{"id":1169,"date":"2019-11-04T10:00:11","date_gmt":"2019-11-04T10:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/?p=1169"},"modified":"2019-11-04T10:00:11","modified_gmt":"2019-11-04T10:00:11","slug":"interview-nicky-harman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2019\/11\/04\/interview-nicky-harman\/","title":{"rendered":"Building Bridges interview series: Nicky Harman"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nicky Harman is a translator from Chinese. She is co-Chair of the Translators Association (Society of Authors), and closely involved with Paper Republic<\/a>, an online publication initiative promoting Chinese writing in English translation. She taught on the MSc in Translation at Imperial College until 2011 and now translates full-time. On 31 October Nicky gave a fascinating talk at the Translating Women conference<\/a>, in which she discussed an interview series she had carried out with Chinese women writers, focusing on the barriers they face within a literary system that disadvantages women and makes assumptions about what they must write about – you can see comments on this and other conference sessions on Twitter, under the hashtag #TWConf19<\/em><\/strong>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

How do you find new works in Chinese, and do you work more with pitches or commissions?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I wish I could say that I looked at all new work coming out very systematically, but I really only touch the tip of the iceberg. China is such a big country that I\u2019ll probably get to the end of my professional life never having read things that I still want to read. As a professional translator, I like it when publishers come to me, when they\u2019ve already chosen a book and have bought the rights. That\u2019s been the case with the majority of the work I translate. The other way is networking: word of mouth, people recommending books\u2026 recently when I was in China I was asking women which women writers they liked. Having said that, pitching to publishers is quite difficult and time consuming. With Chinese there are a couple of different problems. One is that a lot of publishers don\u2019t know much about Chinese writers so they don\u2019t know what they\u2019re looking at or for, and when they find it, they may not like it.<\/p>\n

What in particular drew you to The Chilli Bean Paste Clan<\/em>, by Yan Ge?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I loved the voice from the start. It was so natural and funny and rude and disrespectful, but also utterly unassuming and unpretentious. Yan Ge allowed the voice of this really bad man to just come through completely naturally. And I loved it: it was so accessible, so readable. I didn\u2019t realise quite how interesting the language was until I started translating it; the dialect caused me some problems. Yan Ge and I started communicating after I finished the translation, but before the publisher had been found, and she pointed out that in a lot of areas in my translation of the dialect I either hadn\u2019t got really into the meaning of that particular fruity expression or I\u2019d misunderstood it. In one case, she said there were too many \u201cfucks\u201d, so I went through, and I counted that there were exactly the same number of fucks in the English plus two which were verbs because the verb \u201cto fuck\u201d in Chinese is different from the noun! But I took her point, and so we went through and started adding more colourful expressions. I really had to be creative, because English doesn\u2019t have the same number of colourful expressions and obscenities.<\/p>\n

Are there particular writers or genres in Chinese that are favoured by the regime?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s a really interesting question. The genre that has really worked from Chinese is sci fi. Second to that the Wu Xia, the martial arts fiction. I wouldn\u2019t go as far as to say that they\u2019re favoured though, because the atmosphere is so constrained and constricted in China. And that goes for the intellectual world, the literary world, the artistic world: the clamps have really come down. Xi Jinping has made China a very repressive place, and there\u2019s also a fair amount of discussion about whether science fiction can be a route for writers to express their dissatisfaction with the regime. Martial arts fiction is unlikely to get on the wrong side of the regime. But there have been various sci fi works which have gone a little bit close to the edge; in particular, Hao Jingfang\u2019s novella Folding Beijing<\/em> is all about how Beijing turns into a collapsible three tier city, where by night and by day different layers come out. And by night it\u2019s the migrant workers, cleaners, garbage collectors and so on who come out, and are not allowed to mix with the more well-to-do people who only come out during the day. So the very fact that she\u2019s pointing out the class difference and the underworld in Beijing could be considered a bit risky.<\/p>\n

There are beginnings of a move away from eurocentrism in translated literature \u2013 how have you perceived this over time, and how do you think we can foster this?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Looking at a list of the last 6-7 years, the main publishers who published from Chinese were either university presses, or one-man or one-woman bands. This is not necessarily a good thing; the tiny publishers can be great but also a bit precarious. I hope that mainstream independent publishers will take up books from Chinese. Some do, and then half your promotion is done because the readers will have heard of the publisher and so they\u2019re more likely to go for the book. It\u2019s all part of this strong feeling I have that literature translated from Chinese has got to become mainstream. It\u2019s got to be something that readers pick up and read for enjoyment, otherwise we\u2019ll be stuck with good books that have no readers, which is a tragedy. What\u2019s the point of translating them if people don\u2019t get to read them? I\u2019m still learning, and I\u2019ve reinvented myself as a part-time promoter of the books I\u2019ve translated, but also with the work I do on Paper Republic, which is now registered as a charity in this country promoting Chinese literature in translation generally; there are about five of us all working together and we\u2019re all translators in different parts of the world. But regular book reviews, it seems to me, are like hen\u2019s teeth.<\/p>\n

You\u2019ve mentioned that there is a marked gender bias in Chinese literature; how does this affect who gets published and who gets translated?<\/strong><\/p>\n

There are many women authors in China. I don\u2019t know whether there are more men than women, but I know who gets the prizes: it\u2019s men who get the prizes. I looked at the Mao Dun Prize (a prize for novels in Chinese sponsored by the\u00a0China Writers Association<\/a>) over the last ten years, and found that a very small minority of the winners were female writers. And when we do our end-of-year statistics on Chinese writers translated into English, a great majority will be male writers translated into English and a small minority female writers. I think it\u2019s much the same all over the world. I\u2019m very wary about making generalizations about China because it\u2019s such a big place, but I think women writers all acknowledge the fact that they have less visibility. There\u2019s certainly a dominance of men amongst writers and publishers in China. And the publishers are the ones who will package someone\u2019s book and try to sell the rights to western publishers for translation.<\/p>\n

You work with a number of networks; can you tell us more about Paper Republic in particular, and the activities you undertake beyond (and behind) translation?<\/strong><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been involved with Paper Republic for the past ten years. It started off as a blog where translators could post their questions and write funny posts, and it has expanded to have a big database to link to other articles and to provide a resource not just for translators but also for readers and for anyone wanting to dip a toe into Chinese fiction and translation. We regard ourselves now as almost all outward facing; we\u2019re looking outwards to the readers, doing promotional work of various kinds, educational work, and we\u2019ve got big plans. It would be lovely if we could get money. But in the meantime, we\u2019ve actually done an awful lot without any money at all, both by working as volunteers and by drawing on the goodwill of the translation community. A surprising number of translators from Chinese have a short story squirreled away that they\u2019ve never had published or that they\u2019d like to see published again, and so we\u2019ve done a whole series of nearly 70 short stories which we\u2019ve put out under the rubric \u201cRead Paper Republic\u201d over the last three years; that\u2019s an ongoing project.<\/p>\n

Do you think that China is under-represented in translated literature? And as far as you know is this common across European literatures, or is it an Anglo-American issue?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It\u2019s a complicated question. There is a certain resistance in the English-language publishing industry. But is there something particular for Chinese which makes it hard to sell the rights of a Chinese novel into English? Chinese writing is very different, and one of the things I like about Yan Ge is that she isn\u2019t that different, whereas a lot of Chinese writers do write very differently, which is to do with the history of literature. It\u2019s partly that genres are different: novels can be very long, and in the last century there were a lot of very didactic novels (and that actually predates the Communist Party and the 1949 revolution). Then after that, Chairman Mao insisted that writers had to present a good picture to the world. When you translate a lot of Chinese novels you constantly come across things which refer to cultural or political phenomena. For example, if there\u2019s a casual reference to the Cultural Revolution, you have to think about whether you\u2019re going to gloss it, or just mention it and hope that the reader will understand. There are cultural things lurking under the surface. So there\u2019s a whole cultural and political burden of information and the translator can deal with it, but it just makes more for the casual reader to take on board.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nicky Harman is a translator from Chinese. She is co-Chair of the Translators Association (Society of Authors), and closely involved with Paper Republic, an online publication initiative promoting Chinese writing in English translation. She taught on the MSc in Translation at Imperial College until 2011 and now translates full-time. On 31 October Nicky gave a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,13],"tags":[205,663,919,1061],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBuilding Bridges interview series: Nicky Harman - Translating Women<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2019\/11\/04\/interview-nicky-harman\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Building Bridges interview series: Nicky Harman - Translating Women\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Nicky Harman is a translator from Chinese. She is co-Chair of the Translators Association (Society of Authors), and closely involved with Paper Republic, an online publication initiative promoting Chinese writing in English translation. She taught on the MSc in Translation at Imperial College until 2011 and now translates full-time. On 31 October Nicky gave a […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2019\/11\/04\/interview-nicky-harman\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Translating Women\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-11-04T10:00:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blogs.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/files\/2019\/10\/pixlr_20191027195450701.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Mark\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"8 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2019\/11\/04\/interview-nicky-harman\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2019\/11\/04\/interview-nicky-harman\/\",\"name\":\"Building Bridges interview series: Nicky Harman - Translating Women\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2019\/11\/04\/interview-nicky-harman\/#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2019\/11\/04\/interview-nicky-harman\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/601\/2019\/10\/pixlr_20191027195450701.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2019-11-04T10:00:11+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2019-11-04T10:00:11+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/#\/schema\/person\/f55c794873afd5892e3c96ddf775f5b2\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2019\/11\/04\/interview-nicky-harman\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2019\/11\/04\/interview-nicky-harman\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2019\/11\/04\/interview-nicky-harman\/#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/601\/2019\/10\/pixlr_20191027195450701.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/601\/2019\/10\/pixlr_20191027195450701.jpg\",\"width\":1080,\"height\":1080},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2019\/11\/04\/interview-nicky-harman\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Building Bridges interview series: Nicky Harman\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/\",\"name\":\"Translating Women\",\"description\":\"INTERNATIONAL | INTERSECTIONAL | ACTIVIST | FEMINIST\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/#\/schema\/person\/f55c794873afd5892e3c96ddf775f5b2\",\"name\":\"Mark\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c8bc2e4b4cd54966c634a0cda0b58382?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c8bc2e4b4cd54966c634a0cda0b58382?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"Mark\"},\"sameAs\":[\"https:\/\/university-of-exeter-new.onyx-sites.io\"],\"url\":\"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/author\/rxizfitwrt\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Building Bridges interview series: Nicky Harman - Translating Women","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2019\/11\/04\/interview-nicky-harman\/","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Building Bridges interview series: Nicky Harman - Translating Women","og_description":"Nicky Harman is a translator from Chinese. She is co-Chair of the Translators Association (Society of Authors), and closely involved with Paper Republic, an online publication initiative promoting Chinese writing in English translation. She taught on the MSc in Translation at Imperial College until 2011 and now translates full-time. On 31 October Nicky gave a […]","og_url":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2019\/11\/04\/interview-nicky-harman\/","og_site_name":"Translating Women","article_published_time":"2019-11-04T10:00:11+00:00","og_image":[{"url":"http:\/\/blogs.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/files\/2019\/10\/pixlr_20191027195450701.jpg"}],"author":"Mark","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","twitter_misc":{"Written by":"Mark","Est. reading time":"8 minutes"},"schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2019\/11\/04\/interview-nicky-harman\/","url":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2019\/11\/04\/interview-nicky-harman\/","name":"Building Bridges interview series: Nicky Harman - Translating Women","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/#website"},"primaryImageOfPage":{"@id":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2019\/11\/04\/interview-nicky-harman\/#primaryimage"},"image":{"@id":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2019\/11\/04\/interview-nicky-harman\/#primaryimage"},"thumbnailUrl":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/601\/2019\/10\/pixlr_20191027195450701.jpg","datePublished":"2019-11-04T10:00:11+00:00","dateModified":"2019-11-04T10:00:11+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/#\/schema\/person\/f55c794873afd5892e3c96ddf775f5b2"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2019\/11\/04\/interview-nicky-harman\/#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2019\/11\/04\/interview-nicky-harman\/"]}]},{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2019\/11\/04\/interview-nicky-harman\/#primaryimage","url":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/601\/2019\/10\/pixlr_20191027195450701.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/601\/2019\/10\/pixlr_20191027195450701.jpg","width":1080,"height":1080},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/2019\/11\/04\/interview-nicky-harman\/#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Building Bridges interview series: Nicky Harman"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/#website","url":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/","name":"Translating Women","description":"INTERNATIONAL | INTERSECTIONAL | ACTIVIST | FEMINIST","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/#\/schema\/person\/f55c794873afd5892e3c96ddf775f5b2","name":"Mark","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c8bc2e4b4cd54966c634a0cda0b58382?s=96&d=mm&r=g","contentUrl":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/c8bc2e4b4cd54966c634a0cda0b58382?s=96&d=mm&r=g","caption":"Mark"},"sameAs":["https:\/\/university-of-exeter-new.onyx-sites.io"],"url":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/author\/rxizfitwrt\/"}]}},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1169\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.exeter.ac.uk\/translatingwomen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}