FCC club lunch with Martin MERZ

Speaker: Martin MERZ
Topic: Translating Chinese Literature – New stories from China

There are almost a billion readers just across the border, but who outside China has any idea what they read? China’s literary world is vibrant and enormous, and major western publishers are clamoring for a piece of the action.

Long time FCC stalwart Martin MERZ has a secret life as a translator. He has just co-translated a best-seller from China by controversial award-winning author WANG Gang, titled English, at the behest of Penguin / Viking. Martin will speak about the joys and terror of translating English into English, and share his insights into the Chinese literary world and the publishing of translations in the West.

中國的文壇非常活躍，但誰知道中國讀者到底在看什麼？中國的小說是如何變成英文作品？英文出版界如何選擇要翻譯的作品？是不是專找表現中國陰暗面的作品？何為陰暗面？

中國大陸作家王剛2004年的暢銷小說《英格力士》的英文版最近已在香港推出。該英文版由 FCC 會員馬丁和潘維真共同翻譯完成，並由企鵝公司出版。馬丁先生的演講將涉及中國文學及翻譯的問題

After acquiring an undergraduate degree in Chinese from Melbourne University, Martin headed to Taiwan to study a little more but ended up staying for ten years. He worked there as a freelance translator before being swept up in the tidal wave of businesses migrating from Taiwan to China in the late-1980s, becoming involved in footwear manufacturing, and has been based in Hong Kong ever since. Martin recently completed an MA in applied translation at the Open University of Hong Kong and co-translated WANG Gang’s English (Penguin / Viking 2009) with Jane Weizhen PAN.