The Writers Speak

Li Ang's novel The Butcher's Wife is one of the most translated works of modern Taiwan fiction. There are about 10 foreign language editions.

Li says that, except in Sweden, where the book got a rather chilly reception, the reaction in most other countries has been quite good. Li believes the reason is that the subject matter is provocative.

Another bouquet on the table

Another writer whose works have won a warm reception in translation is Cheng Ching-wen. According to David Der-wei Wang, chairman of the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University, over the past half century Cheng has recorded and carried on the spirit of humanism in Taiwan; his work is measured and sophisticated, totally different from the unsettled state of modern society. Last year, Cheng won the 1999 Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize for the English translation of his collection of short stories entitled Three-Legged Horse.

Though surprised, Cheng was not especially excited on his own behalf. He says the book was able to win a prize simply because someone translated it and someone published it. He says that it never could have won the prize without the translator and the work done by David Wang and Chi Pang-yuan, also a scholar of Chinese literature, who are strong proponents of translating Chinese books into English. Says Cheng: "My works are already out there. Some of them have been out there for 40 years. Winning the prize is like eating a lunch that is the same every day, except that one day there is a bouquet added to the table."

Chu Tien-wen, a writer in the "middle generation" of Taiwan authors, won the first China Times award for fiction (with its NT$1 million prize money) in 1994, for her novel Notes of a Desolate Man. Five years later, the English translation again won considerable attention.

Last April, an English translation of Notes of a Desolate Man was published in the US, and Chu was invited to a number of key centers in the US for the study of contemporary Chinese literature (including the University of Colorado, Harvard, Columbia, and UCLA) to hold seminars or lecture. She also held a book release event at the Chinese Culture Center in New York.

At the event, she described the process of writing Notes: "If a sense of shame is a good thing from the past, then shamelessness is a bad thing from the present. I wrote this book by starting from the bad thing in the present. I thought about the people who grew up in Taiwan in my generation, the last generation of Taiwanese to grow up in an environment which cultivated a sense of shame. A sense of shame and shamelessness are in a titanic struggle, and this is the phase through which Taipei is passing at the turn of the century."

The book is filled with conflict between old and new values. As Chu explains: "If we take the status of the 'desolate man'-a homosexual role-as a metaphor, it hints that if a culture has already developed to the point where people do not want to reproduce, to create a next generation, sex becomes elevated to an end in itself, and the natural drive to reproduce becomes expended in sexual consumption, in pursuit of sensual extremes. . . . In the novel, the desolate man asks whether this is not indeed a 'homosexualized culture.'"

Critics have declared that the situation of the gay man in Notes is similar to that of Taiwan at present. Chu responds that people with different backgrounds will see different things, but when she was writing she did not deliberately create any such parallel. If the parallel is there, it is subconscious. "I am in Taiwan, and the story is told in the first person, through the main character relating his thoughts, so inevitably there are some resonances with Taiwan's situation. But as to what the connection is between the two subjects, that depends on the reader's interpretation."

The book has been selected for translation into English as part of the series "Modern Chinese Literature from Taiwan." Chu says this is a "wonderful thing" and "something that you cannot make happen, but only happens by happy circumstance." She suggests that her book may have been chosen because it fits well with the series theme.

No word wasted

Another work in this series of translated Taiwan fiction is Wild Kids. It includes two books by Chang Ta-chun: Wild Child, published in 1996, and My Kid Sister, published in 1993. My Kid Sister describes a young boy, himself still growing up, who does not understand and is insensitive to the physical and psychological changes his favorite younger sister is going through. The boy is a reflection of male ignorance. Wild Child is the story of the lost lives of a group of teenage hoodlums, who feel life is already decadent and rotten before they have even begun to live.

Chang doesn't care about criticisms that the English translation, by revealing a darker side of Taiwan, hurts Taiwan's international image. He compares himself to King Lear's daughter Cordelia, whose remarks, though offensive to the king, were the truth.

"A writer must deal only with the issue of his own work. When he is writing and evaluating his work, he cannot and should not think about the reactions of the market or of readers."

On a door in Chang's house is pasted the following couplet: "Even if you need to sit for ten years on a cold stool, you cannot waste one word." Drawing a metaphor from sports, he says that it is less important to look at the number of gold medals than at the number of athletic fields and the overall sports environment. Similarly, an author need not be concerned with how many languages a book has been translated into, but must lay a high-quality groundwork.

Lee Chiao, the writer of Cold Night Trilogy, an epic historical novel set in Taiwan during the years just before and after the ROC government took control of the island, considers his book public property, and is happy to see it made available to audiences abroad. "I want to express the cyclical symbolism of life, mother, and earth, and hope that, through this book, Western readers can come to understand this viewpoint." He is especially grateful to Chi Pang-yuan, who has for years been enthusiastically promoting the translation of Chinese fiction into Western languages. Lee describes Professor Chi as the "guardian angel of Taiwan literature."

To adjust to editorial policies and take into account the degree of acceptability to readers, Lee Chiao and Chi Pang-yuan have abridged the 900,000-character trilogy down to 320,000 characters.

The other voice

Nevertheless, besides the quality of the work itself, a book's likelihood of doing well in the international market depends greatly on the quality of the translation. The Modern Chinese Literature from Taiwan series does not balk at coughing up big bucks to get the best translators.

One sign of a good translator is that he or she stays in close touch with the original writer to make sure the author's true meaning is expressed. Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin, who translated Notes of a Desolate Man, exchanged faxes constantly with author Chu Tien-wen, asking about special slang used in Taiwan, events discussed in the book, building names, quoted verse or poems, and so on.

Tao Tao Liu of the Institute for Chinese Studies at Oxford, who translated Lee Chiao's trilogy, made a special trip to Taiwan to get a first hand feel for the setting. Liu, along with Lee and Chi Pang-yuan, spent two days in the mountains in Miaoli where the book is set.

David Wang has repeatedly stressed the importance of good translation for introducing Taiwan literature to the world. "A translator is the author's other voice. In the past we didn't devote much attention to translation quality, and many things sank like a stone after being released, unable to attract any attention," he says.

But how do authors see their "other voice"?

Xiang Yang, who had poems selected for the collection Frontier Taiwan: An Anthology of Modern Chinese Poetry, says that translation is an act of re-creation. When he sees his poems translated into a foreign language, it is like "looking at some other person." He says that poetry is especially difficult to translate, and it is very difficult to retain the original flavor in a translation. This is an inherent limitation of translation.

But author Chang Ta-chun says he has never worried about whether or not the original flavor is lost in translation. "The original flavor is still there in the original work," he says.

Expecting a masterpiece

Of the authors selected for the English-language series Modern Taiwan Fiction and the Japanese-language series Modern Taiwan Literature, Wang Chen-ho died long ago, Hsiao Li-hung is now a Buddhist and has not written anything for a long time, and Cheng Ching-wen is teaching and writing newspaper columns, while the remainder are still working at their craft.

Chang Ta-chun is working on a five-generation family history novel entitled Lingting Fuqin [Listen to Your Father], which he expects to complete by next spring. Chu Tien-wen anticipates finishing her current novel, Mousha yu Chuangzuo zhi Shi [A Time for Murder and Creation] next year. Lee Chiao has two projects planned, but has not yet decided where to begin. One would be a series of interviews with characters from novels. Another is a novel about a cursed people.

Producing quality work is what authors are supposed to do, and what they most need to do if Taiwan literature is to make a place for itself on the international stage.

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Cheng Ching-wen, Three-Legged Horse

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Wang Chen-ho, Rose, Rose, I Love You

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Chu Tien-wen, Notes of a Desolate Man

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Chang Ta-chun, Wild Kids

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Hsiao Li-hung, A Thousand Moons on a Thousand Rivers