Ken Liu Response -- Lianbi

    From reading these stories and doing research on him to prepare for my presentation, I find Ken Liu to be an amazingly well-rounded writer, translator, reader, and scholar in science fiction and story telling. His translations are wonderful--this is a very general comment I recognize, but I will say it anyway--always demonstrating his thoughtful engagement with the original text based on close reading. I might not agree with all his choices, but I can almost always see where he is coming from. Every piece of his that I have read so far has moved me. I felt like he was standing there by my side, reading carefully as I was, and contemplating on the process of translingual practices. I admire the effort he puts into translation even though he is an amazing and prolific writer himself, and appreciate so much his advocacy for Western readers to treat foreign literature as they are, by individual authors and works, not with regard to any overarching label and against certain expectations. He has articulated some issues that have been lingering in my head for a long time. 

    I love both of the stories assigned. "Tongtong's Summer" hit me hard. The translation reads very smooth in English, the humor in characterization is so well done, and despite a few additions and omissions, I think all the details of the original are well captured. Word play and thematic sentences are well translated with all nuances preserved. Instances of dialect, opera, dialogue are thoughtfully rendered. The economic and political thinking that shapes "Folding Beijing" were professionally translated, revealing the story's very universal theme of the humanitarian concern in capitalism and global competition. While Ken Liu does not domesticate any part of these stories, he also avoids rendering culturally specific expressions and idioms literally (a marked foreignizing approach); he usually translates the gist of the expressions, which I felt comfortable with. 

    I am curious about how this short story collection came about. I like the curation and I wonder if Ken Liu was the person who proposed the list, or did publishers play a role too.