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Translation Day 2022: interview with Carles Prado-Fonts

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Once again, Translation Day is here. And once again, we're celebrating by interviewing a translator. In previous chapters we've interviewed professionals in various languages ​​(you can find the interviews here ), but it's clear that my favorite is Chinese. So, this year I'm going back to my original language and culture and interviewing Carles Prado-Fonts, an expert in Chinese language and culture who does excellent translations into Catalan.

However, Carles is not only dedicated to translation. As we have said on other occasions, Chinese experts usually combine several tasks, which can range from teaching to translation, mediation or interpretation, among other things. Today we will review the areas that our guest is most involved in, starting with his training. 

In his case, he has a degree in translation and interpretation of French and Chinese, studies that he took at the UAB, as a server. This is where the similarities between our trainings end, since I opted for English while Carles decided to expand his knowledge of China and Asia. Thus, he did a master's degree in Contemporary Chinese Cultural Studies (University of Westminster), he has a doctorate in Translation Theory and Intercultural Studies (UAB) and he also has a doctorate in Asian Languages ​​and Cultures (University of California, Los Angeles). As we will see below, some of his works as an author have to do with these studies.

Let's go!

Let's start at the beginning: Carles, you have a degree in Chinese translation and interpretation, but your academic career goes beyond translation and you also have a master's degree and two doctorates, all focused on the field of Chinese and Asian culture and related fields. The first question, then, is mandatory: what attracted you to Chinese to the point of making you choose it as a career?

The truth is that I don't really know! As a child I never had any special interest in the Eastern world. I really liked languages, yes. But not so much for what the linguistic skills themselves would be, but rather for everything that exists beyond the language. I have always been very curious about learning things and I suppose I have liked languages ​​as a gateway to other cultures, literatures, histories... Languages ​​make you learn and think differently, which is another thing that I have always liked too. 

But I rationalized all of this afterwards. Honestly, when it came time to choose a career, I wasn't really sure what to choose. I had a feeling that it would be good to study something related to languages, literature, history, humanities. And I wanted it to be difficult or to pose a certain challenge. Then my friend (and great translator!) Albert Nolla, who is a year older than me, gave me good publicity about studying Japanese at the UAB, as part of the degree in translation. I tried to emulate him, but the places on the Japanese route were already sold out. Then I opted for Chinese. 

From there, the Chinese world became more and more interesting to me, especially thanks to professors like Seán Golden. And after a stay in China I decided to try to pursue an academic career in this field and I have been lucky enough to be able to dedicate myself to it. I consider myself very lucky because the academic world and the Chinese world allow me to do what, deep down, I have always liked: reading, writing and continuing to learn things. 

I would like to review with you some of the professional facets that you develop, and I would like to start with the teaching facet. You have taught at the UAB, the UPF, the UOC, UCLA and the Beijing Language and Culture University (BLCU), and I assume that you have taught subjects on various topics: Chinese literature, translation... Which one or which do you like teaching the most?

I like them all: I love teaching! I really enjoy sharing what I've learned with students and trying to instill in them a curiosity for things we don't know and a passion for learning. Seeing them grow as students and researchers is amazing. It may not be the most common thing in the academic world, which has quite feudal inertia, but I get excited when I see how students progress and manage to surpass the skills and knowledge of their teachers. If I had to choose a specific subject, since my specialty is literature, I would probably say that it's the one I like teaching the most. But I also really enjoy teaching everything that has to do with history, thought or culture in general. 

As part of your academic side, apart from teaching, you carry out an important research activity. In your case, this activity that is often hidden in drawers or in publications of very restricted scope has seen the light of day in two very interesting books. The first is Regresar a China , a book that we already discussed in this blog and that brings us closer to China through the eyes of three authors who went to study abroad and who later returned home. What made you choose this topic?

Return to China

The origin of Regresar a China is in my predoctoral research. For many years I researched the phenomenon of Chinese writers who during the first decades of the 20th century went to other countries to study and, later, returned to China. It is a topic that interested me for several reasons: because it involved thousands of young people, because it had consequences in many cultural, intellectual and political aspects. And I suppose also because at that time I was also studying abroad and I empathized with these young Chinese who had to return to their country, even if it was in a very different time and context from mine. I worked on this topic for more than ten years, with two doctoral theses and some academic publications. Then I thought that, to close the project, I could make a more essay-like book like Regresar a China that would make this topic known to a less specialized reader. 

In your second book, Secondhand China , which you recently published, you talk about the way China was perceived in our country at the turn of the 20th century, a time when much of the information we received came to us through bridge cultures. Why did you choose this era? Do you think what you discuss in the book is still valid?

Yes, in the book I basically explain how the image of China and the Chinese that we forged in Catalonia and Spain at the beginning of the 20th century was very much determined by previous images existing in other languages ​​such as English or French. I focused on this period because it is a topic and a period that we decided to investigate in a collective research project with colleagues from the ALTER group. It seemed to us that it was an important time for relations between China and the world, and that the contacts that existed at that time had been less studied than those of previous and subsequent periods. But it is a very valid phenomenon today. Although it is now easier to access China directly in many ways, the way we imagine China and the Chinese is still very indirect, in the sense that it follows what is circulating in other, more hegemonic cultures. 

Let's bring all this to a specific field, that of publishing Chinese authors. Does this vision that we discussed in the previous question influence the selection of literature to translate from Chinese?

Very! It is very difficult to find a Chinese work that is published in Catalan or Spanish and that has not been selected, translated and published before, generally with some success, in English, French or German. This is not bad in itself, because it is a mechanism that, after all, facilitates our access to Chinese authors. But we must be aware that it imposes on us a certain view of China that is not exactly our own and that does not always fit our reality or our interests. A very clear example is what is happening today in Hong Kong, Xinjiang or Taiwan. These are events that should have a very intense echo in Catalonia, because there are many similarities between the respective processes of political oppression. But since information about China reaches us mediated by the English- or French-speaking media, for which these similarities are not so obvious or so important, it is not surprising that they have a lesser echo. To Anglophone or Francophone public opinion, what happens in Hong Kong, Xinjiang or Taiwan is more interesting in terms of geopolitical or global governance and not so much in relation to political and individual freedoms. 

Apart from your facet as a researcher and as an author, there is a re-creative facet: that of a translator. In fact, this is the one that may make you better known among the general public. As far as I know, three of your translations have been published, and I would say that each one reflects a key moment in Chinese literature: a collection of legends, which would take us to the founding era; a collection of stories by Lu Xun, which would take us to the moment of change between traditional and modern China, and a non-fiction book by Mo Yan, which reflects a fairly recent time in his country. Do you have a favorite? 

The truth is that I would love to translate more, because I find it a very focused activity that allows you to immerse yourself in the text and make an interpretation of it that is still creative. But I can only dedicate myself to it from time to time, when I can link a translation project with academic activity. In fact, this has an element of privilege: since I do not translate professionally, I can afford to choose the translations I do very carefully. I also really enjoy translating because it requires a very different mental gymnastics from that required by research or academic writing. They are activities that require very different efforts and complement each other very well. 

Regarding preferences, in addition to these three translations in book format, I also translated a short story by the writer Lin Huiyin for a dossier in the magazine Lectora on women in East Asia coordinated by Professor Pau Pitarch. It is entitled “A trenta-set graus” and is a beautiful piece, in a modernist style, published in 1934. If I had to choose one, I would say that this would be my favorite. Also, on another note, I really liked the short essay “Després de la Postguerra Freda” by the philosopher Dai Jinhua that I translated a couple of years ago for L'Espill . 

If we go back to the three books we mentioned above, I suppose that all three must have very different characteristics. Pan Gu Creates the Universe brings legends and myths, while Diary of a Madman by Lu Xun is a major work that reflects a moment of change in Chinese society and, also, in the way of writing. Finally, Changes by Mo Yan seems to be a closer writing… Which one posed the most difficulties for you when translating? Or would you say that each one has its complications? 

They were all difficult in their own way. The collection of myths and legends was a challenge because it was the first translation that I linked to research work I had done for my doctorate. Lu Xun's stories were the most difficult to translate because Lu Xun writes in a modern language that is still in the process of formation. And also because his work has great historical and existential depth and I suffered a lot so that the translation would somehow convey this gravity. Mo Yan's novel is not particularly difficult on a linguistic level, especially if we compare it to other works of his! But it was an assignment following the awarding of the Nobel Prize and the publisher gave me ten days to translate it. Although it is a fairly short novel, this had its point of difficulty. 

To close, could you tell us a little about what you're up to now? Research, write, translate... do you have any projects in mind?

I am currently still finishing the project that Secondhand China is part of. Although the book has already been published and that is, in a way, the end, I still have a couple of academic pieces on the subject in progress. And, on the other hand, since this research is part of a research group project, we still have to finish it completely collectively. Then it will be time to open a new project, which I am not entirely clear about yet, although I would like it to be more focused on Chinese and Sinophone literature again. 

Thank you very much for everything you have told us, Carles. Once again, we have seen that the Chinese specialist can have many faces. We look forward to continuing to read you and take this opportunity to wish you a very happy Translation Day!

Translation Day 2021: Interview with Antonio Paoliello

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After the interruption of 2020, this 2021 we are publishing an interview again to celebrate Translator's Day. On this occasion, we are going back to the origins and will publish only an interview with a Chinese expert. And I say Chinese expert because, usually, Chinese translators tend to have several facets. And I say going back to the origins because before The Deserted Island was an island, the blog Chinese Character already existed.

Let's get back to the topic. We've already mentioned it in previous interviews: it's difficult for a Chinese translator to make a living by translating only texts in this language, and even less so if we're talking about literary translation alone. Our guest today also has this profile: he's Antonio Paoliello , who oscillates between the world of Chinese-to-Italian translation and that of teaching in the Chinese field. I hope that with this interview you can get to know the profile of the Chinese expert better.

Let's go!

Antonio, thank you very much for wanting to answer our questions today. As always, we will start with the training part, as this will help us to know your profile and your activities. So, if we talk about training… why did you choose Chinese? When you started it, was it fashionable or were you the geek of the group like me?

Thank you, Sílvia, for inviting me. I'm very happy to be able to talk about the work of a literary translator here, on one of my favorite blogs! I was always very clear that I wanted to study something related to East Asia, and especially to the Chinese world. When I was thirteen or fourteen, I told my parents that I would choose Chinese at university and they thought, "Well, it'll happen to him, that's the thing"... and look, it didn't happen to me and here I am, fighting with Chinese every day. And so after high school (in Italy it's called "liceo"), I decided to study Chinese and Korean. I graduated in Oriental Languages ​​and Civilizations at the Università degli Studi di Napoli L'Orientale, which at that time was one of the few Italian universities where you could study Asian and African languages. In the late nineties, Chinese wasn't yet fashionable (Japanese was), so I was also the "weird" one in the group. 

Are these university studies you are telling us about specifically for translators or do they cover a broader spectrum of vocations?

These are fairly general studies that cover a bit of everything, from language to religions, including archaeology, literature, anthropology, but always in relation to the chosen geographical region, which can be: the Middle East, Central Asia, Southeast Asia, East Asia, North Africa and Sub-Saharan Africa. I did not train specifically as a translator, but in the advanced language and literature classes, many hours were dedicated to editorial translation, and in the classical Chinese classes we also did a lot of translation.

I see that you majored in Chinese, but, as you said above, you also did Korean studies: you did your thesis on the bilingualism of the Korean minority living in northeastern China and, in fact, you went there to study. Do you also speak Korean? 

Yes, I majored in classical and modern Chinese, but I also studied Korean as a second oriental language, and when I went to China, I chose to go to the area that used to be called Manchuria. There, I enrolled in a Korean course (in addition to the typical Chinese course for foreign students) and did research on the bilingual education of the Korean minority, especially in Jilin Province. I did speak a little Korean before, but I've forgotten almost everything I learned because I've never used it since.

Val. Stay in northern China, Korean bilingualism… and now I see that one of your fields of research is Sino-Malay and Taiwanese literature, right at the other end of the Chinese sphere of influence. How did you go from one thing to the other?

It was completely by chance: when I was living and working in Hong Kong, I often went to one of the public libraries to borrow books in Chinese. One day I picked up an anthology of Sinophone literature from Malaysia published in Taiwan. I fell completely in love with it and a door opened for me to a world that I had never known before and that no one had ever told me about. Then I decided to spend a long time in Taiwan and when I started my doctorate at the UAB I chose to focus on contemporary Sinophone narrative from Malaysia to research issues related to Chinese identity and relations with other ethnicities in the country.

So I understand that you read literature in Chinese, literature that is not always translated into our languages. What should we have translated into Catalan or Spanish that we don't yet have? What are we missing?

I really like reading in Chinese, and not only for work, I also do it to enjoy literature that I can't find translated into our languages. I think that a very good job is being done to disseminate Chinese literature in both Spanish and Catalan, although, obviously, much more could be translated, especially regarding the more "peripheral" Chinese literature, that is, by non-mainland Chinese authors. I would like someone to translate the novel Niezi (by the Taiwanese Pai Hsien-yung), a classic of LGBTI fiction in Chinese, first published in 1983, into Spanish and Catalan. You can read translations into English ( Crystal Boys ), French ( Garçons de cristal ) and Italian ( Il maestro della notte ). 

Regarding Malaysian Sinophone literature, there are many works that I would like to read in Spanish or Catalan. We already discussed Ho Sok Fong here on the blog. But I also think we are missing Zhang Guixing, a very prolific author, who writes in splendid Chinese and is able to make us travel to the rainforests of the island of Borneo. In English you can read the novel My South Seas Sleeping Beauty .

Continuing on the translation side, I would like to mention your role as a translator. Do you only do literary translation or do you also translate from other fields?

Unfortunately, my activity as a translator is very marginal in my professional day-to-day. I used to translate a little bit of everything (websites, promotional material, medicine leaflets, etc.) and worked as an interpreter, but now, due to lack of time, I only dedicate myself to literary translation and research/teaching.

So let's talk about a book you recently translated, The Merchant's Wife and Other Chinese Women , by Xu Dishan. What can you tell us about the book? More generally: what does this author offer us?

This collection of stories was a proposal that I made to a publishing house in Turin and that, unexpectedly, they decided to publish on the condition that there was a good introduction/contextualization and a good set of notes. It is a translation that I define as “philological”. Xu Dishan was very important and a pioneer in different areas of modern Chinese culture, but in some way he was silenced for a long time, probably because he was not a “political” author. The stories that appear in the collection show the artistic evolution of the author and, above all, his interests and knowledge: from classical Chinese culture to Christian philosophy, through Buddhism, Islam and Southeast Asia. I also like that many of his texts (and all the stories in this collection) have women as protagonists. 

Have you had the opportunity to translate other books? If not, would you like to do so or do you prefer the field of teaching?

Apart from Xu Dishan, I have translated a story by Dong Xi that appeared in December 2020 in the Italian magazine Internazionale . Right now I am translating a novel of Sinophone literature for another Italian publisher. It is a contemporary novel, very topical but with a fantastic and surreal point. I really wanted to be able to translate it, because I had already read it, but it was not me who made the proposal. Thanks to a research and translation practice group of which I am a member, the Officina Permanente di Traduzione directed by Silvia Pozzi (translator of Yu Hua, Hao Jingfang and Wu Ming-yi, among others), the publisher asked me for a translation test. They liked it and suggested I translate it. Besides, at the moment, I am also translating (still into Italian) some Sino-Malay stories and I am preparing a proposal for another publisher. 

I really like translation and if I could I would spend all day translating, but in Italy (and here) you can't make a living just from literary translation from Chinese and that's why I'm also a research professor of Chinese language, literature and translation at the Università di Milano-Bicocca. Since doing research has also always been one of my passions, I can't complain. In addition, I often do research on aspects of literary texts that I have translated at some point or would have liked to translate.

Within the field of teaching, you have taught various literature and language subjects. Do you have a favorite? 

My favorite subject is probably Classical Chinese, which I taught for several years at the UAB. It's a subject that I created from scratch: I really enjoyed choosing the texts, introducing the authors and explaining the grammar of a language that is so different not only from ours but also from modern Chinese. And, above all, it gave me great satisfaction to see how the students got involved and ended up becoming passionate about this language. 

I would like to close the interview by delving deeper into Chinese literature. Since one of your specialties is classical Chinese, could you recommend any books on classical literature?

From literature written in classical languages, I really like philosophical texts such as the Lunheng by Wang Chong, a very independent thinker from classical China. There are many translations of his work into English and French. But I also like reading chuanqi from the Tang period. There is, for example, a small collection in a bilingual Chinese-Italian edition (translated by Barbara Bisetto) called Il laccio scarlatto and which I always advise anyone who wants to get closer to literature in classical languages. They are romantic stories, but they are also stories that bring us closer to a very distant China not only geographically but also temporally. Stories that make us understand that some feelings are universal and timeless. 

That's all, Antonio. It has been a very interesting conversation that has made us learn a lot about you and Chinese literature (I was the first!). Thank you very much once again for your patience. I hope you have a very good Translation Day and that you continue to expand your knowledge… and translations! For now, we will read and discuss La moglie del mercante in the next entry of Caràcter xinès .

Translation Day 2020

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If you've been following this blog for a while, you must have noticed that this year there has been no interview to celebrate Translation Day, Saint Jerome's Day. Neither for translators of various languages ​​nor for translators of Chinese. And the thing is, 2020 has been, to put it mildly, a shitty year, and I didn't feel like preparing an interview. That's the beauty of amateur blogs: you do what you want and when you want, and if you don't want to, you don't do it. 🙂

This is Tofu, and he does what he wants… when he wants!

And then I thought… “Shut up! This year we’re going to do it differently: we’re going to talk about NON-literary translators.” In fact, there are more of us. In fact, you need us in your day-to-day life. In fact, our work is a basic necessity. We don’t have the glamour of literary translators, but I swear that if the leaflet for a medicine isn’t translated well, you can have soooo many more problems than if you can’t read a book by that Thai author you like so much.

So, I thought I would talk about non-literary translators and give a brief reminder of the interviews with literary translators I have already done. I find them very interesting because, if you evaluate them as a whole, you will see a diversity of profiles that you might not have expected. I will start with the Chinese translation side, with a poker of translators who work magnificently well and who have been brought to us by authors like Sanmao or my very revered Yan Lianke:

On the other hand, we also have interviews with translators of other languages, and you've probably seen the blog post a review of one of the books they've translated. Here too, there are diverse profiles, from people who dedicate themselves solely to translating to those who are also poets or authors, or those who combine translation with teaching:

And now let's talk about those whose names are not on the cover, nor will we have them (nor do we need to have them).

Long live NON-literary translators!

Now you can throw all the (virtual) rocks at me that you want, but sometimes I feel a little fed up with the complaints from the world of literary translation. Yes, I understand that they are demanding their rights (and they are doing a good job!), but they could also remember those of us who type on a daily basis and make many everyday activities possible.

I'll give you a list of some of the things we translate (I don't do them all) so you can get an idea of ​​the magnitude of the "tragedy" (relative, I know).

  • Video games: from simple Comecocos messages to things as complex as Clash of Clans or Fortnite.
  • Appliance manuals and other technical documents: it is important to know that program 1 of the washing machine sets the water to 100 degrees so as not to shrink that Mohair sweater that you love so much.
  • Various contracts: it is vital that the salary and conditions are well translated, or the conditions of the mortgage, or...
  • Movies and series: the audiovisual world is super complex! And we want James Bond to drink his martinis stirred, not shaken (or was it the other way around?).
  • Advertising: radio ads, TV ads, posters you see on the street... advertising can be misleading enough in itself, as to not translate the message well!!
  • Judicial processes and administrative procedures: from statements to the police to any kind of sentence; sometimes, the translator even has to swear and perjure that the translation is faithful to the original, and for this you need to be a sworn translator.
  • Online websites and platforms: you've probably bought online at Amazon, or Zalando, or FNAC, or Decathlon or Abacus... well, yes, we, the invisible ones, translate all of this! And also media websites, official entities such as the Generalitat or the Treasury...

And many many other things that I can't think of right now. Yes, we are also supposed to translate the IKEA catalog and posters, but honestly I don't know who the hell does it because the errors they accumulate (and that I have notified them many times by fax -years ago- and by email) are not even machine translation errors. Don't blame us, there is someone out there who wants us bad!!!!

As you can see, the degree of invisibility of the translator is inversely proportional to the lives it helps : have you ever thought about who the hell translates Fornite or Brawl Stars? If you don't know what they are, think of the translators of the introductions to the use of any medication, such as, I don't know... Viagra???. You will surely see that we play a very important role in the day to day of many people.

Boom!

Oh, that's it, I've done the rounds, as a friend of mine says. After saying everything that was going through my head, I'm at peace with myself again and I will continue to worship my favorite literary translators (I have a few!) and demand that they be visible. In a way, they also represent us, the rest of us.

Well, you'll forgive me because I think I've left a strange and somewhat chaotic entry, and at some points it also has a touch of a bit of a fake Musa (I'm terrible). If so, I think it's a good summary of the year of the Lord 2020: a very explosive year that is not over yet. Yesterday, for example, we were brought a case from the movies, the attempted assassination of Josep M. Mainat at the hands of his wife, and I woke up with the news that Donald Trump and his wife have the virus. At this rate, I'm curious to see how the year will end!

In the meantime, read books… and think about translators, too, when you read shampoo labels. 😀

Translation Day 2019: Irene Tor Carroggio

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As we mentioned in the Translator's Day interview that we did with Jordi Mas , the interviewee of Caràcter xinès, our section dedicated to Chinese literature, is Irene Tor Carroggio . Irene completed her Degree in Translation and Interpreting with English and Chinese as working languages. She is currently preparing her thesis for the Doctorate in Translation and Intercultural Studies at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, ​​and she does research both in our country and in China. She also has a Master's in International Business from the Shanghai University of Economics and Finance and has taken several training courses related to Sinology in China and Taiwan. 

Today we will talk to her about her academic training and the professional experience that is linked to it and, in passing, we will take the opportunity to get a little closer to the Chinese literature that we like so much.

Irene Tor

We'll start with the most obvious question, Irene. When you enrolled in the Translation and Interpreting Degree you had to choose a second foreign language, which in your case was Chinese. Why did you choose this language? Did you have an interest in it before?

Unlike many people who later went on to study Chinese, when I was a child, neither China nor Chinese ever caught my attention. In fact, I thought I would study medicine and spent my entire high school years struggling to get into the Clinic. My change of direction came when I discovered (a little too late, to be honest) that I am uncontrollably afraid of blood. It's a very long story...

I had to come up with a plan B and at no point did it cross my mind to pursue another science career. I had started studying Chinese at the Official Language School at the age of 17 because a friend convinced me to do so and I liked it so much that I was convinced that, if it wasn't medicine, I would do something related to Chinese. But I repeat that I discovered this "passion" when I was almost halfway through university! I could have done East Asian Studies, for example, but, despite having studied science, I have always had a fairly strong humanistic side (I have always really enjoyed reading and writing, I had entered literary competitions, I had done my high school research paper on literature, etc.) and I made the decision quickly. 

As we have already mentioned in previous interviews with Sara Rovira and Mireia Vargas , the profile of a sinologist is usually a bit scattered, since most of them combine several activities: teaching, research, Chinese translation, intercultural mediation... You also touch on several aspects that we will discuss later, but... do you like to vary? Or would you prefer to dedicate yourself to just one thing?

Yes, I do a lot of things at the same time. To give you an example, recently I have had to teach classes, correct a translation of a children's book from Catalan to Chinese made by a native speaker, start translating a new novel from Chinese, act as a language proofreader for some Chinese doctoral students, interpret two business meetings from Chinese, finish an academic article, correct a standard on audio description, work on a database that collects all the Chinese literature translated in Spain that we are doing from the TXICC research group , among others.

To be honest, I'm very happy not to dedicate myself to translation all day. Let me explain: I really like translating, a lot, but I need to control the hours I spend in seclusion because it ends up being a bit obsessive... I'm talking, above all, about the experience of translating literature, of course. I know that many translators complain that you can't make a living from literary translation, and even less so in the case of Chinese. I feel sorry for my colleagues who would like to do it (and because that means we don't translate enough), but, even if the option were there, I don't know if I would want to do it. My nature forces me to do different tasks and change activities. Even so, I'm aware that you have to be careful because when you play too many keys, you can end up going out of tune!

And among all these facets... do you have a favorite one? 

Everything I do now is enriching, but I have to admit that teaching has been my latest (and greatest) discovery. I have discovered that I like sharing with students what I have worked so hard to learn. I like students to trust me, to see their progress, to share with them my experiences abroad so that they can make more informed decisions... I like to take care of them, I don't know if it's because I associate it with the "doctor" profile that I have never developed... And, in this case, I save myself the blood! (laughs) In any case, I don't stick to any one facet because I like to cover them all.

Okay, so let's go over these various fields you're involved in. We could start with the academic field, since you're doing a PhD in Translation and Intercultural Studies. What aspect are you specializing in? What research path are you following? Have you had to do field research? 

This has been another surprise of life. I thought I would do it about (the writer) Sanmao … The thing is, I got a grant from a European project to do research on media accessibility. I have to work for this project, since I get a salary from it, but it also allows me to write my doctoral thesis at the same time. I wanted to link the thesis to China in some way because I felt like the five years I had already spent in China couldn't end up in the trash.

Finally, we decided with my directors ( Sara Rovira and Helena Casas ) that we would investigate audio description in China, especially in Shanghai, where I spend long periods of time every year. In the thesis we studied the possibility of using synthetic voices to audio describe films in China, where this service is in its infancy despite being the country with the most disabled people in the world. This would help the service reach more places and reduce costs.

Although audio description is studied within the field of audiovisual translation, it was very difficult for me to “fall in love” with the thesis because it was a very new field for me, one that I had never considered. Things have changed after my last trip to China because I had to go from house to house to visit the blind people who participated in my reception study and I was able to learn more about their needs and everything we can do for them from our field, even if we are neither doctors nor politicians. I like to think that the academic work we do can go beyond the walls of universities…

On the other hand, you have been awarded a scholarship to study economics and business in China. Have you exploited this aspect, that of tasks in the business environment, much?

I've been to more than one company and I've had very different experiences. Despite having a business background, they've almost always wanted me to translate and interpret. Sometimes, it's a little frustrating that they only see that side, but I also have to be realistic and I know that I've never been there long enough to develop that side much more. 

Perhaps the tasks that come closest to this area of ​​business that we were discussing are those that you have done as an interpreter for several companies that do business with China in very different sectors: tiles, veterinary, food... Areas of specialization are always complicated, but it seems that in Chinese they must be even more so. So, do you think that preparing for a specialized Chinese interpreting session is more complicated than, for example, preparing for an English one?

I have worked as an interpreter almost always in companies where I have stayed for a while. This makes preparation easier because the topics end up being very repetitive. For example, I worked for a ceramics manufacturer for a while and the meetings we always had were with distributors, to whom we presented the company, the catalogue, negotiated contract conditions, etc. In the end, the words always came out practically the same, although during lunches current topics could come up, for example.

You can prepare as much as you want, but there will always be a word that will make you suffer a little more than usual. The positive point of business meetings is the patience of the people who participate in them: they are interested in everything being clear and, in case you need them to repeat something, they have no problem with it and are understanding. Interpreting is beautiful, but I have always found it very difficult because, for example, many of our meetings were held in restaurants with a lot of chatter, which is very common in China, and it was very difficult to clearly understand what was being said at all times.

And in terms of pure and simple translation, what kind of things have you translated? More business translation, or more literary?

I would say literary, but I have translated a wide variety of things, although some have been one-off assignments: from current news to hospital information brochures, including songs, for example. 

And speaking of literary translation, tell us about the translations you've done of Sanmao's work. What can you tell us about it to encourage readers who don't know her to read it?

Sanmao is a project that, apart from being a work project, is also very personal. For me it means the beginning of my career as a literary translator, the last thing I did with a person who is no longer here, a train of those that never come back. By that I mean that I don't know if I'm being objective when I talk about it. I think I had a slightly different experience than other translators for many reasons.

For example: the author has been a personal favorite of mine for years, I have been able to meet her family; I have been able to collaborate during the translation with translators who had been my teachers and with whom I have a great friendship; I have been able to choose many of the stories that we have included in the books; I have participated in a documentary about her that has allowed me to get to know her in depth... No matter what I do in China, I am always introduced as the translator of Sanmao. I owe her a lot.

In any case, Sanmao is a suitable read for many types of readers. For example, for those interested in Chinese literature that moves away from the dramas of the Cultural Revolution; for those who want to know what daily life was like in the Sahara when it was still Spanish; for those who want to discover (or remember) Spain and the Spaniards of more than fifty years ago through the unique eyes of a non-standard Taiwanese woman, or simply for those who want to have a fun time, without any further pretensions. 

Let's continue talking about Sanmao. You have translated three works by this writer into Spanish and you have collaborated with Sara Rovira on a translation into Catalan. How was the experience? What were the most complicated points? Would you like to continue doing literary translation?

I have no complaints. I remember that during my degree many professors told me that you had to be careful with publishers because you had to fight a lot with them… I haven't had that experience yet, on the contrary! There has been very fluid communication and they have consulted us with the translators on many things. In addition, it has been a luxury to work with Sara Rovira and Mireia Vargas. It is priceless to be able to consult doubts or even comment on the play with someone who is doing exactly the same thing but in a different language.

As for the difficulties, I would say, to begin with, that Sanmao sometimes doesn't connect ideas well, or at least it's a bit hard to find the link between certain paragraphs. She also repeats a lot, which is more normal in Chinese, but in Catalan and Spanish you have to give it a few more tries. Another complicated point was finding the equivalent of the proper names when the characters weren't Chinese. You had to interpret from the pinyin which Spanish or Arabic name she was referring to and it wasn't always obvious. In addition, Sanmao was a very cultured person and she demonstrates this with literary, historical references, etc., so you have to be very attentive and not take for granted the reputation she has for being "plain literature".

I've also had other kinds of difficulties, such as the challenge of giving a voice to a woman with the weight of Sanmao. It wasn't easy to choose the stories for, for example, the last book because, although Mireia and I were clear about which ones we liked, we also had to take into account that the book had to sell.

As for whether I would like to continue translating, I am already fully immersed in a new project that I am very excited about because it is very much linked to my second home: Shanghai. I can't say more about it at the moment, but I think I will really enjoy it.

It is clear that translators are people with a thousand faces. Irene, thank you very much for sharing your experiences with us and good luck with the new project. In the meantime, we hope that some readers will be curious and delve into Chinese literature, this time through Sanmao.

Translation Day 2019: Jordi Mas López

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Here we are again. Translation Day 2019 is coming and at L'illa deserta, like every year, we celebrate it by talking to translators in two parts: Chinese translators and translators of other languages. Today we wanted to talk to Jordi Mas López , a Japanese translator, while tomorrow we will talk to Irene Tor-Carroggio , a Chinese translator. As you can see, we have a very oriental Translation Day 2019.

As you have seen in previous years, translators are not always just translators. This is especially true when we talk about Jordi Mas López, who is a translator, Japanese professor at the UAB and, last but not least , a poet. And, besides, I am especially happy to have him on the blog because we were classmates and we have always kept in touch. We have many topics to cover!

Let's start at the beginning, though. Who is Jordi Mas?

Jordi Mas Lopez

Jordi has a degree in Translation and Interpreting (Catalan, English and Japanese) from the Autonomous University of Barcelona, ​​a master's degree in Translation Theory and Comparative Literature and a doctorate in Translation and Interpreting from the same university, where he teaches Japanese language and literature. He also translates works from Japanese (classical and modern) and has published several works of poetry. He has won awards in both categories: translation and poetry. So let's get to it!

Jordi, you did your degree in Translation and Interpreting with a combination of Catalan, English and Japanese. The first question is very predictable: at a time when oriental languages ​​were not as fashionable as they are now… why did you choose Japanese? Was it a conscious choice or a rebound?

More like a rebound. At that time, to choose a second European foreign language they asked for a minimum level, and I had only done a little, very little, of French. That's why I decided to throw myself into it and do a second distant language. Arabic really appealed to me, but the year I started my degree there was no promotion for it, so I ended up doing Japanese without really knowing where I was going. Luckily, both the language and the culture quickly hooked me.

Once you graduated, while you were preparing for your master's and doctorate, you started teaching at the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting at the UAB, and you continue to do so. What subjects do you teach there? Have you noticed if interest in Japanese has grown?

I usually teach first-year Japanese and the Japanese part of the second-year East Asian classical literature course, in both cases in the East Asian Studies Degree. I also tutor final-year or master's theses, which is quite an interesting job because I try to give students the freedom to choose the topic they prefer and, since they do them with great interest, the result is usually quite good and I learn a lot myself. When necessary, however, I take on other Translation or East Asian subjects, usually languages. 

I would say that there was a very important boom in the study of Japanese in the first half of the nineties, shortly after I started studying it, and that since then interest in this language has perhaps not increased, but it has not decreased either, which has a lot of merit because, currently, both China and South Korea, which are very powerful countries in the field of popular culture, have a much greater presence than they did twenty or twenty-five years ago.

As we said above, one of your most outstanding facets is the translation from Japanese to Catalan. Surely, the translations that have reached the most people are those of Japanese series such as the very well-known Shinchan . This series initially has simple plots, but… was the translation just as simple? Or maybe there were references and humor that were difficult to transfer to Catalan?

I actually sweated a lot with some episodes. An important part of Japanese humor is based on puns (since Japanese is quite poor phonetically, it's quite easy to make them, and they're constantly making them). And there are a lot of them in Shinchan . I remember one in particular that was based on a triple homophony: ôkama (which was the name of a potter who appeared in the episode), okama (which would be a transvestite man) and kama (which means oven, in this case the potter's). While I was translating, taking into account both the text and the images, I played with the words paller and taller and I kept making and unmaking them, and the translation ended up having little to do with the original text. Obviously, I mentioned it to the series' linguist, just in case he thought I was making fun of him, and he thought the translation was good. And some friends who saw the episode told me that they hadn't noticed anything strange. What saved you, with Shinchan , is that the style of the series is unrealistic, and this allowed you to translate quite freely and add twists that would have been unthinkable in another series. 

At the other extreme we have translations of classical Japanese texts such as Tosa Diary , by Ki no Tsurayuki , or The Narrow Path of the Interior , by Matsuo Bashō (winner of the Vidal Alcover Translation Award). I especially remember the translation of Cent de cent , an anthology of tankas (a Japanese poetic genre) that we discussed in this blog. We are talking about works written centuries ago (Ki no Tsurayuki, 9th century; Matsuo Bashō, 17th century), which is why the distance is double: linguistic and temporal. Can you tell us about any typical problems of classical Japanese?

One of the typical problems in tanka translation is puns based on homophones, of great lyrical intensity but formally very similar to the ones I just mentioned. When you encounter them, you have no choice but to reformulate the poem, trying to say the same thing and have a similar final effect, but the diction ends up varying greatly. Another, which occurs in all classical poetry, is self-referentiality. Many poems use a particular word or motif because it appears in a previous poem, or even in a series of poems in which the authors have been quoting each other.

The aim was not to copy a poem from the past so that one's own would be better, but to make the previous poem present, to pay homage to it, making a poetic allusion to it that any educated person would be able to recognise. The result is that some words, such as "rosada", "mànigues", "oques", "flors"..., ended up being loaded with poetic implications that the original did not make explicit, because it was not necessary, but which do have to be explained, in one way or another, in the translation, because the Catalan reader does not have to know them.

Obviously, we can't close the section dedicated to translation without talking about the current authors that you have translated into Catalan. The best known is Haruki Murakami, whose works you have translated, such as 1Q84 . What can you tell us about him? Is it easy to access the author to resolve doubts? 

Haruki Murakami has a very interesting style. It's quite neutral, but at the same time very personal, because at the beginning of his career he made a very conscious effort to move away from the usual style of Japanese narrative. In Japan, there is a very marked difference between high literature and more popular and consumer literature, and Murakami is positioned between the two, using a style that in Japan has often been criticized for being "un-Japanese". As a storyteller he is very skilled, and I think that, as a translator, the best thing you can do is to let yourself be carried away by his text.

The truth is that I have never asked him any questions. Albert Nolla, who is the one who most often does the translations into Catalan, told me that he cannot be asked directly, but that he has a very efficient secretary who sends him your questions as a translator, if you have any, and he gets back to you with the answer. 

Anyway, there is also life beyond Murakami. Considering that my server is not a fan of this author at all and would like to read other current Japanese writers… could you recommend any?

A hilarious author, for example, who I think influenced Murakami a bit, although he is much more crazy, is Yasutaka Tsutsui (two or three of his books have been published in Spanish). Sweeping home, because they are texts that I have translated, I would recommend The Hunting Rifle , by Yasushi Inoue, which is a fascinating short story, and The Dog Husband , three stories that Yoko Tawada wrote at the beginning of her career. I made the proposal to translate Tawada into Catalan to the Godall publishing house, because I think she is an essential author, although very atypical within the Japanese scene (in fact, she publishes in both Japanese and German, because she has lived in Germany since she was twenty-two). And there are also, of course, the classics of the 20th century, which are little by little being translated into Catalan, such as Kawabata or Tanizaki .

Let's leave translation, but let's not just leave Japanese literary forms, as they have an important presence in your professional career. To begin with... what is a haiku? 

In its classic version, a haiku is a poem of three lines of five, seven and five syllables (although many lines contain metrical licenses) and must necessarily include a kigo or seasonal word, that is, a word or phrase that places it at a specific time of year. It is also very common for Japanese haiku to include a kireji or caesura word, which serves to fragment the three lines into two subunits, if it is in the middle, or to emphasize their emotional content, if it is at the end. The objectivity of the haiku is also usually highlighted, because, since there is very little space to say anything, subjectivity is often implicit, and the result is somewhat reminiscent of a photograph, in which what is there is simply shown, without adding anything to it. Furthermore, in classical haiku, overly intense or personal themes or treatments were usually avoided, which further enhances this feeling of objectivity.

In your doctoral thesis you already talked about haikus and how they have come to have a place in Catalan literature. In this thesis, which has even been published in book form for the public, we see that poets like Joan Salvat-Papasseit or Josep Maria Junoy incorporated these forms into their work. Did they know Japanese? How did they come into contact with it?

No, they didn't know Japanese. Salvat-Papasseit probably got there through Josep Maria Junoy, and Junoy got there, like the other Catalan-language poets, through French. Haiku became very fashionable in France at the end of the First World War, and for a few years many were written in French. It was a form that at that time attracted a lot of attention for the clean, objective treatment it gave to the material, and also because it allowed for the purification of the poetic language, which was something that many authors were looking for at that time. In fact, Junoy was of a very French-speaking culture and spent a good part of 1918 in that country, and during those months he joined groups of poets who met to write haiku.

Your interest in poetry, however, does not end with the relationship between Catalan authors and Japanese forms. In 2008 you published your first poetry collection, Autoretrat amb esfinx , and since then you have been creating a poetic work with which you have been winning prizes and making a place for yourself in the Catalan literary scene. With Febrer , for example, you won the Premi Octubre de poesia 2015, and from there you have been publishing quite consistently ( El crit i l'eco , 2016; La destral del vespre, l'aixada de l'alba , 2018; Brida , 2019). Is your knowledge of Japanese poetry reflected in any way in your poetic production?

Jordi Mas Lopez

From the beginning, everyone told me that it was very noticeable that I was a translator from Japanese, because in general I have tended to say things in the shortest and most stripped-down way possible. I translated Japanese poetry before writing my own, and I think that shows in me, although in the last one I wrote, which is not yet published, I have tried to use a more developed type of diction. At first, I rather avoided using Japanese forms because I was lazy to be classified as a “poet-translator of Japanese”, but in the third book I used tanka and haiku, and in the next two, haiku, either alone, as in The Cry and the Echo , or combined with prose, as in February . In Brida , which is the last one I published, there are some haikus and also my own version of the Japanese chain poem, which is the mother form of haiku.

Translator, Japanese teacher, poet, scholar of the influence of Japanese poetry on Catalan... do you think that any of these facets will end up eating away at the others or, precisely, the trick is to maintain balance?

I hope to be able to maintain a balance between all these activities, which I see as complementary. I like them all, but I think I would get bored and overwhelmed if I could only do one. The ideal, for me, is to alternate them. For example, when I am not very inspired to write, I try to do some translation that interests me, and from time to time it is also good for me to do an article in which I examine what other people have done, because I find it very refreshing. And it often happens to me that one thing leads me to another. For example, I did an article about a book by Salvador Espriu , Per al llibre de salms d'aquests vells cecs , in which he argued that it was not a collection of forty haikus but his own version of a Japanese chain poem. This made me realize that in Catalan we needed to have some translated chained poem and I translated Tres veus lligades a Minase , by Sôgi, Shôchô and Shôhaku (the chained poem was a form that was cultivated collectively). And, once we got going, I ended up writing a chained poem of my own called Brida and it appears in the book of the same name.

Well, let's end the interview talking about balance and how poetry can be approached from different points of view. Translation, creation and analysis, different ways of dealing with it. Thank you very much, Jordi, for everything you've explained to us. Surely, from now on, more than one person will look at Japanese and poetic production in a different way .

HAPPY TRANSLATION DAY EVERYONE!