Liu Xiaobo made a very pertinent observation about contemporary Chinese literary creation, “Most writers in China today lack individual consciousness.” What are your thoughts?

I’m not sure exactly what Liu Xiaobo said, as I can only find online his much-quoted comment that the Chinese lack creativity ( “中国人缺乏创造力”). However, I cannot see how any serious-minded Chinese writer could lack “individual consciousness”, in the sense that s/he must have a consciousness of being an individual. Writers surely have to have a deep personal commitment to writing in order to continue doing it. The writers that I know certainly have. But perhaps Liu meant that they write less about their characters as individuals, and that their characters do less individual soul-searching. On that question, Mark Leenhouts has an interesting comment. He says that “the typical Chinese view of the world […] has placed the social aspect above the individual one for centuries. It was not without reason that traditional novels often presented a whole procession of characters to sketch social relationships rather than inner life. And even in modern novels, the reader is seldom enclosed in the mind of a single character for the entire duration of the book, focused on an individual problematic relationship to reality — something that we in the West have been accustomed to for donkey’s years.”^[3] I think that a social, rather than an individual, focus is simply that: a different focus. It becomes a disppointment for the Western publisher/reader mainly when they look at Chinese genre fiction such as crime. For example, in Scandinavian crime thrillers, the detectives tend to fight intense personal battles, both with themselves and with evil/the criminal; Chinese crime fiction I’ve read is very different; it has a forensic feel, à la Agatha Christie.

…one should not lose sight of the enigmatic in the original writing because that is what can stir the reader. So, the enigmatic in the source language has to have an equivalent in the target language…. the translator has to put themselves in the shoes of the target language reader as well.

How do you rejuvenate yourself in order to stay creative, alert and fresh?

Turn my computer off! Have a cup of tea. Go and talk to real people. Think about something other than translation. Phone a friend. Read. Run translation workshops (because I get a buzz from hearing other people translate and from other people’s enthusiasm). Hear someone say that they found something I translated interesting/moving/funny/striking.

In what way(s) has your work as a translator informed your path in knowing yourself better? What do you still find mysterious in the craft of translation?

Ouch. I have discovered that I do not enjoy negotiating the money/rights side of a contract. But neither do I enjoy being ripped off. In that context, I have certainly learnt my limitations during my work as a translator. But I’ve never doubted how much I love translating, and I regard it as an enormous privilege to be able to do so. I’ll never stop trying to do it better, and I’ll never stop learning.

What do you look forward to as far as new possibilities — in work and more importantly, in life?

I’d like to translate more poetry. I like the discipline and it concentrates the mind.