Sea, Mountains, Desert, Forest: Landscapes in Translation

Sea, Mountains, Desert, Forest: Landscapes in Translation

Date: 21 September 2023 (Thur)

Time: 8 PM – 9:15 PM (HKT)

Platform: Zoom

Speakers: Dr Audrey Heijns (CUHK)

                      Dr Chris Song (UT)

Moderator: Dr Robert Tsaturyan (EdUHK)

Language: English

*The Zoom link will be provided to registered participants before the event.

Description: Xubin (吳煦斌)’s stories remind us of what is beyond anthropocentrism: the tiny living creatures, stones, insects, beans, the sound of rain, the scent of the wood, wet earth, and the myriad of human rituals. In this event, Dr Chris Song, a scholar of Hong Kong literature and translation, and Dr Audrey Heijns, a co-translator of Xubin’s short story “The Sea” in Bison, will look at the very minute and the very large depicted in Xubin’s stories that are at times cryptic as the sea, other times clear as a raindrop.

Speakers’ Bio

Dr Audrey Heijns

Audrey Heijns translates Chinese literature into Dutch and English. She teaches at the Centre for China Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and is the editor of the online database Verretaal—Chinese literature into Dutch translation.

Dr Chris Song

Chris Song is Assistant Professor of English and Chinese Translation at the University of Toronto. His research falls at the intersection of translation studies, modern literature in Chinese, and Hong Kong culture. He is appointed by the International Federation of Translators as the managing editor of Babel: Revue internationale de la traduction / International Journal of Translation (John Benjamins). His co-edited volume, The Bloomsbury Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature in Translation, is published in 2023. He is active in the literary scene of Hong Kong and serve as an advisor at many cultural entities, including the One City One Book Hong Kong.

Dr Robert Tsaturyan

Robert Tsaturyan is a postdoctoral fellow at the Research Centre for Chinese Literature and Literary Culture at the Education University of Hong Kong. He received his Ph.D. in Chinese Language and Literature at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2022. His research focuses on contemporary Chinese poetry, Hong Kong Literature, and comparative literature and translation. His essays and translations in English and Chinese have appeared in Chinese Literature Today, Fleurs des Lettres, and in an edited volume titled Voiced and Voiceless in Asia (2023). He has also co-translated an anthology of Chinese literature into Armenian.