With the publication of "Wang in Love and Bondage, " Wang Xiaobo, one of the most important writers in the twentieth century China, made his first appearance in the English language. The release of the three novellas, by State University of New York Press, coincided with the tenth anniversary of Wang𠏋 death in April 12th, 2007. The co-translators are Hongling Zhang and Jason Sommer. Hongling Zhang teaches fiction writing and Chinese at various universities in the St. Louis area and has published in both Chinese and English. Jason Sommer is an English professor at Fontbonne University and a prize-winning poet whose latest book is "The Man Who Sleeps in my Office?from University of Chicago Press. They have answered a few questions about the project for The St. Louis Chinese American News.
1. How did you know Wang Xiaobo? Did you read his book before? Which book did you read at the first time?
Hongling: I started the project when I was a graduate student in the creative writing program of Washington University. It was in 1999, two years after Wang Xiaobo𠏋 death. A friend of mine brought a copy of his Time Trilogy from China and I immediately fell in love with his writing. I found him speaking to me in a way that no other Chinese writer ever had, with the possible exceptions of Lu Xun and Qian Zhongshu, both of whom didn㦙 address the issues in contemporary China. At the time, I was taking a translation seminar with Professor Robert Hegel at the comparative literature department in Washington University. I told him that I wanted to translate a contemporary Chinese writer instead of a classic one and he agreed. I brought a rough draft of the first twenty pages of 2015 to Jason, my English professor when I was studying in Fontbonne University. He also fell in love with his writing immediately.
Jason: Since I don't know Chinese, I had to be introduced to these novellas by Hongling Zhang, my translation-partner. She had spoken Wang Xiaobo to me as an important writer who was very little known in the West--and one whom I might find unusual. As I remember it, she brought a rough translation of the first few pages of "2015." The artist, Wang Er, who paints without the license he needs in this future-society, is hauled into a police station where inflates himself in protest by swallowing air. It was just so oddball and funny, I wanted to do it immediately. So, I truly met with Wang Xiaobo's writing as I was working on rendering it in English.2. Which books written by Wang Xiaobo do you like best? If possible, could you name an American author who has some similarities with Wang Xiaobo?
Jason: I suppose I'd have to choose "2015" as my favorite among the three novellas in our book--perhaps because it was my own first acquaintance with Wang's stories. The style, its black comedy, reminded me of the Americans Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut. I found Wang's vision of the absurdity of human behaviour under the equally absurd force of politics as compelling as it was funny.
Hongling: I would say my favorite ones so far (I haven㦙 finished reading all his stories) have been The Golden Age, 2015, and Hongfu Elopes at Midnight. Some of his early writings are also very good. If I were to choose another story from him to translate, I would pick Hongfu Elopes at Midnight, his most imaginative and innovative piece.
3.In your opinion, do the English readers have some difficulty to understand Wang's book? If yes, what's the most difficulty?
Jason: I'm not sure that English speaking readers will have great difficulty with Wang Xiaobo--in some ways he will be familiar to them because of the connection with black comedy. I think there will also be a familiarity with the satirical tradition of which Wang is a part. From Mark Twain down through to Joseph Heller, Wang has affinities with western writers, as others have pointed out. The settings of the cultural revolution, the public confessions, the relocation to the countryside and reeducation--these are things American readers may know of, but in Wang's treatment they can seem at once familiar and strange, which is a particular strength of his. Even what might be familiar gets oddly transformed when Wang gets a hold of it. Wang's linguistic playfulness may be something of a challenge, too--but a challenge I hope our translation has been successful in meeting: one moment there's the language of a logician, or something that sounds like Classical Chinese poetry, and then back to the narrator, who might interupt the flow of the story for one reason or another to insert a detail. We worked hard to have those movements in language feel as they did in Chinese.
Hongling: I suspect that many readers in the English-speaking world, or in the western world in general, will respond favorably to his work. His subject matters-power and sexuality, the gay issue and the S/M flavor-will sound familiar to the western readers. They will also register in his style his affinities with black comedy and many of the characteristics associated with post-modernism. He𠏋 a cosmopolitan writer whose literary influences range from Ovid𠏋 Metamorphoses and Boccaccio𠏋 The Decameron to Calvino𠏋 Invisible Cities and Duras?The Lover. What they might find some difficulties is the historical background and the linguistic complexity in his work. In some ways, translating Wang𠏋 fiction is not just a way to deepen my understanding of Wang𠏋 literary world, but also a way to understand what the English readers see in his work and how we can bring the two worlds together.
4.What's your view about Wang Xiaobo and his position in Chinese contemporary literature?
Hongling: In many ways, Wang Xiaobo is a strange genius that would unlikely come out of the Chinese literary world. His quirky logic, his irreverent humor, his idiosyncratic, and often bizarre depiction of sexual relations prove him an odd man in the country and culture of his time. It𠏋 even more amazing to see that his writing would be accepted with such popularity. Despite the controversy around his fiction, time has proved, and will continue to prove that he𠏋 one of the most important writers, if not the most important, in the contemporary Chinese literary scene.
5.Could you talk about the cooperation with each other?
Hongling: It was a great experience to work with Jason, whose poetic sensibility and linguistic versatility benefit our translation a great deal. He𠏋 also the first English reader of Wang𠏋 work. If something doesn㦙 make sense to him, it𠏋 not going to make sense to other American readers. We tried very hard to preserve not just the original meaning and flavor but also the syntax of the original. Jason is finicky about diction as only a poet can be---his insistence on weighing each word drove me a little crazy sometimes.
Jason: The collaborative translation with Hongling was very demanding and a great deal of fun. We sometimes spent a great deal of time on a single word or phrase. It was interesting to find parallel metaphors in such different languages, to see the commonality. How, for example, light can be seen as liquid in both Chinese and English--"pouring" into a place. And then there was the problem of the idiom in Chinese for a woman with a bad reputation. It's literally a "worn-out shoe" in Chinese--we finally, after long discussion, settled on "damaged good" as having the right flavor in English. I think I stretched Hongling's patience at times with questions about the "root" of a word or whether it was "plain" or "high" or even what sort of expression would be worn by a Chinese speaker when she or he said a certain phrase.
"Wang in Love and Bondage?is available both at http://www.sunypress.edu/results.asp and
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