Q & A: “Last Quarter of the Moon”

Noting that my rendition of one of China’s best-selling novels about the twilight of the reindeer-herding Evenki, 额尔古纳河右岸 (The Last Quarter of the Moon), was to be launched in January 2026 – targeting the North American market – China Publishing & Media Journal (中国出版传媒商报) offered to interview me.

I gladly accepted and answered in English, while reporter Qu Jingfan (渠竞帆) oversaw the translation. As promised, I did get a chance to “comment” on the Chinese version, but as anyone who has dealt with media based in the PRC knows, there can be quite a gap between what is expressed vs. what is published.

Unfortunately, the link to the published Chinese interview is dicey – (sometimes) when you click on it you get a warning that the site is not secure – so I’ve copied the entire Chinese text (plus my original English-language answers) below. That said, I was able to see it on my phone using WeChat, but I and others got an error message when we tried to use our PCs.

At any rate, it’s always interesting to see what is finessed or simply . . . deleted. In this case, one entire question and answer got the cut, and no explanation was forthcoming.

Key:

English in black: my original responses in English

Chinese in black: the published translation

Words in [ ]: Added/altered by the editor to the Chinese translation

Words like this: Deleted by the editor from the Chinese translation

哪些成长经历促使您成为中译英文学译者？

一路走来，一些经历不知不觉中为我的职业发展铺平了道路。最根本的是我幼年时对外语的痴迷。我清楚记得10岁前我曾花大量时间自学拉丁语，在母亲的钢琴伴奏下唱外国民歌和颂歌，或者在空无一人的房子里，用男高音跟着布莱希特德语版《三便士歌剧》的录音对唱，我度过了许多快乐时光。大学一年级时，我同时学习汉语、法语和德语——后两门语言的基础知识来自母亲的教诲。但在巴黎索邦大学进修一年后，我放弃了除汉语外其他语言的学习，那些“不够异域”的语言已不再令我心动。20世纪八九十年代，我曾为两种推出即大受欢迎的中文B2B杂志策划内容，旨在帮助中国管理者学习国外先进经验并将其应用于中国市场上。也是在这个时期我开始思考：既然我已将西方管理技术引入中国，那么是否应该让世界了解中国？某日在上海季风书园闲逛时，我偶然瞥见一本书封面上印着一位20出头时髦女性的自拍照，将其带回家3天就读完了。我确信这部讲述爱情故事的作品——《上海宝贝》在中国以外的国家肯定会大卖。这本书经过我的翻译在海外出版后成为超级畅销书。我也由此踏入文学翻译的世界。

What formative experiences led you to becoming a Chinese-to-English literary translator?

Along the way, there were perhaps four attitudes or experiences that unwittingly smoothed my career path.

The foundation was certainly my fascination with foreign languages as a young child. I distinctly remember spending hours learning Latin – on my own, not in school – before I was ten. I spent happy hours singing foreign folk songs and carols, accompanied by my mother on the piano, or singing along (in my soprano) with a recording of Brecht’s Three Penny Opera in German when the house was empty.

By the time I was a college freshman, I was studying Chinese, French and German, having learned the basics of the latter two from my mother. But after a year at La Sorbonne in Paris, I dropped all but Chinese; I was no longer interested in less “exotic” tongues.

During the 80s and early 90s, I directed content for two new and very popular Chinese-language B2B magazines aimed at helping managers compete in China’s emerging market economy.

Around this time I began wondering: Now that I’d introduced Western management techniques to the PRC, wasn’t it time to tell the world about China?

As fate would have it, one day browsing at Jifeng Bookstore next to Shanghai’s Shaanxi Subway, I happened upon a cover featuring the selfie of a chic and sultry twenty-something. I took it home and read the whole novel in just three days.

This tale [about a love story] heated love triangle would sell like hotcakes outside China – I was certain! And that’s how – with my rendition of the naughty Shanghai Baby (上海宝贝) [that became a best-seller overseas] – I made my entry into the world of literary translation.

您为何选择专注于翻译中国少数民族作家的作品？

初到中国的几年里，我常被问及国籍、同胞早餐吃什么以及对中国人的印象。有一天我突然意识到，西方人并不是这里唯一的“他者”。中国少数民族人数占中国公民的近十分之一。我开始思考：他们如何看待自己的身份？少数民族作家如何描绘少数民族在与外界接触日益频繁、接受汉语教学或迁往大城市时受到的影响？汉族作家又如何在小说中描绘少数民族人物？我决定通过阅读新出现的中文小说探索这些问题，2009年我首次发布了名为“中国少数民族文学：非汉族人的创作与书写”（Ethnic ChinaLit: Writing by & about non-Han Peoples）的博客，希望通过介绍和评论这些尚未翻译的作品，引起文学经纪人或外国出版商的兴趣，他们可能会委托我翻译一个章节甚至整部小说。

Why have you chosen to focus on translating fiction by non-Han Chinese [ethnic minority writers]?

For several years after I arrived in China, I was treated like the “Other,” constantly quizzed on my nationality . . . what my compatriots ate for breakfast . . . and my impressions of the Chinese.

One day it occurred to me that Westerners weren’t the only “Other” on the scene. What about those persons who weren’t Han, China’s mainstream ethnic group? Estimates are that one out of ten citizens are of a different ethnicity, such as Zhuang, Miao or Uyghur, and that information figures on their ID card.

I began to wonder: How do they view their “Other,” i.e., the Han [perceive their own identity]? How do their [ethnic minority] writers portray the impact on their people as they come into more frequent contact with the outside world, attend school taught in Chinese, or migrate to the big city? And how do Han authors use ethnic motifs and depict minority characters in their contemporary fiction [novels]?

I decided to explore these questions via new fiction appearing in Chinese, and in 2009 I launched my B2B blog, entitled Ethnic ChinaLit: Writing by & about non-Han Peoples.

My business model: Introduce and review this writing – not yet translated, of course – in the hopes of attracting interest from literary agents or foreign publishers, who might in turn commission me to translate an excerpt or even an entire novel.

您翻译了《额尔古纳河右岸》、《时间悄悄的嘴脸》、《我心归处是敦煌》以及最近的《凿空》。在您看来，这些书籍张主题方面有何关联？翻译过程中哪些问题最具挑战性？

You translated Last Quarter of the Moon (额尔古纳河右岸), Confessions of a Jade Lord (时间悄悄的嘴脸), Daughter of Dunhuang (我心归处是敦煌), and most recently, Audible Annals of Abudan (凿空).  In your mind, how are these books/topics related, and which aspects of their translation was most challenging?

For the first decade after I launched my blog, I covered new writing by authors representing a variety of ethnicities, but I gradually began to focus on Altaic peoples and culture.

“Altaic” is a reference to the Altai Mountains, located in Central Asia where Russia, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan converge. They are believed to have been the ancient cradle of civilization for the three main Altaic peoples – Turkic (Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz), Mongolic (Mongols, Yugurs, Dongxiang) and Tungusic (Manchu, Evenki, Oroqon).  

All the books above are set in regions of China traditionally inhabited by various Altaic peoples, such as the Greater Khingan Mountains (Inner Mongolia and Russia) in the Northeast, and Gansu and Xinjiang in the Northwest.  Although Daughter of Dunhuang, the memoir of female archaeologist Fan Jinshi who oversaw the restoration of the Buddhist Grottoes at Dunhuang, is non-fiction, these temple-caves were also significantly impacted over time by the rule and faith of a Turkophone people – first Buddhist, later Muslim – who eventually became what we know today as the Uyghurs.

In translating these novels, I’ve put a lot of effort into identifying iconic indigenous concepts and vocabulary, and wherever possible, including them in the text spelled phonetically according to their mother tongue, not Chinese.

I also lived in Turkey three years or so where I studied Turkish, which shares syntax and around 70 percent of vocabulary with Uyghur, in the hopes that I could put that to use in translating Confessions (the author is Uyghur) and Audible Annals (the characters are almost all Turkic Muslim villagers in Southern Xinjiang).

您翻译的《额尔古纳河右岸》英文版于2013年首次推出，新版于2026年1月面向北美全新推出。这部小说有哪些特质吸引了英语国家的出版商？

这部小说在全球范围内反响非常好，已译成荷兰语、英语、芬兰语、法语、德语等12个语种，俄语版也在翻译中。在与英文出版商的交流以及对其营销定位的观察中我发现一些线索。出版社翻译书名时先后采用了The Last Quarter of the Moon和The Right Bank of the Argun两种不同的译法，企鹅出版社2022年重新出版时将其收入“佳酿地球”（Vintage Earth）品牌重新推出，旨在将其作为“生态小说”进行打造，以改变我们对当今时代最紧迫议题——气候危机的思考和行动方式。Milkweed Editions出版社今年1月在北美推出新版The Last Quarter of the Moon时，将其打造成“生态寓言”，我认为，这或许是迄今为止对其最佳的定位，他们委托一位美国本土印第安人作家撰写的序言中，将敖鲁古雅鄂温克族的衰落与北美大平原的拉科塔印第安部落联系起来，两个部落都曾因当地自然资源开采而迁徙。

Your version of Last Quarter of the Moon was first published in 2013, and will be newly launched for the N American market in January 2026. Altogether, three major English-language publishers have published it. What about the novel has attracted these publishers?

The first thing to note is that the novel has been exceptionally well received globally, having been translated into 12 languages [such as] Arabic,Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Swedish and Turkish, and a Russian version is underway.

Your question is, of course, best answered by the publishers themselves, but I can offer a few clues based on my interaction with the English-language publishers, and the way they have positioned the novel when marketing it.

Harvill Secker crucially decided on the current title, which – very unwisely in my view – contains no references to China, the Argun River, Evenki or reindeer. I  think this was a misdirection. Several of the other foreign editions– though not all — retain “Right Bank of the Argun” in their titles, which is a literal translation of the Chinese original. Publishers have used two different translations for the book title: The Last Quarter of the Moon and The Right Bank of the Argun.

Penguin relaunched it in 2022 as part of the Vintage Earth series, “to change the way we think about — and act upon — the most urgent story of our times: the climate crisis.” [positioning it as an “ecological novel” to transform how we think about and act on the most pressing issue of our time —the climate crisis].  This suggests that Penguin perceives the novel as a moving example of the “eco-fiction genre.”

To my mind, Milkweed Editions North American launch of the novel in early 2026 possesses perhaps the best positioning to date.  It also packages the novel as an “eco-fable” of sorts. But they commissioned a Native American author to write the Preface, in which she links the twilight [decline] of the Aoluguya Evenki with the Lakota, a Great Plains Indian tribe, both of which experienced displacement and disenfranchisement from their traditional territories by others eager to exploit their natural resources. [Both tribes migrated due to the extraction of local natural resources.]

韩国小说在全球的成功推广，对中国文学译作海外营销有何启示？

韩国文学译作在全球很多地区都炙手可热。这当然要归功于像韩江的《素食者》这样能引起韩国以外读者共鸣的作品，也得益于韩国文学翻译院的努力。该机构可以说是兼具文化部、资助基金会、文学代理和推广多种职能于一身的综合体，为从作者到海外发行推广整个供应链的每个关键环节提供服务。他们提供的服务包括：提供翻译资助和出版补贴；举办译者工作坊和驻留项目；在伦敦、法兰克福、博洛尼亚等国际书展上设立“韩国文学”展台；组织并资助国外作者参加巡回活动、文学节和阅读活动；为目标国家新书发布会、宣传材料和社媒活动提供资金进行营销。

为成功推动中国文学翻译出版，我认为可以从两方面发力。一是资助旨在将作家、中国本土译者和外国译者汇聚一堂的活动，如工作坊和驻留项目，以此促进三方合作，共同创作高质量翻译作品。为这些项目遴选译者时，应不限于英语和欧洲主要语言译者，还可扩大到中东、非洲、拉美地区语言译者。二是更有效地使用补贴资金。目前，一些补贴资金拨给了中国出版社的海外分支机构。这些分支机构在海外市场知名度不高，图书印数不多而定价远高于市场价格，可能也没有广阔的宣传推广和发行渠道。

What insights does the successful promotion of Korean fiction have to offer to the overseas marketing of Chinese literature in translation?

 

Korean literature-in-translation is undeniably hot in many parts of the globe. Certainly, this is down to writing that resonates beyond a Korean readership, such as The Vegetarian by Han Kang, and also due to the efforts of Korea’s Literature Translation Institute.

It is arguably a hybrid  – combining a cultural ministry, a grant-giving foundation, a literary agency, and a promoter.  It provides services to each of the key stops along the supply chain, from authors to overseas distribution and promotion.

As I understand it, their activities include: Translation grants and publication subsidies; hosting translator workshops and residencies; funding and distributing translated excerpts; attending world-class bookfairs (London, Frankfurt, Bologna) at “Korean Literature” booths; organizing and funding international author tours, festival appearances, and reading events; and marketing support (funds for book launch events, promotional materials, and social media campaigns in the target country).

Some of these activities are also carried out by the China Writer’s Association (CWA). For the most part, however, their support ends with publication subsidy for the overseas publisher.

Here are my suggestions for more successful promotion of Chinese literature-in-tranlsation:

One, sponsor events aimed at bringing together authors, China-based translators and foreign translators, such as workshops and residencies . The goal: Foster collaboration between all three that leads to high-quality translations.  Expand such activities beyond translators of the major European languages, to include speakers of Middle Eastern, African and Latin American languages. Chinese bodies often overemphasize English to the detriment of readers in much of the world.

Two, make more efficient use of funds used to subsidize translation and publication of Chinese fiction into foreign languages. At present, some of these funds are routinely awarded to publishers that are, in fact, overseas subsidaries of the original China publishers. In my experience,these subsidaries print a small number of copies and price them well above typical market prices, and make little effort to actively market the books. These subsidiaries [They] are typically not well known in the country where they are located, [overseas] and may not possess broad channels for promotion and distribution.