Thanks so much to Hope Lauterbach for interviewing me about my translation practice, the difference between translating poetry and prose, and #LiteraryJianghu over at Learn Write Essentials.
Here is my answer to her opening question about what literary translators do:
For me, literary translation is not merely the process of bringing literary works into another language, but rather an attempt to give literary works new life while recreating them in another language. In this sense, I see translation as an extension of creative writing, because it requires me to think through how the original author went about constructing a piece of literature and how to recreate the effects of that original work. In addition to doing translation work itself, I also spend a significant amount of time reading Chinese literature and immersing myself in its literary traditions, to familiarize myself with the larger context that I’m translating in, by following the literary conversations that are currently happening, and keeping an eye out for emerging and underrepresented voices. I try to be deliberate in thinking about whose work I translate and how.
You can find the rest of the interview online here. Please feel free to share the interview if you enjoy reading it and check out #LiteraryJianghu.
