Statement on Qiu Jin’s Poetry Translations and the British Museum’s “China’s Hidden Century” exhibit

For a full account of everything that happened surrounding this incident, see this page. 

August 7, 2023

Statement on Qiu Jin’s Poetry Translations and the British Museum’s “China’s Hidden Century” exhibit

I am happy to announce that the British Museum and I have reached a settlement after they used my translations of Qiu Jin’s poetry in the “China’s Hidden Century” exhibit without permission, pay, or credit for over a month, and their later action of removing both my translations and Qiu Jin’s poetry from the exhibit.

On Tuesday, July 11, very soon after I officially obtained legal representation (thanks to the support of many folks who spread the word and donated to my Crowd Justice fund), the British Museum’s Director Hartwig Fischer reached out to me to make a proposal essentially matching the reasonable terms that I had proposed to them several times before launching my legal fundraiser.

I appreciate that the museum has come around. It is frustrating that this did not happen until I went through all the trouble to fundraise and obtain legal representation.

On the Reinstatement of Translations

As a part of the settlement, the British Museum has agreed to re-instate my translations of Qiu Jin’s poetry in the exhibition, with appropriate credit and professional payment, by August 11th (with the exception relating to the projection below). They have also obtained permission from me to create a spotlight page on their website featuring Qiu Jin’s poem “A River of Crimson.” I am glad that more readers will be able to see my translations, with credit given for the first time, and am glad that more visitors will be able to learn about Qiu Jin’s wonderful poetry.

There will be a delay in reinstating the projection of my translation of Qiu Jin’s poem “A River of Crimson” (满江红) at the physical exhibit. My translations were originally displayed with incorrect line breaks added without permission. I am still waiting for that to be fixed by the British Museum as much as possible and I appreciate their ongoing efforts to achieve this.

The British Museum’s Clearance Process for Translations

During this settlement process, I also learned that the British Museum currently “does not have a policy specifically addressing the clearance of translations.” It’s very surprising to me that such a large institution does not have such a policy. I hope that the British Museum follows through on their commitment to create a clearance process for translations in the future by the end of this year and to take concrete steps to ensure that the mistake does not happen again.

Donation of Settlement Funds

As I mentioned before in on my Crowd Justice fundraiser page, I plan to donate 50% or more of the settlement amount I receive to a cause to support translators of Sinophone poetry. The British Museum have agreed to make an additional payment to me matching their licence fee payment to enable this. I have reached out to a literary organization to propose a series of translation workshops for and led by BIPOC/racialized translators, where at least one workshop will focus on the translation of Sinophone poetry. I hope my donations can help fund a series of workshops with a focus on feminist, queer, and decolonial approaches to translation, in honor of Qiu Jin. I will give more updates about this once it has been arranged.

Edit on August 29, 2023: I am really delighted to share that I have donated 50% of the funds that I received from the British Museum settlement to Modern Poetry in Translation to fund two MPT Labs (translation workshops) led by and for BIPOC/racialized translators. One of the workshops will focus specifically on Sinophone poetry. I would like to take this opportunity to highlight the important work that organizations such as MPT are doing in terms of supporting poetry in translation. Please read the official announcement here. 

To Wrap Up

Thank you to everyone who has supported me over the past two months, which have been incredibly challenging. Thank you to my lawyers Jon Sharples, Aimee Gavin, and Alex Watt at Howard Kennedy LLP for all their help.

Thank you to everyone who has spread the word on social media, wrote letters, drafted and shared a petition, donated to the fundraiser, and reported on this incident in newspapers, podcasts, or other formats. Thank you to all the friends who supported me behind the scenes, and especially to all the organizers in ace and aro, queer, feminist, academic, speculative fiction writing, and translation communities who stepped up. I could not have done this without you.

This incident has showed me the power of the collective in holding institutions accountable. Let this be a lesson for the British Museum and other museums, organizations, and publications that permission must be obtained for the use of copyrighted translations, and that it’s important to always #NameTheTranslator and pay them professional fees for their work.

I am excited to finally be able to return to working on The Lantern and the Night Moths, a book of poetry translations that I was in the middle of translating when I discovered the British Museum’s use of my translations of Qiu Jin’s poetry in their exhibit. I look forward to sharing more of Qiu Jin’s verses with you all in the future.

Yilin Wang

www.yilinwang.com

Twitter/Instagram/Bluesky: @yilinwriter