Book launch: The Bloomsbury Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature in Translation
Key information
- Date
- Time
-
5:00 pm to 7:00 pm
- Venue
- Brunei Gallery, SOAS
- Room
- B203
About this event
Offering the first systematic overview of modern and contemporary Chinese literature from a translation studies perspective, this handbook provides students, researchers and teachers with a context in which to read and appreciate the effects of linguistic and cultural transfer in Chinese literary works.
Translation matters. It always has, of course, but more so when we want to reap the benefits of intercultural communication. In many universities Chinese literature in English translation is taught as if it had been written in English. As a result, students submit what they read to their own cultural expectations; they do not read in translation and do not attend to the protocols of knowing, engagements and contestations that bind literature and society to each other. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature in Translation squarely addresses this pedagogical lack.
About the speakers
Cosima Bruno (PhD SOAS) is Reader in Chinese Literature at SOAS University of London, UK. She is the author of Between the Lines: Yang Lian’s Poetry through Translation (Brill 2012), and co-editor of the anthology of contemporary Chinese fiction Made in China (Mondadori 2008). She has published literary translations and several essays on translation and contemporary Chinese, Sinophone, and bilingual poetry.
Lucas Klein (PhD Yale) is a father, writer, translator, and Associate Professor of Chinese at Arizona State University. He is associate editor of the Hsu-Tang Library of Classical Chinese Literature (Oxford), author of The Organization of Distance (Brill, 2018), co-editor of Chinese Poetry and Translation (Amsterdam UP, 2019), and translator of Mang Ke (Zephyr, 2018), Li Shangyin (NYRB, 2018), Duo Duo (Yale, 2021), and Xi Chuan (New Directions, 2012, 2022).
Chris Song (PhD Lingnan) is Assistant Professor of English and Chinese Translation at the Department of Language Studies and an associate graduate faculty member at the Department of East Asian Studies, at the University of Toronto. His research falls at the intersection of translation studies, modern literature in Chinese, and Hong Kong culture, with a focus on Chinese anthologies of American poetry.
He is appointed by the International Federation of Translators as Managing Editor of Babel: Revue internationale de la traduction / International Journal of Translation (John Benjamins).
Discussants
Paul Bevan is a Sinologist, historian, and literary translator. From 2020 to 2023 he worked as Departmental Lecturer in Modern Chinese Literature and Culture at the University of Oxford. From 2018 to 2020 he was Christensen Fellow in Chinese Painting at the Ashmolean Museum. Paul’s most recent books are translations of The Adventures of Ma Suzhen: A Heroic Woman Takes Revenge in Shanghai (2021), and Murder in the Maloo: A Tale of Old Shanghai (forthcoming).
He is the author of A Modern Miscellany – Shanghai Cartoon Artists, Shao Xunmei’s Circle and the Travels of Jack Chen, 1926-1938 (2015), and ‘Intoxicating Shanghai’: Modern Art and Literature in Pictorial Magazines during Shanghai’s Jazz Age (2020).
Wen-chi Li 利文祺 holds a post as the Swiss National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Mobility Fellow at the University of Oxford, after completing Susan Manning Fellow at the University of Edinburgh and receiving his PhD in Sinology from the University of Zurich. He has co-edited the Chinese book Under the Same Roof: A Poetry Anthology for LGBTQ and the volume of Taiwanese Literature as World Literature.
As a translator, he has co-translated Decapitated Poetry by Ko-hua Chen and received the first prize in the John Dryden Translation Competition for translating Yang Mu’s poetry. He is a co-founder of the “World Literature from Taiwan” series with Balestier Press.
Mary Mazzilli is Senior Lecturer in Drama and Literature at University of Essex. She has an expertise in both Chinese and British drama and theatre. Before joining Essex in 2016, Mary worked at Goldsmiths College in the Theatre and Performance Department (2015-2016), at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (2012-2014), and had been a Research Associate at SOAS for many years.
She is also a playwright and her plays have been staged in UK and China. In recent practice-based projects, Mary has focused on issues of migration and the effect of Brexit on migrant community through theatre.
Dylan K. Wang 王珂 received BA degrees in Chinese and English literatures from Tsinghua University (Beijing) and an MA in Chinese Studies from SOAS University of London where he is now reading for a PhD. He has also studied at the College of William & Mary and the University of Oxford. His publications include peer-reviewed articles on Chinese-language queer literature,translation studies, censorship in contemporary China, and traditional Chinese fiction.
His English-to-Chinese translations include A New Literary History of Modern China (edited by David Der-wei Wang), Shaping the World: Sculpture from Prehistory to Now by Anthony Gormley and Martin Gayford (which was named one of the ‘Top 12 Books of 2021’ by The Beijing News Book Review Weekly), Chinese Art and Dynastic Time by Wu Hung, and Why Fiction Matters in Contemporary China by David Der-wei Wang.
Registration
This event is open to the public and free to attend, however registration is required.
Please note that this seminar is taking place on campus and will not be recorded or live-streamed.
