Taiwanese translator Lee Lo (李洛) and Northern Irish translator Michael Sharkey have been crowned champions of this year’s Taiwan/Ireland Poetry Translation Competition for their “unique and creative” English translations of a Hakka poem, the Taipei Representative Office in Ireland announced on Monday.
Lee graduated from National Taiwan University and is now pursuing a master’s degree in translation and interpretation, while Sharkey, who holds a master’s in modern Chinese studies from the University of Oxford, is a translation studies master’s student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Daylight (天光), the poem selected for translation this year, was written by Taiwanese poet Tseng Kuei-hai (曾貴海) in the competition organized by the University of Dublin’s Trinity Centre for Literary and Cultural Translation, the office said.
Photo courtesy of the Taipei Representative Office in Ireland via CNA
The original poem was written in Hakka, which is spoken at home by about 7 percent of people in Taiwan, the event’s Web site says.
This year’s competition has arguably been the fiercest in its three-year history, attracting submissions “of the highest standard,” Trinity center director James Hadley was quoted as saying by the Taipei office.
There were barely any errors in the 17 submissions that passed a preliminary review, prompting the jury to raise its evaluation standards by adding three categories candidates were judged on: artistic merit, linguistic merit and alignment with poetic traditions.
The submissions by Lee and Sharkey stood out for how they utilized “the musicality of English to echo unique and complex phonological changes, while conserving the cultural emotions of Hakka,” the Taipei office said.
Tseng weaved the colonial history of Taiwan and Ireland into Daylight, and touted the resilient spirit of citizens in both nations, emphasizing how they share the same destiny, and would hold on to democracy and freedom tightly.
At the online awards ceremony, Tseng said he was glad to see many excellent English translations of his work and that they enabled people from around the world to establish an emotional connection with Hakka culture in Taiwan.
Representative to Ireland Pierre Yang (楊子葆) said that the Hakka community is an indispensable part of Taiwan and that people could get to know the nation better by familiarizing themselves with Hakka culture.
The Taiwan/Ireland Poetry Translation Competition is modeled on the Poetry Slam held by US poet Marc Smith in Chicago in 1984, and is a bid to spice up literary activities by adding an element of competition.
First held in 2021, the annual contest invites translators from around the world to reflect on Taiwan’s connection with Ireland through their linguistic skills.
The poem selected in 2021 was written in Mandarin and the one chosen last year was in Hoklo, commonly known as Taiwanese.
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