In Chinese province targets journalists and students in planned surveillance system, based at least partly on a Reuters' new item, we learn that China's Henan Province has commissioned a state-of-the-art surveillance system: A 29 July tender document published on the Henan provincial government’s procurement website details plans for a system that can compile individual files on such … Continue reading Surveillance in the People’s Paradise: Update on Henan Province
Nobel Laureate Gurnah’s Tales of Exile and Migration Set to Launch in China within 2nd Half 2022
By Bruce Humes Recent press reports in the English-speaking world note that the new Nobel Laureate for Literature, Abdulrazak Gurnah, is relatively unknown in his native Zanzibar and Africa in general, but none of his novels have ever appeared in Chinese. This looks set to change. "We aim to publish five of Gurnah's full-length novels within the second … Continue reading Nobel Laureate Gurnah’s Tales of Exile and Migration Set to Launch in China within 2nd Half 2022
非洲文学：中文译本 African Writing in Chinese Translation
Nobel Literature Prize Update (Nov 6, 2021) Shanghai Translation Publishing House has announced that it has acquired the rights to publish Chinese translations (using the PRC's official, simplified script) of ten novels by the new Nobel Laureate Abdulrazak Gurnah. See the announcement here in Chinese. They are: Memory of Departure (published 1987), Pilgrims Way (1988), … Continue reading 非洲文学：中文译本 African Writing in Chinese Translation
Gurnah’s Nobel Prize for Literature: One African Publisher’s Take
During the immediate aftermath of the naming of Zanzibar-born author Abdulrazak Gurnah as the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, it seemed that much of the Sinosphere coverage was either scholarly papers penned a few years back by Chinese scholars and reheated for the occasion, or translated snippets of English-language wire service reports pasted … Continue reading Gurnah’s Nobel Prize for Literature: One African Publisher’s Take
Quote of the Week: Yan Lianke Nomination for the Newman Prize
Throughout his career, Yan Lianke has held fast to the notion of the writer as a voice of social or moral conscience, a notion that in China under Xi Jinping appears at once quaint and deeply subversive. (Excerpted from Kirk Denton's nomination of Chinese author Yan Lianke (阎连科) for the Newman Prize for Chinese Literature)
Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and his “The Perfect Nine”: Now Slated for Future Translation into Chinese?
April 14, 2021 Update: Writer's Literary Agent Confirms that a China Publisher has Bought the Rights to Translate and Publish <The Perfect Nine> in Chinese Reports the Guardian: Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o has become the first writer to be nominated for the International Booker prize as both author and translator of the same book, and the first nominee writing … Continue reading Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o and his “The Perfect Nine”: Now Slated for Future Translation into Chinese?
Writing Fiction: “A Degree of Possession”
Whether or how much a book draws from real life isn’t strictly quantifiable . . . Part of this mystery is due to the chaotic consciousness native to the novel-writing process, which requires a degree of possession . . . To dig a book out of the ground can be backbreaking, hand-tearing work; you need to forget what you … Continue reading Writing Fiction: “A Degree of Possession”
At Last, A Native American to Head US Dep’t of the Interior
The New York Times reports: WASHINGTON — Representative Deb Haaland of New Mexico made history on Monday when the Senate confirmed her as President Biden’s secretary of the Interior, making her the first Native American to lead a cabinet agency. Ms. Haaland in 2018 became one of the first two Native American women elected to … Continue reading At Last, A Native American to Head US Dep’t of the Interior
“Let a thousand translations bloom”
Mridula Nath Chakraborty on the controversy arising from the resignation of Amanda Gorman’s Dutch translator: Translators ferry across the meaning, materiality, metaphysics and all the magic that may be unknown in the mediums and conventions of their own tongue. The pull of the strange, the foreign, and the alien are necessary for acts of translation. It … Continue reading “Let a thousand translations bloom”
27 Million Reasons Why
The city of Minneapolis has agreed to pay $27m to settle a civil lawsuit with the family of George Floyd, who died under the knee of a white policeman. The Guardian cites the family’s lawyer, Chris Stewart, about the huge settlement figure: . . . what happens is that trickles down to decisions in the communities across this country. … Continue reading 27 Million Reasons Why
bruce-humes.com 