Thursday, November 5, 2009

Ready, Get Set, Go!

Just to prevent any confusion, this project will be translating only the first few chapters to pique interest in Big River Big Sea - Untold Stories of 1949 (大江大海一九四九). Just from feedback from my American-born Chinese friends and some general scouring on the internet, there seems to be substantial interest from English readers in the content of this book despite the obvious language barrier.

The titles of the entries will list which chapter in case someone decides to purchase the actual book and use this as a reference. Of course, I am not a professional translator, so this is my disclaimer for any shortcomings. :)

In addition, I would like to encourage readers to submit any family stories related to this subject. All Chinese have been affected by the events of 1949 and onward, but each tale is unique and worth sharing with the world. If you feel inspired to, please let your story be heard and share it with this blog.

8 comments:

  1. Thanks for translating the Book "Big River Big Sea - Untold Stories of 1949 (大江大海一九四九)". You have done a wonderful job!

    In your very first sentence, "Just to prevent any confusion, this project will be translating only the first few chapters to PEAK interest in Big River Big Sea - Untold Stories of 1949 (大江大海一九四九). " I think you meant to say ""Just to prevent any confusion, this project will be translating only the first few chapters to PIQUE interest in Big River Big Sea - Untold Stories of 1949 (大江大海一九四九). "

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  2. Thank you so much for doing this! I was at NTU/ICLP Fall 2009 and saw this book at a bookstore, but didn't have the patience to read the Chinese.

    I look forward to following your blog :)

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  3. I really appreciate your encouragement, Edward! It's great to hear that you went to ICLP too (I was there from Spring-Fall 2009)! As you have probably noticed, we haven't updated this blog in quite awhile... things have been busy on my end and also I've heard that Lung Yingtai is in the works of getting the book translated into English. I hope that our translations of the first 10 chapters will get you far enough for now, and perhaps you'll end up reading the rest in its original format. :)

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  4. Any word about when the English translation will be published? I granted permission for the author to use information, photos and correspondence from my LST-847 web site that ultimately appeared in portions of Chapters 40 through 49. I have found bootlegged copies of the book which I have used to create a rough English translation of those chapters, but after reading your translations I know that I'm missing a lot of the author's eloquence.

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  5. Hi Mike, thank you for your comment -- it definitely wasn't easy translating the chapters and luckily we also had some amazing contributors such as Scott and Teresa. I don't know when the English translation will come out, but I was hoping to see it within a year of the original publication. I've let my project lie fallow after Chapter 10 to respect the author's intellectual property, but please do let me know if you get wind of an official translation!

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  6. Cap'n - I'll keep my ears open about any English edition, but seeing as it took me two years to "find out" the name of the book and author for which I had given the permissions, I'll probably be one of the last to learn about any English translation! I was most pleasantly surprised to hear of the importance and success of this book and how the author used my uncle's words and my LST-847 contributions to fill in the story. From my rough Google Translation of Chapter 42, it appears that the first sentence in that chapter would make a great quote for use on my LST-847 web site to set up a link to English reviews of the book. If it's not asking too much, would you be willing to provide me with your best translation of that one sentence? Thanks, Mike http://grobbel.org/contact.html

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  7. how many chapters are there in total? Where can I find information about an English version? When will that be published? I would offer to translate the book from English to German to make it available to some more 100 million people... :-)

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