The Audible Annals of Abudan (凿空) is set in an imaginary village in southern Xinjiang, which has historically been largely peopled by Uyghurs, a Turkic Muslim people. Although the word “Uyghur” never appears, it’s clear from several aspects of the tale, such as occasional transliterated vocabulary, that they speak a Turkic tongue.
It’s important to note that author Liu Liangcheng (刘亮程), who was born and raised in Xinjiang, and has lived at length in the Xinjiang countryside, confirmed to us that he knows only a spattering of Uyghur.
Given that, and since the names of the characters have an obvious Turkic feel, we commissioned a Uyghur to help denominate them using typical Uyghur names. Where possible, choosing a similar sound to the character’s name in the story, but it’s not obligatory.
For the women, names such as the Uyghur term for flower — gül (古丽) — figure prominently, e.g., Aygül, Meryemgül. This is not our express choice, per se; our use of -gül mirrors the author’s use of it. Turkish speakers will recognize the sound, but in Turkish it refers to a rose specifically, not flowers in general.
For one character in particular, we have chosen to do more or less of a literal translation: Qara Erkek (黑汉), which means “dark fellow,” a reference to his complexion and his beard. (Note: 汉 here does not refer to the Han ethnicity; he is not Han.)
To summarize, for almost all names of characters in the novel, we have done our best to recreate the Chinese sounds in romanized Uyghur — except for Han Chinese characters, of course. For them, we use standard Hanyu Pinyin.
This is a very different approach from the one adopted for an earlier novel Jun Liu and I translated. Titled Confessions of a Jade Lord (时间悄悄的嘴脸), it was authored by a bilingual Uyghur, Alat Asem (阿拉提·阿斯木).
This reflects the very Uyghur custom, among men at any rate, of assigning friend and foe alike with a moniker that belittles.
To do so, we also commissioned a Uyghur to “decode” those names, which we then translated literally or slightly altered, often for comic affect. This meant that the English-language reader was made aware of the meaning of the characters’ names, while the vast majority of Chinese readers did not have the same benefit when reading the original – unless they knew Uyghur, that is.
A few examples: Eysa ASAP, Caesar, Obul the Rooster, Xanqiz the Night Butterfly, and Meathead Rozaxun. Of course, not all such renderings were so colorful; we also simply romanized other Uyghur names, such as Mijit, Minewer, etc.
The above text is about a Chinese novel,凿空, by Xinjiang-based Liu Liangcheng (刘亮程). The working title is The Audible Annals of Abudan. It is newly translated by Jun Liu (刘浚) and Bruce Humes. To request an excerpt, and for information about foreign language rights, contact Yilin Press’s Ms. Yvonne Wang (王玉强) at wangyuqiang@yilin.com
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