#taiwanese literature

[have-you-read-this-short-fiction]

"Fables" is available to read here

[rosesteeth]

— from notes of a crocodile by qiu miaojin

[legendarycollectiveflower]

Who was the real me, then? It was an abstraction that hadn’t yet taken shape in my lifetime.

-Qiu Miaojin, Notes of a Crocodile

[gennsoup]

Here's a lesson about light. In your language, they say life is extinguished. But that assumes our bodies are made of light, and light is always limited. We are sacks of dark, and the dark resists direction, resists capture.

K-Ming Chang, Bestiary

[aikawa-kazuki]

i think i found the book (or rather story) that made the most miserable and i say that with having read both pachinko and notes of a crocodile, to the point i had to make a conscious decision to stop reading for a moment because it was affecting my mental well being.

the butcher's wife by li ang.

the amount of abuse the mc when through is just awful, no one should go through something like that. not to mention the victim blaming from other women and lack of support for her.

posting both covers, because i really like how original Taiwanese edition looks like

(pst the book can be read here)

[sawreadreviewed]

Me and my mate are on a roll! Membranes is a bizarre 90s post-apocalyptic queer Tawainese sci-fi romp. It’s taken two false starts to really get into, but now I’m in. The translator end notes are also a delight!

[confield]

Huang Fan - A History of Condo Sales

[have-you-read-this-short-fiction]

"Gloria" is available to read here

[rosesteeth]

happy pride to all my fellow lesbians and trans people <3

— from notes of a crocodile by qiu miaojin

[legendarycollectiveflower]

And really, what difference did the world make to me, anyway? With that question, something stirred deep inside me, making my body tremble. It did make a difference. I had needs like anyone else, and sure, one of those needs was a little acknowledgment.

-Qiu Miaojin, Notes of a Crocodile

[gennsoup]

But the price of having a body is hunger.

K-Ming Chang, Bestiary

[millipedereads]

Notes on a Translation

A year ago I audited a course on translation of Taiwan literature to English. For our final we had to choose a chapter from a book and translate it. I faced particular problems as a non-fluent speaker (nor reader...) of Chinese, though it should be said that I had different problems to my classmates, who do not natively speak English.

I had chosen the first chapter of 牛肚港的故事 (Niudu-gang de gushi) by 王拓 (Wang Tuoh), which while does not have a full English translation published can be found under the title "The Story of Cowbelly Harbor." The titular harbor has this name because of the mountain overlooking the town that looks like a cow's head, and so the lower laying land thus looks like the belly of the cow.

牛肚港的故事 is a murder mystery, in the most simplistic of genre descriptions, starting out with the town drunk saying he saw a ghost, the corpse of a teenage town beauty. It's intention though is more social commentary on the period of White Terror in Taiwan by the ruling KMT (國民黨). Wang wrote this book during his time as a political prisoner.

I had previously read Wang's most well known short-story 金水嬸 (Jinshui-shen, Auntie Jinshui) for a seminar on Taiwanese Literature, though my understanding of it at the time was quite poor. His style is more direct, making it a tad easier than some other writers for the non-native speaker.

Wang's stories generally take place in rural North-east Taiwan, around Keelung, an important harbor and currently best known as being the rainiest place in all Taiwan. I already mentioned the language used is more direct, but you might misunderstand to what degree that makes things easier to read. Though Mandarin is the National Language, Minnanhua has a longer history here. In Southern Taiwan you hear it frequently, particularly among older generations. Cowbelly Harbor is 40 years old (written in 1982) about a rural fishing village by someone who himself was from a similar small village. Do you see where I'm going with this?

I did not anticipate the amount of words and phrases I had to cross check on Pleco and two or three Taiwanese Hokkein reference websites. Such as: 黑白講 - to speak without care, speak falsely (the pleco entry only has an explanation in Chinese (“閩南方言。把黑的講成白的，白的講成黑的。指沒有事實根據，而隨意亂講”))

The other issue that came up was what to do with names. For most, but not all, there were 2 options (that I was considering): a Mandarin pinyin transliteration, or a Hokkein one. Does 杜南山 become Du Nanshan or Tu Lamsan, 阿基嬸 as Auntie A-Ji or A-Ki, or to include the 阿 (used for nicknames, affectionate referal) at all.

These are just reflections on my little experience with translation, as I try again to read novel-length stories in Chinese. Maybe one day I could revise and post my translation of chapter 1 and blog trying to go past that.

[bookjotter6865]

Winding Up the Week #381

An end of week recap “Good communication is just as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after.” – Anne Morrow Lindbergh (born 22nd June 1906) You were promised a link-stuffed wind up when I returned from my chill in the Scillies – so, here it is in all its bibliophilic abundance! As ever, this is a post in which I summarise books read, reviewed and currently on my TBR shelf. In…

[kino-free-time]

The butcher's wife and other stories - Publication from 1983

The newspaper says that Lin Shi killed her husband, the butcher, because she has a lover on the side, but that isn't true. Lin Shi's husband tortures her: the more she screams, the more he likes it.  Li Ang's highly charged collection of fiction begins with the internationally acclaimed novella The Butcher's Wife, which provoked shock and outrage in her native Taiwan when it first appeared in 1983. The short stories that follow are erotic, thought-provoking, and cautionary. A thrilling entry point into contemporary Chinese literature.

source english translation can be read here

[femboy-expert]

Guess whose poem got published by the premier Taiwanese language literature magazine? :33333

[yyoon5]

Can't believe we're going to be submitting our poetry to be published next week...I really can't believe a xiaowang poem is making it out into the world.