More than 75 years after the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four, the Orwellian phrase “Big Brother is watching you” has become so familiar to most of the Taiwanese public that even those who haven’t read the novel recognize it.
That phrase has now been given a new look by amateur translator Tsiu Ing-sing (周盈成), who recently completed the first full Taiwanese translation of George Orwell’s dystopian classic.
Tsiu — who completed the nearly 160,000-word project in his spare time over four years — said his goal was to “prove it possible” that foreign literature could be rendered in Taiwanese.
Photo: CNA
The translation is part of his decade-long push to “normalize” the use of Taiwanese in broader cultural contexts.
“With more books like this coming out and becoming part of daily life for the younger generation, people will see this as part of their culture [rather than] just something they hear when talking with their grandparents,” he said.
PROBLEM SOLVING
Now 55, Tsiu is a businessman with more than a decade of translation-related experience.
He previously worked as an English-language reporter for local media and as editor-in-chief of the National Geographic Chinese edition in Taiwan. He has also translated two English books and one French book into Chinese. His translation of Nineteen Eighty-Four marks his first foray into Taiwanese.
As one of the few people translating foreign literature into Taiwanese, Tsiu described the process as “problem solving.”
“When I was working on it, I felt like I didn’t see anyone ahead of me on this road. I had to find my own way,” he said.
His solutions involved consulting Taiwanese experts and four major dictionaries, including one compiled by the Ministry of Education in the late 2000s.
Still, he sometimes invented expressions even when existing ones were available to “introduce something new.”
Since some Taiwanese words change meaning depending on pronunciation, he chose Romanized spelling in certain cases to highlight sounds. In others, he used Romanization and Chinese characters interchangeably to show that Romanization is just as valid.
Tsiu said his translation allows readers who can read Chinese but not understand spoken Taiwanese to still follow the general plot because of its mixed use of Chinese characters with Romanization — a mainstream approach in Taiwanese writing circles.
Despite these efforts, Tsiu said the translation will likely still be challenging for most readers, as the novel is not an easy read and Taiwanese speakers come from diverse backgrounds.
“I would even encourage people to read the English version first, then come to mine to see how these ideas are expressed in Taiwanese,” he said.
WHY TAIWANESE?
Tsiu, who grew up in Taipei, said he learned little Taiwanese in school and picked up most of what he knew from conversations among relatives and friends.
His interest in studying the language seriously began after he returned to Taiwan from Geneva, Switzerland, where he had been a foreign correspondent, in 2010.
“When we spoke Mandarin abroad, we were usually assumed to be Chinese. That made me wonder what my connection to Taiwan was, and the answer was Taiwanese,” he said.
“There were moments when we wanted to talk privately and would try to use Taiwanese. That’s when I realized how limited my vocabulary was.”
Since returning, he has worked to promote the language, including a stint writing a column called “Se-kai Tai” (世界台) for the Public Television Service’s website from 2014 to 2016 to report global news in Taiwanese.
He said he feels more at ease speaking Taiwanese than Chinese. His translation somehow serves the same function.
“In many ways, Taiwanese reads more naturally and makes more sense to us Taiwanese people. We are just deprived of the opportunities to recognize that fact.”
TRUTH AND UNTRUTH
Tsiu said his political science and criminal justice education, including postgraduate work at the University of Edinburgh, sparked his interest in themes like surveillance, state power and totalitarianism that are crucial in Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Still, he said he had no intention of translating the novel until 2017, when it unexpectedly topped the US Amazon bestseller list in the wake of Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts” comment.
Conway, an adviser to then-President Donald Trump, used the phrase in reference to then-White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s inaccurate claim that Trump drew the largest presidential inauguration crowd in history.
While Tsiu said that Nineteen Eighty-Four has everlasting political relevance, he disagreed with those who draw a comparison with Trump, noting that the novel specifically depicts life under totalitarian rule.
For a democracy like Taiwan, he said the novel resonates most due to the threat of China’s dictatorship.
Given the looming threat of Taiwan being absorbed into a “Big Brother” state, as noted in the afterword, Tsiu said the risk of Taiwan facing a Nineteen Eighty-Four scenario would be “being infiltrated, controlled and annexed by China.”
“The Chinese Communist Party is even more dangerous than the Party depicted in Orwell’s novel,” he added.
“They combine top-down control with mass mobilization — a method not shown in the book.”
For Tsiu, surveillance is only one facet of totalitarianism. More chilling in Orwell’s novel, he said, are the distortions of truth and control over thought.
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