Posted By: Kate Griffin, 12 December 2011
I’m writing this from Beijing (taking the scenic route back from Australia). It’s a cold winter morning with bright sunshine, far from the heat, rain and thunderstorms of Perth, and I’m taking a little time to reflect on and share with you what I’ve learned during this trip.
The
Asia-Pacific Writing Partnership conference, organised by APWP director Jane Camens, was hosted by the University of Western Australia, coinciding with their own symposium on
digital literature in the Asia-Pacific. The university has a beautiful campus, by the lake; we were in the arts block, famous for the mating displays of the roaming peacocks, including an albino peahen who apparently doesn’t know she’s white and is distressed when her offspring don’t look like everyone else.
The theme of our conference was Writing Out of Asia, with representatives from all over the region. Much of our discussion focused on the multilingual nature of the region and the writers within it, the advantages of writing in more than one language and the importance of translation.
From left to right: Alvin Pang, Jhoanna Lyn Cruz, John Mateer, Jane Camens, Shelley Kenigsberg, Kyoko Yoshida
Worlds regular
Xu Xi, who set up the MFA in Creative Writing at City University Hong Kong is introducing a programme of creative literary translation for Asian-language literatures, as part of the MFA. The MFA is a combination of residential teaching and distance learning, using online workshops, and focuses on Asian writing and Asian Englishes. Many of the creative writing students are bilingual and some are writing in more than one language, so they are well equipped to explore literary translation. This new programme is in part to address the shortage of literary translators for Asian languages in the region. Also, although the MFA is taught in English, Xu Xi hopes that students will go on to set up their own creative writing programmes in Asian languages across the region.
Kit Kelen at the University of Macau also combines the teaching of creative writing and translation, looking at the work of classical and contemporary poets from China as well as Western Australian writing, training his students to become bilingual poets and to work across cultures. We enjoyed bilingual readings of Kit’s own work by two of his students as part of their presentation. Both Kit and Xu Xi are keen to explore possible links between their students and Norwich-based writers and translators.
Japanese writer and translator
Kyoko Yoshida writes in English, but incorporates Japanese idioms and language into her writing, creating a strange kind of English that crosses boundaries. She also co-translates contemporary Japanese experimental writing and theatre into English, as the Japanese informant for a native English speaker. For her, translation and transformation is a way of exercising her creative writing muscle, and she believes that all writers can benefit from experimenting with translation and other languages.
Cristina Hidalgo from the University of the Philippines gave an overview of the development of creative writing programmes in the Philippines from the first course in the 1960s. Although originally set up in English, many of the courses are now bilingual, English and Filipino. Also from the Philippines, Isagani Cruz talked about how he is incorporating more translation and multilingual writing into his programmes, encouraging his students to follow the example of writers such as Junot Diaz. There was some discussion of the advantages of this approach, using your other languages for concepts that don't exist in English, and creating a sense of intimacy with local readers.
Jose Dalisay from the Philippines gave a brief overview of digital literature in the Asia Pacific, talking about the varying rates of adoption (Taiwan's airport offers free access to library e-titles, for example, while Japanese publishers are very slow to adopt e-books). He also spoke about how in the Philippines digital access separates one class of society from another - Filipinos send the highest number of SMSes per day, but broadband is lagging behind and e-readers are expensive - calling into questions claims of democratisation. However he felt that the development of distance learning and e-procurement could be revolutionary.
Alvin Pang pointed out that in Singapore, despite having more mobile phones than people, readers have no access to kindle or itunes stores and find it difficult to buy books online. Alvin edited Tumasik, an anthology of 39 Singaporean writers from across the four language groups (English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil). His work on the anthology led him to recognise the need for a culture of quality literary translation in Singapore, as well as the importance of translation in allowing writers and readers from the different languages groups access to each other’s work.
In the translation roundtable we talked further about the importance of translation for crossing community boundaries within countries, as well as across the region. We started to explore the wider issues of editing and translation and audience, how to help writers in Asia get their message across without Englishing them too much (the domestication versus foreignisation debate) and who are we writing for - a local audience or an international readership. We also talked about how UK-based organisations such as Writers’ Centre Norwich and the
British Centre for Literary Translation can work in partnership with writing and translation initiatives in the region.
Overall it was a fascinating conference, with many contacts made and avenues opening up for future collaboration. My thanks to Jane Camens for inviting me, and to WCN and BCLT for funding my trip.
Kate Griffin
Beijing, 12th December 2011
www.kategriffin.org
