The Role of a Literary Translator and the Ethics of Naming in Translation: A Workshop and Conversation with Nicky Harman and Austin Woerner
Award-winning translators Nicky Harman (trustee of Paper Republic and translator of novelists including Han Dong, Xinran, Ding Yiling, Jia Pingwa) and Austin Woerner (author of Doubled Shadows: Selected Poems of Ouyang Jianghe) speak on the role and craft of a literary translator, particularly when translating contemporary Chinese literature into English, the creative process of translation, the ethics and craft in naming, and the relationship between the translator and the reader.
The talk will be followed by a translation workshop where participants will be guided to translate selected Chinese poems and prose into English. This workshop is open to all and no prior knowledge of Chinese or translation experience required (max 20 participants).
Registration for the workshop is required. Please register via the Microsoft Form, here.
This is event is a collaboration between the Oxford Comparative Criticism and Translation (OCCT) Research Centre, Red Bean Poetry, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong's English Department. Please visit Red Bean Poetryl for their full programme of events. You can also find them on Twitter, here.
Nicky Harman translates fiction, and occasionally non-fiction and poetry from Chinese. She is based in the UK, and before becoming a full-time literary translator, taught technical translation at Imperial College London University. Prize-winning authors she has translated include: A Yi, Anni Baobei, Chan Koon-chung, Chen Xiwo, Han Dong, Huang Beijia, Jia Pingwa, Dorothy Tse , Xinran, Xu Xiaobin, Xu Zhiyuan, and Yan Ge. She has won several awards, including the 2020 China Special Book Award, the Mao Tai Cup People's Literature Chinese-English translation prize 2015, and the 2013 China International Translation Contest, Chinese-to-English section. When not translating, she spends time promoting contemporary Chinese fiction to the English-language reader. She co-runs and is a trustee of the registered non-profit Paper-Republic.org; runs literary events and writes blogs; and gives talks at literary festivals and, especially, the Centre for New Chinese Writing at Leeds University. Photo: Alex Hofford
Austin Woerner is a Chinese-English literary translator whose work has appeared in Ploughshares, Poetry, The New York Times Magazine, and elsewhere. He is the translator of a novel The Invisible Valley by Su Wei and two volumes of Ouyang Jianghe’s poetry, as well as the editor of Chutzpah!: New Voices from China. He has taught creative writing and translation in China for many years, first at Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou and then at Duke Kunshan University in Suzhou, and he is currently a Teaching Fellow in Translation Studies at the University of Leeds.
