like to tell us a wee bit about yourself, Dylan?
Dylan Levi King
Yeah, sure. I’ve been working with Chinese translation for about about 10 years now. And my first major work was don’t see his record over get which came out through University of Oklahoma press. I’m working on Joplin was teeny Chang right now for Amazon crossing. And, you know, over the years, many, many smaller works that they came out in places where people will never find them, like obscure journals and whatnot. I’m I’m based in Tokyo right now. But I spent about 10 years going back and forth to between China and Vancouver where I went to school.
Angus Stewart
Okay, so you Canadian, then?
DLK
Yes, sir.
Angus
Cool. Got some family over there, but not in Vancouver. So I’m going to ask you a question. People ask me a lot. How, or when or how, and when did you first get interested in China or connected with China?
Dylan Levi King
Yeah, I mean, my story is kind of maybe a typical I was, I was going to school, doing an undergraduate degree in political science. And I just sort of had the opportunity to go overseas somewhere I wanted to go to Brazil or, or Southeast Asia, you know, somewhere fun with drugs and women. Like there’s really no choices left. So I was kind of forced to choose China. And when I got there, I discovered you know, it’s like landing on another planet. You know, it’s completely different from from where I grew up, like out on the prairies in Canada. Right. And I mean, literature was my interest. So when I got there I was I was complete, you know, terra incognita. completely unknown. So when I started digging into it, and the more I dug into it, it was more and more fascinating. Hmm.
Angus Stewart
So sons a wee bit like how I ended up in China. I knew I wanted to go use my English degree to teach somewhere in you know, the far eastern end of the world, but I didn’t have a particular country in mind. And then I landed on China, but of course, people always framed the question as why China when I guess for some foreigners, it’s kind of a roll of the dice. And also, like the place I ended up in was a small town. Where was the first place you wanted? When you are incognita?
Dylan Levi King
Yeah. I went to Nanjing University first okay. But then I was just an absolutely. I was a bad student. I wasn’t really interested in going to class because as I said, I was looking for women and drugs. And I actually found them when I got to China. So that is a major distraction. And I ended up leaving the programme and going to Northern Jiangsu province to basically teach English and screw around for for a while, and that’s where I really got my mic. That was really the best education possible. I learned so much more land I had so much more free time to, to go to the library and then read whatever I wanted.
Angus Stewart
Was the Chinese library reading Chinese books.
Dylan Levi King
Yeah, yeah. I mean, and when you go to a Chinese library, they usually have like, the foreign languages press copies of like, outlaws of the marsh and Journey to the West. So that’s that’s sort of what I got started reading first in English and then going on to Chinese eventually.
Angus Stewart
That’s cool. I didn’t go to the so I was in a town called rukon capital Duchene County and Joe Jang. And they had a fab library completely massive and modern. But they didn’t they had plenty of foreign books translated into English. But there was never anything in English at least they had one book in a collection, which was Mark Kittles China cuckoo, because it was based on a mountain nearby. But yeah, whenever I wanted to go to library, it would be to bring my laptop and do work or read books I brought with me or my Kindle.
Dylan Levi King
Oh, that’s the thing I found when I got there was there was there was really nothing to read in English. Like, once you got through those foreign languages, press books. And if you went to the to the Shinhwa bookstore in the middle of town, there’d be like, like a bunch of 19th century novels like Middlemarch and, and Jane Austen and whatnot. So it’s sort of like, just out of necessity, like, Oh, I gotta, I gotta find something to read. And this is this is pre sort of pre internet in a way. I mean, it was. I shouldn’t say that, because it was 2000, late 2005, but less like crazy penetration of like ebooks and all those kinds of things.
Angus Stewart
But that would be an era with less Internet censorship as well. Right?
Dylan Levi King
Yeah, back when I first got there, you could you could go on Facebook. You could, you could do whatever the heck you wanted. Really? Right. Were
Angus Stewart
a lot of people there on Facebook in 2005.
Dylan Levi King
Yeah, I think so. There was like those sort of like, the 20 Something people you would meet out, they would always be like, Yo, add me on Facebook. Whereas, whereas now it’d be like, put me on WeChat or whatever.
Angus Stewart
So that in theory, there must be a lot of dead profiles out there that got cut off after Facebook cut off.
Dylan Levi King
Yeah, probably. I mean, and some of those kids who were on Facebook would were the ones who were more likely to, to try to find a way to jump the wall. Lots of them like wanting to keep in touch with.
Angus Stewart
That’s fair. So was it. I know I’m, I’m probably digging into this too much. But I travelled in Jiangsu Province province quite a lot, but I could see there was quite an arm of the province that went north that I never really explored. Were you in one of the cities in the kind of the far north of Jiangsu or was it really a small time?
Dylan Levi King
No, no, it was a pretty big city college shoe Joe. Alright, shoe Joe. It’s basically like, you know, the challenge to the southern part is beautiful and, and green, whereas the North is basically like, like, like Shandong province or, or Eastern Hunan province. It’s quite quite rough and rugged.
Angus Stewart
Yeah, there is a an Instagramer I follow who is a Chinese guy who photographs Xuzhou and he makes it look nice, but by photographing it nice with all the city lights I think that’s the only way he could maybe pull that off.
Dylan Levi King
You know, I think every Chinese city is the same like you can there’s like all those promotional pictures of like the one little area that they’ve that they’ve read down in the last couple years but the rest is just just just horrifying.
Angus Stewart
See, don’t recommend to Joe for a we can break.
Dylan Levi King
I mean, it depends on what you’re looking for. I mean, like the famous products they’re like, dog meat tacos and some they’ve got a museum of tacos are really good, but they can they’ve done some all the Han Dynasty things there. So they’ve got quite a nice Museum and but everything all the charms of the Old City and everything have been have been torn down and replaced with a Walmart and
Angus Stewart
well, dog meat tacos. Interesting. Yeah. So that’s your kind of your your footstep or your what’s the word, your first foot in the door? We’ve we’ve explored that. But you mentioned your first kind of studies, academic studies were in political science. So did you end up transitioning in academia to translation? Or is it all been a lot more kind of DIY?
Dylan Levi King
Oh, no. I mean, when I was there, I I fell in love with a sweet Chinese girl who was a bookworm. And she was she introduced me to many great works of, of Chinese literature. And when I went back to Canada, I decided to change my major to Chinese and I changed schools even I went to the University of British Columbia, where they’ve got an amazing Chinese programme and A professor there in particular, Christopher Ray, has just published some of his own translations of Qing Dynasty, humour and whatnot, early Republican humour, he, he just changed my life, he showed me how to read and introduce so many works that, that I that I wouldn’t have been exposed to otherwise. So I ended up getting a degree in Chinese.
Angus Stewart
Cool. And is that so? Is that an undergraduate degree? Or is that a postgraduate degree?
Dylan Levi King
No undergraduate degree? D’Amico? Pretty much everyone else I know has gone on to to do you continue in academia, I think I’m one of the few of like my cohort of, you know, translators of sort of the same age who have stayed out of academia.
Angus Stewart
And with your pals, who are still in academia, would they have the time to, if they wished to kind of do freelance translation or just non academic translation? Like, is it is it a question of time, or just disinterest slash interest?
Dylan Levi King
No, I mean, I think like, if you look down the list each year of books coming out in translation from Chinese, I mean, like a huge percentage of them are done by academics. All right, with with Chinese, it’s there. They’re all the translators are academics except for, you know, a very, very short list.
Angus Stewart
Hmm. Okay. Since right, this is the stuff that I’m only just learning having kind of come in as a total, well, just a random doing a publishing degree.
Dylan Levi King
Yeah. That’s why the translations from Chinese are so often not very good. I mean, for, like the general reader, because they’re done by these sort of, you know, cloistered academic types, whereas I picture people who translate from like, French to English, or like, cigarette smoking bond vivantes, who, who just are brilliant writers as well. Right?
Angus Stewart
Yeah, you would need. Do you know, how many of these academics not to sound snobby. But how many of these academics haven’t spent much time inside China?
Dylan Levi King
I mean, there’s sort of a split like with, with older with like the previous generation, they couldn’t go to China. Right? You talk about Howard gold, Blatt, who’s like the dean of Chinese translation. I mean, when he when he was getting his start you, he had to go to Taiwan to to learn Chinese and so many, like Michael Duke, who is also another big name in Chinese translation. He’s sort of Taiwan focus for that reason. But anyone who sort of came of age after, let’s see the late 90s Stay. Quite a few of them went over to China, like Joe Martin since been in China forever, and I could name names, but really, they’ve most of these academic translators have also spent a lot of time in China.
Angus Stewart
Okay, we did do one of our gold. Gold blatten speaks on the podcast. Wang Shuo. Please don’t call me human. Have you read that one?
Dylan Levi King
Yeah, I mean, I think I’ve read every Howard gold, black translation, sort of like, he’s like, the the Jay Z of the translation world. I mean, you have to, even if you don’t love him, you got it. You got to check each each new album, you know, he’s, he’s, he’s got a really interesting history. And he’s, he’s, he’s sort of responsible for critical work that I do today. If it wasn’t for him. Whether all of his work is great or not. I mean, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t be able to do this.
Angus
So if he’s Jay Z, who’s can you?
Dylan Levi King
Ah, I mean, I usually say, Howard Golbat. A Jay Z. And Nikki Harmon is NAS, you know?
Angus Stewart
Okay. I’ll, I’ll knock that one down, that might be in the show notes, is that we hope to get the listeners in. Okay. So moving on to your present. So you’re based in Tokyo, and I kind of had some, some wonderings to myself, Why could that be? Or is that helpful? Or not helpful, but without me imposing my own musings? What are the advantages and disadvantages of being a translator of Chinese based in Tokyo rather than, say, Beijing? Or, I don’t know. Vancouver?
Dylan Levi King
I mean, it’s a part of its practical you know, it’s it’s hard to be a freelancer and get a visa. Just just stay in China and screw around, you know, right. Yeah, I wouldn’t even know how to do it would be much more convenient if I was married to a Chinese woman as many translators are, and to make that whole process easier, but I mean, Tokyo is like a three hour flight from Beijing. So if I ever need to go do anything there. It’s easy. Also, I mean, Tokyo As a city where if someone asks what you do, and you say you’re a Chinese translator, they won’t think it’s unusual. I mean, there’s been 1000s of years of, of Japanese intellectuals and academics closely engaged with Chinese nature. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s sort of like a storehouse of Chinese culture. I mean, there’s still like huge Chinese departments in universities, people still read the Chinese classics and read contemporary Chinese literature. So yeah, that way, cultural side, it sort of makes sense to
Angus Stewart
remember, there was a time I was born on WeChat. And I was searching the name of just different bands I liked and wechat usernames I was that bored. And I think I searched for Run The Jewels, and I got this Chinese guy who loved hip hop. And I started talking to him. And it was like a mishmash of his basic English, my basic Chinese lots of translation. And I started he asked me like, What’s your favourite traditional Chinese instrument? And they said, it’s the chin, the chin? You know, they are who the one that’s like the middle kind of thing fiddle as they are who, right? Yeah. And he sent me some ARCU music, on kooky music. And I said, Hang on a minute. This is this is a Japanese track from Japan. And he said, Yes, that’s an he said exactly what you just said. It’s because it’s a storehouse. This is stuff that’s had survived over there. It was lost here. And hopefully is on its way back. So yeah. So it’s interesting that you’ve kind of are part of that movement, maybe? Or at least that trend?
Dylan Levi King
Yeah, I mean, sort of, sort of distant from it. I in a way you say my, my Japanese is not, is not fluent. But it is a more Chinese city than then you would think. And that’s, that’s the kind of the classic influence, but also just like the presence of of millions of Chinese people in Japan. Now.
Angus Stewart
Yeah. It’s a thing I started to notice. In. So there’s a couple of things. Have you seen the film, old boy? Yes. Yeah. So first time, I watched that it was long before I ever knew I was going to China. And I didn’t really think much of the kind of presence of Japanese and Chinese stuff in that Korean film. But then there’s like, I realised later, there’s a whole sequence where they’re going through Chinese restaurants called is its golden dragon, isn’t it? I think so. Yeah. Yeah. And they’re just trying all the different dumplings. And then suddenly, all those things were leaping out at me. And the other one was, did you ever watch The or any version of Ghost in the Shell? No, I don’t think Oh, all right. Well, in the TV show version, the second season, the whole plot is about a refugee crisis in Japan, and its refugees from China, which is a bit of a hard to imagine scenario. But there’s a lot of Chinese stuff in that if you’re looking for it and if you know where it is in that season, because of the presence of the refugees. But first time I watched it again, it was in university studying English Lit and it was, you know, Chinese and Japanese things look the same to me. No bouncing off. Anyway. I’m totally rambling now.
Dylan Levi King
It’s the first Ghost in the Shell. The first Ghost in the Shell movie is set in in Hong Kong, isn’t it? Yeah.
Angus Stewart
It’s it’s I think it’s ascetics are based on Hong Kong. I think it’s set in Japan, but the artist was basically drawing Hong Kong, like 90s 90s Hong Kong, and you can you can see it again. I had never been to Hong Kong when I first watched that film version and wasn’t seeing it at all. But then I rewatched, that version of the film, and then also the ridiculous what she called, What’s the actress?
Dylan Levi King
Scarlett Johansson?
Angus Stewart
Yeah, the ridiculous Scarlett Johansson version. And yeah, I’d been to Hong Kong after prior to having seen rewatching the original and then watching the Hollywood version, and I said, Oh, yeah, that is Hong Kong.
Dylan Levi King
But I have one more wild digression. How do you know the Kowloon Walled City?
Angus
Um, no.
Dylan Levi King
this. It’s like this. Basically built in, I guess, the Qing Dynasty in Hong Kong. It was sort of this space that was always outside of the jurisdiction of the sort of Hong Kong city. So it was sort of just this massive fortress and Warren of tunnels and everything. It survived up till the 70s I believe, but they’ve, they recreated it in Tokyo, they built in to an arcade. There’s an arcade inside and they’ve sort of meticulously recreated this, this weird ghetto of Hong Kong and in Tokyo. So yeah, that’s just a wild digression.
Angus Stewart
Yeah. Yeah. I think is Interesting, I always find it interesting as a complete outsider. Seeing all the interactions between, you know, the China, Korea, China, Japan, Japan, Korea, but like, especially in Shanghai, Shanghai, where I was spent most of my time in China has a massive Korea Town. But the Korea Town isn’t just a Korea, Taiwan, it’s kind of a hub for all the foreigners from neighbouring countries rather than foreigners from, you know, the English speaking or Western world. And just someone who didn’t really have a dog in the race. It was a really interesting place to walk around. Anyway, I think we should start rambling about these things. Yes. Yeah. So Sophie’s diary. So I’ve literally just read that for the first time. I chose to read it as a PDF. I’ll get into that in a minute. But what’s your history with the diary of Miss Sophie or Sophie’s diary? Or what’s your history with reading dangling?
Dylan Levi King
I mean, it would have been something I read in probably fourth year, Chinese class. You’re reading the original and I know I have on my shelf a copy of the Tanny Barlow translations. She’s like a collection with I think it’s called I Myself am a Woman. My PDF was a clip from that.
Dylan Levi King
Yeah, I think it came out in the in shortly after she had died. I believe in that in the early 90s.
Angus Stewart
Brings a PDF. I think it’s about that. Let me see. It’s got the year on the because the PDF, it’s just a story, but they have the cover page of the book. Let me see. Sure. It’s being slow. Know, yeah, I mean, sorry, keep going. 1989 apparently on 1989.
Dylan Levi King
IBM so close to so so old now. But yeah. Yeah, there was there sort of an emphasis in in undergraduate Chinese courses, and especially Chinese education in the West, when you look at literature to look at those, those may 4 writers. I mean, they’re, they’re very easy to teach. I mean, they were very influenced by by Western literature and sort of, you know, the individualist modernist forms that are right but easy to talk about. Yeah.
Angus Stewart
Make me feel lazy for her doing let’s to I’ve done on my show now, because first episode was Lu Xun. But you’re right. Yeah. They’re not at all alien. They feel no, I mean, comfortable.
Dylan Levi King
Yeah, I mean, I really kind of dislike that era of literature, myself. To be to be honest. I mean, maybe because I was forced to read so much of it. I mean, I sort of more appreciated it’s like a movement, like the new culture movement itself, rather than the actual work that it produced, like Lucia and I never want to read this to you. And again,
Angus Stewart
I know that you were on the Chinese literature podcast before. And I seem to remember listening to one of their episodes on Lucia and one of those guys. Yeah, really wasn’t digging it. I think for similar reasons.
Dylan Levi King
No, I mean, I think we can all be honest that Lucian is not is not good. But But what a what a powerful contribution to Chinese culture, but his writing, we don’t need to read it anymore.
Angus Stewart
Okay. I’ve only read Diary of a madman. I think I started I had that collection of short stories. And I started another one and kind of lost interest. But I was reading on an iPhone screen, which probably wasn’t helping. No, no. Right. So that that kind of leads into the next question really nicely. Because this is, so this is the second kind of new culture book. We’re doing it. Yeah, that we’re doing on the podcast. And it’s also in a diary form. So do you think it’s got any do you think it could be any kind of response to the illusion Diary of a madman? Or do you think there’s a reason why the diary form got used? At least these two times? Do you know if there’s any other new culture books that take the form of a diary?
Dylan Levi King
Hmm, you i, that’s, that’s a good question. Probably somebody listening to this is just thinking of like three different, you know, diary.
Angus Stewart
using your phone right now.
Dylan Levi King
Yeah. I’m thinking maybe, you that fool maybe might have done the same trick, but I think it’s just like the best way to pull off the trick that they were that they were trying to do, which is just sort of, like for ground that interiority foreground, that individual sort of message. And I think that’s, I think that’s just the best one to do that in the simplest form to do it in.
Angus Stewart
Oh, As not my original thought, I don’t know if I heard this on the Chinese literature podcast or something I read, but Miss Sophie’s diary is way more interior than a diary of a madman, because this one’s like an emotional roller coaster, whereas it seemed like a diary of a madman. He’s, although what he’s seeing is obviously not completely may not be completely real. It’s not really it’s not it’s not an emotional outpouring like this one is.
Dylan Levi King
Yeah, I mean, I mean, like those, like those Lucien kind of those writings are sort of made not not just as, like a portrait of an individual, but also, you know, they have, they can be read, as you know, about China, whereas, you know, dealings writing is incredibly personal. And there’s no, it’s political by being intensely personal, whereas leashing was kind of another another thing all together.
Angus Stewart
Yeah, I think as as I was reading this one, I was thinking, okay, how can I read, like a picture of the country and its present state into this. And I felt like I couldn’t really apart from Yeah, like, they kind of her her as a new women. However, she would fit into both kind of world trends at the time and Chinese trends. And like, looking for Western, or cosmopolitan influences in the book, there was mentions of like things in urban life like cinema, newspapers, advertisements, and there’s the, her love interest is a sing of the Singaporean, and there’s references to speaking English, but like really avert references to the foreign powers in Beijing? I feel like they aren’t really there. They’re only kind of there. By inference.
Dylan Levi King
Yeah, I mean, that’s why I think this, for me, at least, it kind of stands above, or stands up to rereading more than other may 4 literature where with that literature, I’ve, I’ve gotten the message, I don’t care. But with with dealings writing from that period, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s so emotional, and so and so powerful and so personal, that you can, really stands up to pulling it down from the shelf again.
Angus Stewart
And it’s fairly brief, just sort of 18 pages in my PDF, first two are the cover. So that would be 16 times two, just 32 pages of this book. I felt like it got a bit a wee bit repetitive. But maybe it was because it was a character focused, you know, it’s not got an awful lot of plot in it. So it seemed to be definitely just about the human beings and what they were doing. No fancy descriptions. Yeah.
Dylan Levi King
Just intense focus on her. I mean, that book has. I mean, it’s, it’s been, I think, just as influential as as Aleutians writing, but for, for different people. I mean, I think you can, you can look through, you know, Chinese and Taiwanese women writers through the past 40 or 50 years and just see that, that it all started with with gaming.
Angus Stewart
It was definitely sewn on my podcast, Instagram, I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to get reactions and interest from people. So what I did for this one was I posted a picture of her and said, Who knows who this is? I did that on Twitter as well. Yeah. You responded to that, didn’t you? Yes, I did. Yeah, that’s why we’re having this chat. And I don’t know how much of it was the format. And I don’t know how much of it was dangling. And the the kind of popularity she has, but it definitely got a reaction. Maybe a reaction I wouldn’t have got if I popped up. I don’t know one of her more generic male contemporaries.
Dylan Levi King
Yeah, I mean, she looks sexy as hell in her in those old black and white pictures, like the 20s and 30s.
Angus Stewart
Yeah. What else can I say? Yeah, so. So on the topic of Wait, no, hang on. Give me a sec. Yeah. So here’s the question. All that arming and hiring is going to get it out, by the way. So you’ve got a fairly good knowledge of, I guess, both how she’s read in China and in the West, would you say she’s more popular in her home country then with readers of Chinese fiction abroad? Or would you say there’s differences in the ways that she’s appreciated, or is it more or less the same everywhere?
Dylan Levi King
Hmm, I mean, she was basically she was sidelined for for most of her life. I mean, yeah. Starting in, like, starting in, like the 40s, she was she she wrote the Sunshines over the song and, and, and whatnot. But after that from like 1958 to, you know, the late 1970s She was either on a commune or or in solitary confinement or just unable to write. I mean, it’s she was basically erased from history. I think she I think you’re right that she does have more of a profile in the West. You know, with that tiny Barlow collection when that came out, I think it really got people to, to start to start reading her again. Right. I mean, but, but like I said, I mean, I, you, when you look at people like this, this book called Shanghai, baby, oh, yeah, nothing came out in 1999, translated by Bruce Humes, I mean, it’s, you, you have to see like the, like, the fingerprints of of dealings. 1920s writing on that, and like, Taiwanese writers like Leon, and Tian, when these these women who sort of followed in her footsteps and wrote these intensely personal books about about women? I mean, I think her influence is huge on Chinese writers. But the I don’t think anyone’s really, I think she does have a larger profile in the West.
Angus Stewart
I can tell you a story that about a place that kind of gave me ideas are gave me some initial interest in Chinese writers. So there’s an area of Shanghai, I think I mentioned in illusion episode, which is called writer Street. I’m trying to remember the name of the district. It’s in, oh, dear Hong Kong District, which was where a lot of the Chinese left leaning modernist writers lived. And it was kind of a minor irony, because that was the part of colonial Shanghai that was administered by Japan. Right. But there’s this whole area, which is kind of dedicated to Lucia and Shanghai is big, really nice Lutheran Park is there, it’s got one of the many Lucian museums. But there’s like an actual street, which has, like bookshops, ink and pen shops. And it’s got some Western murals of these various kind of Republican era writers. And the only two, I think I could recognise Lucian by sight at that point. But dingling got pointed out to me, and first I thought, as a silly name, but then I kind of heard more and more about her. So that’s a preface to this question. How do you think the kind of re acknowledgement or recognise recognition of dangling might have come about in China? Do you think it could have been kind of a return from Taiwan our popularity in Taiwan kind of spilling into a more free China? Or if you don’t know that? Because I started? No, I
Dylan Levi King
mean, I think I’ve just just a boring answer that she was it just sort of a rehabilitation. I mean, she did have a, she was there from the start. She was she went to, to Shansi. She was a revolutionary. And, I mean, it was just sort of political nonsense, that that had her silence. So I think it’s just a sort of a just rehabilitation of her, you know, legacy from the 40s and the 50s.
Angus Stewart
So it was, in a sense, the government that allowed her to kind of come back as a well read Chinese writer inside China.
Dylan Levi King
Yeah, I mean, that the part of the project of rehabilitating all those people that were, that were marked as, as rightists was, was sort of a was kind of a big political programme of, of reform and opening and modernization of the country. I mean, it was seen as a big deal that, that the government was allowing those people to come back. I mean, she sort of benefited from from that more than anything. She had really good connections. Also, in the government, I mean, they didn’t save her when, when she was sent to Xinjiang prison in Beijing, but she still had those connections when she when she resurfaced in the late 70s and early 80s. So yeah, it’s I don’t think there’s an interesting answer that question unfortunately.
Angus Stewart
Okay. And do you know, would you be able to name any of those specific steps they would have taken to rehabilitate her?
DLK
Yeah, I mean, when she first I don’t know if I if I felt if this is what you want, but when she When she first got out of prison in 75, she went to she was sent to Shansi. Again, she will be united with her husband, who was who had actually been held in the same prison as her, I think a couple cells away from hers. Oh, yeah. And so there was just sort of constant thawing after that 1975 release when she was set to shine. See, by that time, she was already, you know, in her early 70s. So she used some of her connections that are in her husband’s connections to come back to Beijing and in I think, probably the early 80s. And she reunited with with all those writers, many of whom had been marginalised as rightists, like shentong, when was probably there, and she just sort of rebuilt that that network, which was, which was sidelined during most of the 70s. And she sent petitions off to two big leaders who were very keen to distance themselves from the sort of the, the radical left ism of the 70s. And she sort of, even though she was getting on in years, she was in her 70s. By the end, she sort of managed to build up her reputation again in her networks.
Angus
So a lot of it was it was her own doing, not some big government programme to publish her books or somesuch.
DLK
No, I mean, they, when she came out in, in, in 78, sorry, in 7578, I think her she was fully rehabilitated, there was some she republished a book or revised a book that had that she had been working on, before she was sent to prison. But I think that was her only major publication after that, I think there was also a memoir of her time in a commune called, gets translated as cow pen. But yeah, she was she wasn’t an old woman by the energy. She really of course. She She was nearing the end.
Angus
Okay, so I think that’s a just about enough about Sophie’s diary and dingling. So know some kind of more nitty gritty questions. Sure. All about being a translator of Chinese to English. So since you might have some particular knowledge here. Could you tell us a wee bit about the role of university presses in getting stuff from Chinese into English and getting out there?
DLK
I mean, that’s huge. As I said, all these translators are, are academics. And their biggest outlet is university presses. When you look at the list of what’s come out each year in in translation, you see the same names every every year, it’s always Columbia University Press, usually University of Hawaii, which publishes a lot of Howard goblets books, Yale University, Duke University, University of Oklahoma, which which put out a book that I did recently. But they are basically the the major publishers of Chinese fiction in in translation things that are of academic interest, translated by academics and mostly read by academics as well, I think,
Angus
and are there any university presses from outside North America that are as prolific with Chinese books
DLK
in English? I can’t think of a UK publisher, UK university publisher off the top of my head that does a lot of Chinese fiction. There’s even many Canadian ones. There’s a University of British Columbia press puts out a little bit but it’s those American university presses that are especially those like top five university presses or just have the translation market cornered for Chinese.
Angus
Right? Maybe need to up our game over here on this side of the pond. I do you know, the big one of the big UK nexuses for at Chinese writing and translation. It’s the Leeds University has a centre for Chinese writing, but I don’t think they actually have a press as far as I’m aware. I don’t think so. Yeah, I think they’re quite tied up with them, or interwoven with Nicki’s Mickey Harmons paper Republic, although, I know I do. I’m not an insider. So I don’t know how to quite know how the connections work. But I think there’s quite a little overlap. Yeah. Okay.
DLK
And so then the question is, the question could be why why do Americans put out so many Chinese books in translation? Yeah, um, it’s, I think part of it is just like, a lot of these academics were, you know, sort of relics of the Cold War. Like Howard gold, Blatt got occasional Chinese in when he was in the Navy. And right, yes, I think it’s that cold war relationship with that Cold War tension with China that that produced so many people who were studying China.
Angus
That would make sense. I definitely know. So one thing that led to the creation of this podcast was me, having returned to the UK. Actually, it was even before I returned to the UK, I was just looking for podcasts to listen to, because I became slowly and more more and more addicted. So in China, I was looking for podcasts about China. And the majority of them are well, I was had no interest in business, or almost no interest in business podcasts. But with those cast aside, the vast, vast, vast majority were politics, international relations, geopolitics. And those were interesting enough for me to listen to. And yeah, a lot of them seem to be tied to universities. And I guess probably also, one advantage the US has is a great big American Chinese population. I think, proportionally it’s probably quite a bit larger than the UK.
DLK
And I mean, like increasingly, I you know, close business relationship with China. Yeah. And especially the universities are just making a tonne of cash off of China and doing doing big business with you know, launching campuses in China as well
Angus
that the UK is doing that too. There’s actually I think my university Edinburgh Napier is not a it’s an old pharma Polytechnic. Not an old traditional established university, but it’s opening up some tartan colour. So opening up a school in Shenzhen which has like tartan carpets and is totally amping up the Scottishness. But
DLK
of course I shameless I exactly Seamus and
Angus
our campus here in Edinburgh, we’d never do that we’d never returned carpet, but in Shenzhen, why not? Yeah, throw the tartan down. And I have an uncle who’s a geography professor in which you need it. It’s in England, he betrayed us. Darren Durham, Durham University, and he does quite a lot of trips around the world, trying to recruit overseas students, and China’s the place that I think gets the most visits.
DLK
Does he always kill time? When he goes does he throw the tartan on? He should?
Angus
But I think because he’s representing an English university that would just cause confusion. Right, right. Right, for sure. Yeah. But I’ll mention that to him if I’m in touch with him anytime soon. Thank you. Yes. Oh, I’ll give you a percentage of the proceeds. Yeah, so that’s university presses. And you mentioned earlier, you’re working with Amazon crossing just now as well.
DLK
Oh, yeah. I mean, Amazon is Amazon is a beast in, in the world of, of Chinese translation. I mean, I, maybe it’s a conspiracy theory, but I think it has something to do with their, with their deal to sell books in China. I think there’s the have some interest in in promoting Chinese books as well. But they, they have completely changed, what’s being published and who’s translating it, rather than those university presses who are mostly interested in, in works of academic or literary interests, they’ve been able to branch out to maybe work that that wouldn’t be transmitted, or would come out on a very small press before? So I mean, they’re an evil corporation, of course. I mean, there’s no denying that but they’ve they’ve been very good for the, for the Chinese translation module.
Angus
Yeah. All through the top part of my course, because I’m on the dissertation part now. It’s like a weekly reminder of Yes, Amazona are incredibly evil. So you don’t need to convince me of that one. But that’s, that’s fantastic. Because what my dissertation is kind of going to be looking for it’s yeah, it’s exactly what part of Chinese writing is being missed. Just because the market once you know, the market once banned in China books, and the market wants this kind of book, that kind of book. So if, if do you think that the the books that Amazon crossing would be bringing into the English speaking world would be a bit more kind of like, pop Chinese fiction, less heavy and literary or more genre fiction?
DLK
I mean, their their record so far is, is sort of an emphasis on I guess, more pop literary stuff. I mean, they some of it’s quite, you know, far from you know, Pulp Fiction airport books. I mean, they last year they did a tapping one novel, translated by by Nicky Harmon, they did. A book by Rene called, actually goes in by tone. Do you think they would do more? You know, popular books, they’ve, they’ve, their choices have been quite good. So far, they haven’t really gone deep into genre fiction but more popular literary stuff.
Angus
Okay, popular literary stuff. Cool. Today I have a follow up question. Don’t think I do. Yeah. So that’s, that’s Amazon? Would you like to tell us a wee bit about your life and your work and the business of being a translator? And all the ins and outs of that, since? Still a total mystery to me, and quite possibly a mystery to a lot of our show listeners?
DLK
Yeah, I’m always happy to talk about that. Because sometimes people email me and say, How do I become a translator? Okay, so like that. And it’s, it’s really, I believe that it is impossible to make a living as a, as a translator, from Chinese to English. I managed to do it. But only by living in a very cheap place. For a book from a University Press, the first book, I translated it, I got $7,000. And that was, you know, that’s a translating a novel, several, several months time. So it’s, it’s almost necessary to be either in academia, or have a very lucrative day job to, to back that up. The it’s basically a lonely, poorly compensated job with where you’re publishing books that very few people read, and even fewer critics review is a very dark, dark, dark, dark work.
Angus
Yeah, that description just sounded darker with each item on the list.
DLK
Yes, but I mean, if you do it, well, if you if you line up some, some translation work on the side, that’s not literary fiction. You could use that to subsidise your your work with literary translation. And you could, you could live pretty well, you could not have a day job, which is I mean, that’s what I think everyone should be, should be aiming for. So it’s not that dark.
Angus
So I’m sure it’s satisfying anyway.
DLK
Yeah, it’s very satisfying. It’s nice that to just to know that I don’t have to do anything else, I just have to completely lose myself in a novel. Even if it’s only paying $7,000. To translate it, it’s still still the opportunity to, to completely tear apart a novel in and rebuild it.
Angus
Actually remembered what I was going to ask but from before, about, it’s about lighter fiction superlight fiction, actually. So when I was at London book fair, there was this company I stumbled across called webnovel, who were they’re an offshoot of GDN GDN, which is a Chinese online kind of light fiction platform. And they are translating, I think with Freelancer professional freelancers. And I think, like just web users who get paid in, no, no microtransactions. They’re bringing books over from GDN into English on an international platform. And I think they’re also getting writers to contribute to web novel in English, but a lot of it’s got a bit of a Chinese vibe to it, whether it’s based on something based on ancient Chinese culture, or whether it’s just got a flavour. So one of their top novels, it’s about the main character is a professional gamer. So of course, that’s not, you know, it’s got a bit of a Korean flavour to it, I suppose. Right. But have you have you stumbled across anything like that? In the translating?
DLK
Yeah, I actually had a had a side job, maybe a couple years ago now doing Wuxia novels, so like, oh, Chinese fantasy novels for for very little payment. But it was surprising that there was actually somebody paying for it. And there was just an impressive readership for those translations in English. And yeah, like you said, it’s, it’s mostly, you know, like non professional translators, mostly people who just love the love the books, translating them, not always really, really great translations. But there is like, a massive number of those web novels out there and people reading them in English translation. Yeah,
Angus
it’s something that I don’t know if there has been academic writing on it. It’s something I want to fish around in for my dissertation because it seems like a total like, iceberg thing. you if you take a passing glance you see a little bit. But yeah, it seems like there’s a massive kind of unofficial readership of this stuff makes me wonder who these people are.
DLK
I mean, like, even even when you go beyond like that genre fiction stuff, there’s, there’s always been like, since the 2000s. Just a large number of large number of literary works as well put up online, you know, people who are completely, you know, the publishing industry, what’s different in China than it does here, there’s sort of a chance of, of breaking in, you can’t really just write a brilliant novel and start sending it off to publishers in China. So there was just like people who, who built a name for themselves off of off of those web novels. So for every, you know, big book that comes out, there’s like a million that are just circulating on the web.
Angus
Yeah, well, one of one of the episodes I did was on Murong, which were tune and leave me alone. And that’s, that’s how he did it. Amazingly.
DLK
Yeah, he’s one of the success stories coming out of that world.
Angus
Okay, so it might be brackets here. I had a few kind of specific areas for the kind of job of being a translator I’d like to ask about, so there’s payments, contracts and pitches, what can you tell us about those things?
DLK
It’s just an absolute hassle. You know, like I said, the work is dark, but it’s actually the, it’s actually like, trying to figure out how to deal with publishers. That’s the real dark work on. I’ve been really interested in this novel recently called foo Chang, which is usually translated as floating city. It’s by a writer named the Ansel Chang. He’s sort of like a kind of a sci fi novel, it’s about a city that floats away from the mainland, sort of drifts off into the Pacific. Just an amazing book, it’s a huge bestseller in the original. But, you know, trying to shop it around to publishers, you know, most of them won’t talk to you, if you don’t have a, you know, they don’t want to talk to anyone who’s not an agent. Right. And then there’s just the issue of, of securing the rights to it from from the Chinese side, where there’s never a clear cut situation with rights. The the writer will will usually say, I don’t know, the publisher will say, Yeah, maybe. But there might have been another publisher along the way, who grabbed the international rights. So it’s just, it’s just a pain to do that sort of business work on the side of just being a translator. It’s so much nicer if a publisher comes to you to to pitch a project. Hopefully, I’m I’m at the in the position where from now on mostly publishers will be pitching me on things rather than me than the other way around. But I’m just at the moment suffering through trying to get this floating city book placed with with somebody.
Angus
Yeah, I read the we synopsis or blurb of Floating City that you sent me. And this sounds absolutely amazing. And it just made me think. So there’s, there’s a bit of a wave of new Chinese sci fi that’s got quite a lot of buzz just now. So it would seem like the iron would be hard to try and get floating city out there, even if it is what originally published in the 90s. Is that right?
DLK
Yeah, originally published in the 90s. But it was just such such an important book that sort of inspired all these all these later writers. I mean, his name check directly and, and lots of these new sci fi novels that have come out in translation, it was just sort of a groundbreaking book that that needs to be translated. But yeah, it is. It is old. And I mean, grant money for doing Chinese translation from science fiction is not so forthcoming. So if you’re dealing with publishers who mostly get funding from Chinese sources, they’re, they’re not really interested in, in trying to secure a grant for a Chinese sci fi novel. So they have to go to these people like Tor or, or Head of Zeus.
Angus
Yeah, it was, I’d say, Is this because they’ve all the Chinese sci fi books I’ve got on my bookshelf, or Head of Zeus?
DLK
Yeah, but they, they’ve sort of they, they have a limit to to what they can publish and how much they can publish. And you have to go back to the, to the writer himself, who’s who’s very, who’s insisting on a certain type of publisher. So it’s, it’s hard to get these books out.
Angus
What kind of Publisher does he want?
DLK
I mean, he was burned in the past on as he sees it, when it came out in, in Korean, and he’s he has some kind of post traumatic stress disorder about his book being put out by some Korean pulp And he wasn’t happy about it. I guess he wanted to come out on on Simon and Schuster or something. I
Angus
don’t know. Jeez. Yeah. Well, I guess I can sympathise. But oh my goodness, what a pain. Yeah.
DLK
And he’s a very old man. Oh, yeah. So there’s there’s many, when you see these books come out in translation. And you look at the list and you see, it’s it’s not a very long list. I mean, it’s not all because there’s limited interest in in Chinese fiction, but also many, many issues with with publishers and rights and securing all that.
Angus
Nonsense, something I hadn’t properly considered all the different barriers. And as I understand it, China’s Utrecht rights wise, it’s trickier than other countries, right?
DLK
Yeah. I mean, if you look at the situation XIAO PING WA, he’s basically the king of Chinese literature. He’s one of the Great’s you should have the Nobel Prize. But he’s been kind of stymied, by, by, by rights. I mean, there’s absolute confusion to this day, of who owns the rights to what I mean, they, his people have given the rights to person acts, and then they gave the rights. Other books the person why, but there was sort of a crossover between the two lists. So it’s, it’s tricky. Nobody knows what the rights and there’s, there’s, there’s often no, no real contracts. So it’s hard to, to name who has one.
Angus
So it’s not the cliche of the Chinese system being too strict. It’s actually like the reality you come up, I came across over and over word law, there’s, the laws are actually too loose. Nothing’s clearly defined. So yeah, nobody would happen.
DLK
Like if you did a book and you maybe there was some discussion of international rights, maybe there was a contract signed in like 1991 for that floating city book. But since then, it’s it’s changed hands to all different publishers. So probably it’s in the writers control, but he doesn’t know he doesn’t really give a damn either. So
Angus
no, if I was the writer, I’d find that far too exhausting to think about.
DLK
Yeah, absolutely.
Angus
Okay, so you mentioned Jeff Penguin, and you let me know that you’re working on a translation of his book. Jinjiang, aka Shanshui opera, is that right?
DLK
That’s right. That’s right. I’m working on it with with Nicky Harman right now. She’s, I know, I’ve said it a million times, which is really the best translator working right now. So it’s a great opportunity to work with her and XIAO PING Wah, is she he, his books really changed my life. I mean, when I was in Northern tianzhu, and came across them, they sort of opened a whole other world. So to finally get the opportunity to work with those reports, Apple wine, Nicky Harman is it’s just wonderful.
Angus
So you picked up his books in pseudo shoujo?
DLK
Yeah, I mean, particularly, put out a book in, I believe, 1990 1992. I forget. It’s translated as ruined city by Howard Cole plot spaces, the greatest work of Chinese literature. It’s about a, a writer and a rural upstart. And it’s, it’s got sex. And yeah, that’s about all it has. And it was, it’s, I sort of read it at the perfect time. And when other people might read, you know, update or Garcia Marquez or something like that. It’s sort of just opened up a new horizon. You know, I do like Chinese literature. But deep down. I’m basically a fan of, of tapping one and his writing is, is what I wanted to translate from the very beginning. That’s, that’s all I’ve cared about for about 10 years. It’s good
Angus
to have a goal, I think, yeah. My interest in reading Chinese fiction, probably really kicked off with Tsushin. Leo, and there’s a sci fi trilogy. So that’s probably why I’m so interested in stuff that doesn’t fit the mould of like a standard literary translated book. It’s really interesting to see the possibilities when you read a piece of genre fiction that’s just trying to, I feel like you probably, yeah, I suppose he wasn’t just writing for Chinese readers. But it’s got it’s got the feel of, you know, a book from China, which isn’t and is authentically Chinese, but isn’t all about China. And yeah, so that’s probably the I’m kind of partly stuck in that mindset. And it’s just the mindset I had of reading the first book and thinking, wow, this is totally something special.
DLK
Yeah, but I think going forward, I mean, I think there’ll be a lot of people who, who share that same experience of reading seameo and and just going to dig deeper into into what out there. I think he’s that’s sort of a big a big moment for for Chinese translation.
Angus
Yeah. On my with my podcasts Instagram account, I follow a few of the different hashtags they post under and what I think I think under like hashtag Chinese literature. It’s very often people taking pictures of their three body problem books that pops up under Chinese literature. So hopefully that’s the start of a ball rolling and it will be not just that book and not just classics that start popping up.
DLK
We can only hope, indeed.
Angus
Okay, so another book, when you’ve finished translating, actually no rewind, rewind, rewind. You mentioned you’re working with Nicky Harman on translating Shaanxi Opera. Yes. And I also know the link you sent me about that was on a website called ugly stone, which seems to be all about translating, jumping, right? Is that right?
DLK
Yeah, there’s this a fella named Nick Stember. He’s, he’s one of those academics. I think he’s a Cambridge right now. I’ve known him since probably 2009. And he was one of those people who were who were given the rights to zapping was international, its international rights. So he said about promoting them. He made the ugly stone website and, and put out sample translations and informations and the very few at the time existing translations of Japanese law. And, you know, since he since he launched the website, there’s just been a flood of, of Jia Pingwa books in translation. Not not not solely because of extenders project, but he was a big part of the reason there’s so many books out in translation.
Angus
It’s a really nice website, I have to say.
DLK
Yeah, I mean, he was kind of screwed over by, by the rights situation, the confusion over it, but I mean, he’s doing fine. And Jia Pingwa was doing fine in translation. So hopefully, there’s no hard feelings.
Angus
Cool. And just a question about so having two people yourself and Nicky Harman working on translating the book? Is it kind of like a teacher and a student role? Is she kind of mentoring your way through it? Are you kind of sharing the work load? How does that work?
DLK
Well, I, I kind of see it as a teacher, student thing, although she’s she’s very resistant to that idea. But yeah, I’ve learned a lot from her. I had some very kind of strange ideas about what makes a good translation. And she’s sort of steered me towards a better way of doing things. Okay.
Angus
Is she making your thinking a bit more conventional, or just a bit more kind of common? Like, I don’t know.
DLK
I know, I know. I mean, I think I, I, all those university presses you put out Chinese books translated by academics, they’re, they’re all of a certain style. They’re there. They’re not very, they’re not very good. They’re, they’re 100% accurate translations, but they’re just a slog to read through, right. And always, you can always see the Chinese original through them, you know, whereas Nicky Harman has is, is just really quite adept at taking the original, and translating it in a way that, that it, it preserves the flavour the spirit, the original essence, well, actually being in beautiful modern English was the, you know, I was very infected by that style of, of wanting to, to have 100% accuracy and don’t change a single word where she, she actually writes books, she translates books that people actually read. So I’ve learned a lot from her in that way.
Angus
Yeah, I think I mentioned on the podcast. i On one hand, I like it when the translated book I read is very kind of naturalistic and readable. But I also kind of get a weird fun if it’s, if the prose is just a wee bit askew then, or if there’s something that feels like I’m seeing the original text through the slightly askew prose, I can kind of enjoy that. But that said, I have actually had a really bad experience reading a translated work. It was when I sat down to read. Well, this makes it sound like I did it in one setting. Of course, I didn’t. The hongo among Dream of the Red Chamber on my Kindle, and I was reading like the first Victorian translation and oh my god, that was a that was a mistake. I should have gotten a more modern translation. Yeah,
DLK
I mean, I’ve started was addicted to that and start with wanting to preserve everything but we’ve we’ve gotten our style of translating sort of to do chapter by chapter sort of I’ll do one and then she’ll do the next and then we switch off and and edit it. And through her edits I’ve, I’ve seen so many, so many issues with my, with my approach that that have been improved for the better,
Angus
huh? That’s cool. So it’s a, it would be like you do chapter one, she does chapter two, and then you swap you edit chapter one and then sorry you do chapter one, she does chapter two and then swap you edit chapter two, she edits Chapter One is that right?
DLK
Yeah, I mean, it’s sort of more, there’s actually no chapters in the book. So we’ve just had it up sort of arbitrarily. Okay, but sort of big chunks. And then switching back and forth.
Angus
Cool. I have not read anything translated by her but I’ve got the chilli bean plate, chilli bean paste clun on the mail in the mail to me now from Amazon. So going to get my first bite out of her translations quite soon. Looking forward to
DLK
check it out. And also check out she just did a book for ACA, Elaine Charles Asia, have another job in one novel, broken wings. As well as happy dreams, which is one of my favourite zapping novels shooting.
Angus
I’ve been speaking to someone from ECA who just kind of randomly reached out via the podcast. So yeah, there might be Watch this space, there might be something. Something about one of their books on the show at some point in the future. I’m not sure which one yet. Maybe Maybe that one. Right to one more book to talk about. Last one. I’m going to quiz you on I think. Okay, so it’s it’s your own published translation record of regret by Dong mushy.
DLK
Yeah, I did it for University of Oklahoma press. They did a book series, Chinese Literature Today. book series that includes the Japanese law ruin city transition. There’s a Moyer novel in there called Sandalwood death. Don’t see is a sort of came of age around the same time as every other Chinese writer went to university in the 80s. And he put out he eventually went into into screenwriting. But he published a series of very popular novels in in the 90s and early 2000s.
Angus
Right. And so I listened to a wee bit of your, of the podcast Chinese, the Chinese literature podcasted. With you that was about this book. Yeah. So I didn’t finish it. I think I didn’t have time. But I’m not sure what we could talk about here that you didn’t talk about on that episode. Is there anything you kind of wish you could have talked about more that we could cover? That wouldn’t be a repetition?
DLK
No, I don’t think there’s anything. Okay. Just just go and listen to that. It’s been so long since I since I translated the book that I that I and I wasn’t in love with it, either, like I am with XIAO PING Wah novel. So the less said about it, the better maybe,
Angus
huh. So, is there any danger if you’re translating something that you maybe I don’t know if contempt is too strong of a word? If you’re not totally into a book, and you’re translating it, is there a danger that you might not quite do it justice? Or you might project your own dislike into the translation? is not something you can easily avoid? No,
DLK
no, I think the problem is, is resisting the urge to make it better, you know, read like this, when you read like this, this really like hackneyed phrasing, and you think, Oh, it would be so much better if he had said this, or, or, Oh, it’s it’s very stupid that this character enters the room at this time, it would be so much better if he entered the room. After this character spoke, it’s there’s you have to resist that temptation. Right? Don’t she is a great writer. But there were one issue with with Chinese books is that they don’t really see a publisher. They don’t there’s no, there’s no famous sorry, see an editor. They’re really famous editors in China, even with even with short stories, nobody touches them. So if you’re, if you’re a writer, like Japanese law, or even, don’t you, nobody is ever going to say, Listen, you got to cut pages five, six, and seven. They don’t add anything. So there is an urge. There’s an urge when you’re when you’re translating to, to act as an editor. And you can do that to some extent, but you can’t. You can’t completely remake the damn book.
Angus
So there’s no substantive editing. Is there any line editing just like proofreading?
DLK
Yes, usually there’s and things have to be proof read for political reasons. Write Of course. So that’s basically it. So like when when, let’s say a big writer, like Maurienne turns a book in. Nobody is he’s going to do his his revisions himself, maybe he’ll have somebody who works with him to see his own his own toy or somebody who’s, who’s with, like, wherever. But when he turns it into the publisher, they’re not going to send back suggestions to him, except for perhaps, you know, proofreading things or, or political issues.
Angus
That’s fascinating. Do you know why that is? Um, or do you have a theory?
DLK
I have no idea. And no theory, really, it’s just, it’s just been that way for for a very long time. And it’s almost an almost all levels like way for even famous writers down to people who are just putting things out for the first time in literary journals
Angus
could be out of a reverence for the author or not wanting the author to lose face.
DLK
I think that’s that’s part of it. And also, there’s just never that, just never that, that role for, for editors. And as I say that I I think of some examples of, of literary journals that do, do sort of work with new writers on on their work, but otherwise now just doesn’t exist.
Angus
Or another theory that’s just popped into my head, maybe if it’s went from a time when there was less of a market during publishing industry, you wouldn’t have to make changes to the book to make it more consumer friendly. Could that be it? Maybe? Yeah,
DLK
I could live with that. With that theory. I’m really Yeah, I really have no idea exactly why that’s the case. So
Angus
hello, listeners, if you’re listening, and you’re screaming into your podcast listening device, and you know, the answer to this question, and give us a message on Instagram, or Twitter or whatever, because that’s plenty to get to the bottom of this was. Okay, so I’ve been quizzing you for? Oh, my goodness, an hour and 12 minutes, or in 30 minutes, actually. So without wanting to take up too much of your time, could you maybe recommend for the listeners, a translated Chinese book or author that they really ought to investigate?
DLK
Okay, I mean, I shopping while I write the app in well, but I think, I mean, I’ve said some negative things about Howard gold, black, but when he’s at his best, he’s at his best. He’s amazing. And I would recommend his translation of, of GTM lens, notes of a desolate man. It’s in the original, it’s longer and showed you it’s about it, translated in 1994, I believe. I also want to say it came out on University of Hawaii press or Columbia University Press, is written by GTN when she’s a Taiwanese woman writer. It’s about a basically a gay man watching his partner died of AIDS, some sort of sort of set in 1990s. Taipei many locations in between just this the the one of the greatest works of Chinese literature, and it’s also one of the greatest translations ever done.
Angus
sounds really interesting. That’s something I’ve not. I have I have considered Taiwanese authors for the show, because thing me SanMar had her birthday not so long ago, and I posted about that. But yeah, that could be an interesting first time a nice book to look at.
DLK
Yeah, there’s a new translation of of Samar coming out, coming out very soon done by my colleague from Shanghai Literary Review, Mike foo, is a is a very good translator. And he’s got a new sama book coming out soon.
Angus
He got recommended to me by one of my old pals from Shanghai. Mike foo. Yeah, the Shanghai Literary Review. I did when I was living there. I did have some contact with them. I read a story at one of their events, but they couldn’t publish it, because it was a bit too sensitive. Mod. Yeah. But yeah, we might we might get Mike or someone else from TSR on the show. That’d be cool. And also want to say what you said about how our gold was. So I think on the one short episode, I reference, I cast some aspersions on him, which was stupid because I’m not a translator. And also at that time, I didn’t know how I didn’t know he was the godfather. He was just a name in my book. So yeah, the power Goldblatt, if you’re listening, we think you’re great.
DLK
I’m sure he’s not listening on Shannon’s sitting like in some beautiful retreat somewhere. And he’s just surrounded by translations he completed many years ago waiting for them to be published. And for the royalty checks to come in. Well, good for him. Oh, yeah.
Angus
Yeah. Okay, so on that note, thank you so much for, for spending so much time on the show. I’ll probably make this a separate episode from the dangling episode just because it’s so lengthy. It’s going to out length, anything I can say about Miss Sophie’s diary. So this will be episode eight,
DLK
I think. All right, wonderful. And please guide me saying anything offensive.
Angus
Oh, yeah, anything that will get you off to Tokyo jail or China jail will be boring. Okay, so to leave, enjoy your day. Bye, bye. Bye.
// INTERVIEW ENDS //
There we go. The man himself doing Levi King. Thank you so much for coming on the show and having such a fireside chat. I really enjoyed that. And I’m looking forward to getting more people on the show at pretty much anyone can come on. By the way. I’m not just hoping to talk to translators, people from publishing houses and authors. I’d also just welcome anyone who enjoys reading books from China. If you’ve got a book you’d like to talk about, sent me a message, we can discuss it. If you want to just dictate an episode, then if you can donate 20 USD to the Patreon or the binary coffee. You’re the boss for one episode you get to take over. But in any case, please do reach out. And I’d love to chat with people. If you want to be on the show. I’d love to get you on. I have a few ideas for what the next episode is going to be. I’m going to deliberate on what those are and then I will announce ahead of time on the Instagram. So remember that true ship fic that’s where you can find out all news about the show and upcoming episodes. Go follow it and if you’re not an Instagram, well, you really should be because my goodness, it’s 2019 Come on. What are you doing? Come on. Anyway, thank you so much. That’s all for today. Our longest episode yet is now over. Zai jian!
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The Translated Chinese Fiction Podcast 