Closing the distance for Chinese literature abroad: Sinologist

Liu Zhenyun is writer, scriptwriter and professor at People's University. He is also winner of China's Mao Dun Prize for Literature.[Photo/IC]

Q: Do you have any plans of translating some Dutch literature into Chinese?

A: It's always best to translate to your mother tongue, not from it, so I won't be translating Dutch books to Chinese. Fortunately, there are a number of excellent Chinese translators who translate Dutch literature, and a lot of books have already been published.

Q: Now you have your own translation team, how do you do your work? What are the works that you are working on right now?

A:I am self-employed and often translate alone, but two books I have translated together with my colleague Mathilda Banfield. We usually each translate different chapters and then check each other's work. It's very helpful to have a second person look at my work, since the publisher usually doesn't understand Chinese and can only check for spelling mistakes in the Dutch. Throughout the translation, Banfield and I keep in close contact to discuss problems we run into and to make sure we translate everything consistently. This was especially important on our latest book, Liu Zhenyun's I am not Pan Jinlian, because Liu likes to repeat words a lot. We kept a list of words that were repeated a lot, to make sure we translated them the same throughout the book. By the end we had a list of over 400 words and phrases.

Annelous Stiggelbout could be reached at astigg@hotmail.com.

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