A week in Suzhou 上有天堂下有苏杭

This week I have been honored with the opportunity to attend the second Annual Chinese English Literature Translation Course hosted by the Penguin Books publishing company in Suzhou. The participants have been set up in a wonderful hotel in the middle of Suzhou, a wonderful city in itself that I haven’t had adequate time to explore. We’re spending the mornings and afternoons translating works by six different authors, three writing in English and three in Chinese. Working with each author’s work is a team of about eight people, with varying degrees of experience in translation. The teams are divided up by mother language, with native English speakers translating into English from Chinese and vice versa (except for my friend Vincent, who was placed wrongly but has decided to look at it as a unique challenge). In this forest of professionals, I am barely a shrub, and it is more than humbling to work with the incredible minds here.

Perhaps the most notable feature of all is that our teamwork translations are all taking place with the authors in the room available to answer any questions or discuss their work. Unfortunately, as the banter discussing their work is all taking place in the opposite language, it can make it difficult to be as inclusive as we would like. My group is working with a beautiful young female author named Sheng Keyi, and we are translating a short story by her. I feel embarrassed to admit how little Chinese literature I’ve read; I have not been exposed to the bulk of the work of our translation instructors. Despite my lack of knowledge about the feild of translation, two notable guests here that I am roughly familiar with are the translator of Shanghai Baby, Bruce Humes, and the author of A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian, Marina Lewycka.