American translator Eric Abrahamsen has lived in Beijing since 2001, when he
studied Chinese at the Central University for Nationalities. In 2007 he founded
Paper Republic, an organisation bridging the gaps between, on the one hand, Chinese
publishers and contemporary Chinese authors, and on the other Western
publishers and readers. It combines the functions of a literary translation
agency, and a publishing consultancy. In conjunction with the Chinese-language People's Literature Magazine it produces Pathlight, an
English-language literary magazine focusing on the best new prose and poetry
from China.
Does Paper Republic have members
who translate from Chinese into languages other than English?
We have one or two translators who work into French, but
otherwise it’s all Chinese to English. The main reason being, there really
isn’t much opportunity for contact between translators working in different languages.
We’re involved with different publishing industries, talking to different
agents and editors, facing different pools of already-translated or
yet-to-be-translated material. Through international book fairs or various
literary events, I’ve met and come to be friends with other translators from
Chinese to French, Swedish, Italian, etc. But apart from us sharing information
individually, there’s not a whole lot of professional contact.
When it comes to Chinese writers gaining international attention, do you worry about the dominance of English?
Not too much. Some language or
other is going to be dominant, after all - although it's easy for me to be philosophical, when
I speak that language! It’s a bit of a shame that that US publishing market,
in particular, is so insular, but I think that insularity is actually part and
parcel of the dominance. I’d like to know if, when French was the
“international language”, they published more or less international fiction
inside France. They sure publish plenty now.
How and why do you think
perceptions of Chinese literature outside China have changed over the past few
years?
I think that, in the recent past, there was a general fatigue among
Western readers towards Chinese fiction that revolved around the Cultural
Revolution, and the “grand sweeping historical epic” style. A fairly large proportion
of what had been translated and published previously fell into these
categories, and I think readers, or at least publishers, were feeling like it
was time for something new. Many editors, when they ask me for recommendations
or whatnot, are now asking for fiction written by younger writers, perhaps more
“hip” or “modern”, set in urban situations. I think partially it’s a desire to
find something unlike what we’ve already seen, but also a belief that urban
fiction by younger writers will have more universal appeal. I guess I think
that’s true.
To be honest, though, apart from the Cultural Revolution category, I
don’t think international readers have much of a perception of Chinese
literature at all. There simply isn’t enough of it published, nor has any of it
really taken anyone by storm. Critical reactions are generally lukewarm, or
puzzled, or faintly enthusiastic. No one’s really got a coherent concept of
what Chinese literature “is”, and thus there isn’t much of a perception of it.
If you ask the average reader what they think of Chinese literature, they won’t
have read any. Or they might have read one book, which isn’t enough to form a
general opinion.
China has a vast domestic
market. I have heard Chinese authors are
now paid much better than their Western counterparts. Is this true?
If Chinese authors can make a good living selling books within China, do
you think they care overly much about being translated (into English)?
The Chinese authors who are making huge amounts of money are either A)
one of a very small handful of top-market literary authors, B) writing genre
fiction, or C) writing fiction that ties into TV/movies/games, or writing the
scripts for those products themselves. I think writers in the latter two
categories don’t care too much about an international market. They’re very
focused on their domestic readers, because close interaction with those readers
is what has made them wealthy.
Authors of literary fiction always assumed that real fame and riches
would come with international publication. A few years ago they started to
realise how little authors earn in Western countries, and that, furthermore,
their own books would be way down at the bottom of the scale. No one now
expects to get rich selling their books abroad, but there’s still a lot of
cachet that comes with being translated, because Western publishing is seen as
more respectful of quality, and less motivated by cronyism. Which, sadly, is
true.
Turning to Pathlight, how does the partnership with People's
Literature Magazine work in practice?
Most of our interaction now revolves around choosing themes for each
issue, and then suggesting pieces that fit the theme. Both sides come up with
potential pieces, and then we discuss them. Both sides have veto rights
over any piece, which I find works out pretty well in practice. Once the table
of contents is set, then it’s pretty much just us, assigning translations,
editing the manuscripts, and laying stuff out. Once the design is finished, then
they take care of producing the actual magazine.
Has
Pathlight had any problems around
censorship? If so, and they were
resolved, how were they resolved? I have
heard that when it comes to censorship, the Chinese government is much more concerned
about what is said in the news media, than in books. Is this accurate, do you think? If so, do you think officials take the view:
so few people read books, it’s not worth bothering what they think?
In general yes – the government is much
more concerned about what is said in media (such as news, film, or television)
that are perceived as having a wide popular audience. So literature has gotten
off easy due to its obscurity! That doesn’t mean we can publish what we like,
but it’s a little easier.
We’ve definitely had issues with
censorship, but vary rarely of the sort where text was actually out-and-out
deleted. That’s not particularly good news, though – it just means that the
pieces we’re publishing have already been vetted for acceptability. The most
frustrating thing, from my point of view, is having to publish pieces just
because someone owes the author a favour, or not being able to run two pieces I
like in the same issue because the authors have some sort of feud going on.
Like I said above: cronyism. It happens in any literary society, but here
cronyism is usually the deciding factor.
It’s not like there are a whole bunch of
really politically-sensitive pieces out there that I want to publish, but
can’t. You’d be surprised how often “politically-sensitive” pieces actually end
up being very poor literature.
If
the Chinese news is heavily censored, do you think that has a knock-on effect on
writers of non-fiction? If they are
attempting to engage with contemporary reality, how can they, if they don’t
really know what that reality is?
Oh, no one really believes the news
here. Everyone knows they’re being lied to, though I think most people don’t
realise the extent to which they’re being lied to. Writers are writing about
the social realities they know, and within the extent of their experience I
don’t think there are many illusions in place. What there is, is a bone-deep
knowledge that they are living within and writing for a society – both a
literary society, and the larger national society – and that this society (both
these societies) have collectively decided to pretend that certain things are
true which aren’t, or vice versa. Writers are deeply aware that, if they
violate those collective decisions, their books will essentially be ignored,
and their careers vanish. It’s not so much the danger of the Great Red Pen, or
government attack, but instead simply becoming invisible to a society which
doesn’t want to read books about things everyone has agreed to pretend don’t
exist.
How
is Paper Republic funded?
Ha, good question. I’ve tried a few
things over the years to sustain Paper Republic as a business, with varying
degrees of success. For a while I produced monthly book reports for Western
publishing companies, but they didn’t quite work out - very few people are
willing to pay for information! Right now I sustain myself through publishing
consulting for both international and domestic publishers, events organisation,
a few government-funded projects, and helping Chinese publishers promote their
books abroad. I’m hoping to continue the consulting, and the events, and do
more work for Chinese publishers. Though you’d think the Chinese government
would be interested in funding Paper Republic, as we’re essentially promoting
China to the world, all my experiences and observations of the past decade have
taught me not to rely on the government. Chinese publishers, on the other hand,
are under pressure to sell their books abroad, and many of them are doing a
fairly good job of becoming more professional, so I feel by working with them I
can accomplish my goal of getting more Chinese literature translated, published
and read, while minimising the foolishness I have to deal with.
Why
does your translators’ directory list so few Mainland Chinese-born translators?
That reflects what I think is a fairly basic principle in literary
translation, which is: you only translate into your native language. The level
of language skill required to produce a work of literature in a certain
language can usually only be reached by someone who grew up speaking that
language. There are certainly exceptions, but they are rare. There are also
people who grew up speaking two languages, and that’s a different situation. As
China becomes more and more open to the rest of the world, there will be more
people like that.
What are your hopes for the
future development of Paper Republic?
What I’m doing right now is improving the sorry state of the database.
After a couple of years of neglect, it is way behind on new Chinese books and
new English translations. Once I’ve got it a little more up to date, I’ll also
add better search facilities, so that people can really get in there and find
what they’re looking for. People keep referring to Paper Republic as a “blog”,
and while that’s not wrong, I think it’s a lot more than that: there’s a lot of
really good background information, and it’s going to get better.
I’d also like it to be more of a community space. It started out that
way, but again a certain level of neglect on my part left it fairly quiet. I’d
like to revive that.
As far as Paper Republic the company goes, I’d like to do more
publication, more consulting and more events organisation. The major barrier to
the greater publication of Chinese literature is connections between the
Chinese publishing industry and the international publishing industry, and a
lack of information on both sides about the other. That sort of problem
requires direct action to remedy, which means consulting, and doing
publishing-related events at book fairs and literary festivals and the like.
I’d love to do more of that.
