Guest Lecture: “Translating Chinese Literature: The Importance of Getting the Text Right”

We are delighted to welcome Professor Dongwei Chu 褚东伟, Professor of Translation Studies, Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, for this special lunchtime guest lecture. 

Translating Chinese literature into English has been a great challenge for native speakers of English handling Chinese as a foreign language and a greater challenge for native speakers of Chinese translating into English as a foreign language. Citing examples from two forthcoming Panda books, Dongwei gives an intimate account without reservation of the craft and the art of literary translation as one whose mother tongue is Chinese and who fights the tremendous odds to recreate the rhythm and feeling of Chinese short stories in the English language.  

About the speaker: 

Currently a visiting scholar at the Department of Chinese Studies, University of St. Andrews, Scotland and formerly Fulbright Visiting Research Scholar at the Center for Translation Studies, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2016-2017), Dongwei Chu is Professor of Translation Studies in Guangdong University of Foreign Studies, founder and Editor-in-Chief of Chinese Literature and Culture (print and online journal of scholarly translations and reviews jointly published by IntLingo Inc., USA and Zilin Limited, China, and editorial board member of Renditions published by the University of Hong Kong. He is a member (expert level) of China Translators Association and a member of Guangdong Writers Association. 

Prof. Chu is the English translator of three coming books: two anthologies of short stories by established and emerging authors--Beijing Guys: Stories by Active Chinese Women Authors, and Visitors from Deep in the Mountains: Stories of Animals, Humans, and Society, both being published by the Foreign Language Press in Beijing as part of the newly relaunched Panda Books series--and an English translation of a Mao Dun-prize winning full-length historical novel Willows of the White Gate: Romance in the Setting Sun, to be published in the United States as an English-only edition and in China as a Chinese-English bilingual edition. 

Click here if you would like to read some of the materials in advance for this event.

The event is free to attend but please sign up here.