Sometimes when I’m talking with my friends, colleagues, or students, the subject of my book comes up. A few of these people don’t speak much English, and they say that they would like to read the book when it gets translated to Chinese. I figured if that was going to happen, I was going to have to make it happen.
A friend of mine, Shirley (厉雪), is a semi-freelance translator. I’ve known her since I moved to Guangzhou nearly seven years ago (I can’t believe it’s been so many years already!). When I first came to Guangzhou, Shirley was getting her Master’s degree in translation, and she has since translated multiple books into Chinese from English. When I was thinking about having my book translated, I knew that I wanted her to do it, and I was thrilled when she agreed.
Shirley and I agreed on the price for the translation, and then I sent it over to her to begin translating. Throughout the translation process, Shirley would come to me with questions. Translators are excellent editors and Shirley found several errors in the document that I and multiple other readers had all overlooked. She checked with me about the things that she thought should be changed, and we also talked about some translation challenges with several of the stories.
One of the stories is written from the perspective of a student who is studying English and writes a diary about her experiences. Shirley felt like translating the story into Chinese would defeat the purpose of the story and might seem weird for Chinese readers because the charm of the story is in her simple expressions of English. Translating that into Chinese might make the girl’s diary-style seem too simple because no college student would write that way in her own language.
I was a little bit biased because this story was one of my favorites, and I eventually decided to still keep it. I suggested adding a sentence to explain the story for Chinese readers. I’m curious to see how the readers respond to that one and whether or not it seems odd to them.
After Shirley finished translating and proofreading everything, she sent it back to me, and I began looking for another proofreader. I didn’t really want to (I was confident in Shirley’s abilities, and I didn’t want to pay for a proofreader also), but Shirley insisted that this was the proper way of doing things.
After asking around a bit, I found a friend, Jiamei (嘉梅), who didn’t speak much English and was between jobs so she had a bit more time. I wanted someone who didn’t speak as much English because I wanted her to look at only the Chinese from a more Chinese perspective. Jiamei used to live in my city, and we would often take walks around campus after having dinner together. She was the inspiration for one of the stories about a little girl named Lili who used flowers to dye her fingernails with her grandma.
Jiamei read through all the stories and made a few corrections, sometimes consulting Shirley because they also knew each other. After she finished, she sent it back to me. Now, looking at the document full of my stories in Chinese, I am amazed that the project is done!
I spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out a way to publish the book in China, and I also gave the book to someone that I met, through another friend, who works in publishing. However, that lady didn’t find anyone who was interested in this type of book. Getting a book published in China is a little bit difficult for people who are not Chinese, especially when the book mentions anything related to religion or Christianity. A couple of the stories in my book mention Christianity or God, and she didn’t think the publishers would be able to publish the book.
I met a couple of other friends who were also writers in China, and they showed me a book that they had self-published by just taking the manuscript to the printer and getting it made into a book. I thought about doing that, and I haven’t completely ruled out that possibility, but it doesn’t seem like the easiest option since I would have to physically publish the books myself.
Rather than getting the book published in a book form, I decided maybe I could use my website to share my stories with the world. I talked with my website designer, and we figured out a way to organize the website so that I can post the English and Chinese stories on the website.
I’m really excited about this, and I will have more updates about that coming in the future!
As far as the translation goes, I’m so excited to have my book translated into Chinese, and I’m eternally grateful to 厉雪 and 嘉梅 for making that happen!