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Bringing Taiwanese literature to the world

Sunday, Feb 16, 2003, Page 18

Howard Goldblatt, right, with Sylvia Li-Chun Lin. PHOTO: BRADLEY WINTERTON

"My roots in Taiwan go way back. When I first came here there were ox-carts going along Chungshan North Road, and I lived in a traditional Japanese-style house. It was during the early years of the Vietnam War and I'd been sent here by the US military. I stayed 18 months, and after that I was here again for another two years, studying Chinese at the Taiwan Normal University. I've lived here five or six years in total, mostly in the 1960s and early 1970s. My first landlord in Taipei now owns the Howard Plaza Hotel! There are some wonderful young writers here. It's a small but vibrant literary community. After martial law was removed Taiwanese authors could write about almost anything, and they did. They are better educated than their peers in China, for the most part, and have read more Western authors, either in the original or in Chinese. I mean, look at all the books here at this fair! Things are getting better in China quickly, but Taiwanese authors write in a way that's more accessible to people round the world. Books from China tend to be China-centered. It's not hard to translate this into other languages, but into other cultures it's difficult.

"Taiwanese authors write in a way that's more accessible to people round the world. Books from China tend to be China-centered. It's not hard to translate this into other languages, but into other cultures it's difficult."

Howard Goldblatt, translator

"I've recently moved to the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, and I'll probably teach a course a year, when I want to, if I want to. But I translate virtually full-time. I find the majority of the books myself, or they find me, and then I recommend them to publishers. I have an agent, and typically I do two or three chapters as a sample, and then he tries to sell it. Some I'll market on my own by going direct to university presses. I try to get a couple of books out a year. I've translated over 30 in all.

"Sylvia Li-Chun Lin comes from Tainan, and she and I have done three together, and in addition I've co-translated two others with former students. Sylvia and I did Notes of a Desolate Man (荒人手記) by Taiwanese author Chu Tien-wen (朱天文), voted one of the best books of the year by both the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. Due out next spring will be City of the Queen (香港三步曲) by the Taiwanese novelist Shi Shu-ching (施叔青). It's a historical novel set in Hong Kong, a trilogy that Sylvia has shortened to one book. The author lives in New York and is the older sister of Li Ang (李昂), author of The Butcher's Wife (殺夫).

"We've just finished another novel from Taiwan that will be out in the fall. The provisional title is Retribution and it's by Li Yung-ping, who was born in Malaysia. It's about a rape, a suicide, and a murder -- but that's like saying Moby Dick's about a whale! It consists of 12 linked stories that go back and forth in time. It's a very bleak novel, much of it dealing with low-class prostitutes in a poor area of town.

"Then last year we translated Red Poppies by Alai, an ethnic Tibetan who lives in China. Tibetans are all educated in Chinese, so when it comes to writing they can really only write in Chinese. It's about a war-lord community in the east of Tibet. Tibetan nationalists have hated it, but at least the narrative stops in 1949. Anything after that would have been too controversial to be published in China.

"I'd love to translate everything Mo Yan (莫言) writes, but even if I only worked on Mo Yan he'd be ahead of me. I've done four of his so far. The fifth, Big Breasts and Wide Hips, will be out in the fall. I'm afraid the feminists will crucify us over that title.

"Another novel I'm working on is My Life as Emperor (我的帝王生涯) by Su Tong (蘇童), author of Raise the Red Lantern (妻妾成群) and Rice (米). It's about an imaginary boy king in an unspecified period of China's history. The author lives in Nanjing and is still quite young. I'm preparing a third of it to submit, but one publisher has already made an offer so we're OK.

"Crystal Boys (孽子) by Taiwan's Kenneth Pai　(白先勇). Yes, I translated that in the 1980s. It did well, in part for the wrong reasons. They put a sexy young Asian boy half-clad on the cover. But it's not a gay book in the soft-porn way. It's a very good novel, about things like fathers and sons, and marginalization.

"I hope to break into the commercial market. I have friends in the publishing business, but unfortunately, as in the UK, all the smaller publishers are being bought up. The publishers of Please Don't Call Me Human are now owned by Disney, for crying out loud, and have to take orders from idiots in Los Angeles who want to see only the bottom line. When I published Red Sorghum (紅高梁) Penguin did a printing of around 5,000. It did pretty well and is still in print. But the same month they published a Stephen King novel in an edition of 950,000. They said the one could support the other. But nowadays it's different, and each book must make a profit on its own. That's very hard.

"Have I read Gavin Menzies' 1421: The Year China Discovered the World? No, but it was reviewed just recently in the New York Times and didn't get very high marks. Everyone knew Zeng He was a great sailor who went to lots of places, but America was not one of them, and nor was the Antarctic!

"Columbia University Press's Modern Chinese Literature from Taiwan series is running into trouble unfortunately ... contracts, royalties, rights ... it's an administrative problem essentially. But no one else publishes Taiwanese novels in translation as such, and I very much hope it survives. There are some young writers here who really deserve to be better known.

"Which books have I enjoyed translating most? Well, Mo Yan's Red Sorghum and Republic of Wine (酒國) were both wonderful. And so was Rose, Rose, I Love You (玫瑰玫瑰我愛你) by Taiwan's Wang Chen-ho (王禎和). And I'm on the look out for new things all the time."
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