customContents

entityId

entityUuid

articlePageQuery

filter

article

articleBaseAdvertisingInfoArticle

articleListArticle

articleSeoArticle

helpersCheckIsPostiesArticle

hooksArticleAcknowledgementGateOverlayArticle

hooksTrackPageViewArticle

hooksContentInterestArticle

articleLinkingDataContent

articleSchemaContent

liveArticle

advertZone

sentiment

contentLock

topics

types

sections

moreOnThisArticles

urlAlias

commentCount

sponsorType

authorLocations

authors

paywallTypes

corrections

displaySlideShow

multimediaEmbed

printHeadline

seriesContainer

socialHeadline

headline

flag

firstTopic

glossary

flattenTypeIds

publishedDate

additionalInfoBoxes

images

image

relatedLinks

relatedNewsletters

__typename

createdDate

sponsor

factSheets

series

knowledgeQuestion

disableOffPlatformContent

published

updatedDate

summary

subHeadline

body

keywords

copyrighted

customTimezone

liveContents

Tribune News Service

August is a lot of things: it is uncomfortably hot, and it is somehow already time for your kids to go back to school.
August is also Women in Translation Month, a yearly celebration of books by women written in languages other than English.
Jennifer Croft – the award-winning author and translator of writers such as Nobel Prize-winning Polish novelist Olga Tokarczuk, with whom she shared the 2018 Man Booker International Prize, and who has translated works from Polish, Ukrainian and Argentine Spanish – says Women in Translation Month has been a good thing.
Croft is also the author of the memoir Homesick and the novel The Extinction of Irena Rey, and a professor at the University of Tulsa, in the US state of Oklahoma.

“For me, it has been very helpful as a translator. Initially, when I was starting out, my project was specifically to advocate for and translate contemporary women,” says Croft, who focuses on works by Russian, Polish and Argentine writers, including Federico Falco’s A Perfect Cemetery, Romina Paula’s August and Tokarczuk’s 912-page The Books of Jacob.
When society has blinders on about the work of women, Croft says, that affects which books we read and which get chosen for awards.
“I definitely do still think there’s a value in spotlighting women’s work, because, of course, there are still these sexist tendencies in our society,” says Croft.
Not only are translators often overlooked – something that Croft has advocated to change – but the work can seem a bit mysterious as well.

For many, translation sounds like a simple process of switching one set of words for another, but it is obviously far more complex and can be performed in a variety of ways.
“It’s not the same for everybody, and that was one of the reasons why I also wanted to mention some women translators as well as women writers who are being translated, not necessarily by women,” says Croft, who says these days she works with writers of all genders.
“I really think of the translator as the co-author of the translated book. People don’t realise how much power is in every single choice that we make as we’re translating.
“And translating is always rewriting, and every translator has a different opinion about to what extent that is true for them, but I just don’t see a way that we as human beings can avoid including our own subjectivities in our translation so it becomes a collaboration,” she says. “And I think that’s a good reason to look at the work of women translators.”

To celebrate the work of women writers and translators, Croft has compiled a shortlist of book suggestions for readers interested to know more:

Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge, translated by Jeremy Tiang is a wonderfully fun and endlessly intriguing compendium of urban human-beast encounters that troubles the line between the imaginary and the possible.


Your Utopia by Bora Chung, translated by Anton Hur, is such a fun collection of short stories infused with speculative tendencies, Slavic literary traditions, and extremely relatable pandemic-era fears.


Emily Forever by Maria Navarro Skaranger, translated by Martin Aitken, is a beautiful and particular coming-of-age novel about a pregnant young woman who lives in a world of her own.


Vernon Subutex 1, by Virginie Despentes and translated by Frank Wynne, is a perfect marriage of translator and author.


I would also recommend seeking out the work of women translators like Emma Ramadan (French), Saskia Vogel (Swedish), Mui Poopoksakul (Thai), Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Polish), Tiffany Tsao (Indonesian), Tess Lewis (French and German), Susan Bernofsky (German) and Esther Allen (Spanish).
Each of these translators also has amazing taste, so anything they choose to work on is probably an excellent choice.
Erik Pedersen


How the Cold War and a largely imagined China made spy novels cool

How Hong Kong’s Albert Leung (Lin Xi) became one of Cantopop’s most loved lyricists

Toxic masculinity satirised in Sorry Men, a short story collection on male ‘obliviousness’

Want a fashion lesson from ‘the menswear guy’? This podcast episode on Sean Carroll’s Mindscape is for you

Books and literature

4 must-read translated books by women, picked by Man Booker prize winner Jennifer Croft

Vernon Subutex 1, by Virginie Despentes, is a perfect marriage of translator and author, says Jennifer Croft. The prize-winning translator shares three other top reads. 

Jennifer Croft translates works from Polish, Ukrainian and Argentine Spanish. She is also the author of the memoir Homesick and the novel The Extinction of Irena Rey. Photo: Nora Pushkin

The cover of Strange Beasts of China by Yan Ge, “a wonderfully fun and endlessly intriguing compendium of urban human-beast encounters”, according to Croft.

Your Utopia by Bora Chung is “such a fun collection of short stories”, Croft says.

Emily Forever by Maria Navarro Skaranger is “a beautiful coming-of-age novel about a pregnant young woman”, Croft says.

Michael Jackson groupie, knew Prince pre-fame, stole US$40 million. Tanya Smith tells all

Pop artist Prince performs in the Hong Kong HarbourFest in 2003. Photo: SCMP

Tanya Smith tells her story of teenage Michael Jackson fandom, seeing Prince start out, and hacking into bank computers to steal US$40 million, in memoir Never Saw Me Coming. Photo: Tanya Smith

The cover of Smith’s book. Photo: TNS

Tyka Nelson at a Grammy after-party in 2017 in Los Angeles, California. Smith knew singer Prince as “just Tyka’s brother”. Photo: Getty Images

Pop artist Prince performs in the Hong Kong HarbourFest in 2003. Smith knew him before he was famous – he would rehearse at a theatre her father owned in the US city of Minneapolis. Photo: SCMP

The Great Gatsby prequel novel Gatsby’s Rival tells story of the iconic character’s rise

The cover of Gatsby’s Rival by Richard Guimond.

The cover of Gatsby’s Rival by Richard Guimond, a prequel to the classic 1925 novel The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Richard Guimond is the author of Gatsby’s Rival.

The Great Gatsby was published in 1925.

Japanese crime mystery novels become popular in the UK, especially books by Kotaro Isaka

Kotaro Isaka’s Ax (The Mantis in English) was nominated for a coveted award by the Crime Writers’ Association this year, a sign of the growing popularity in the UK of Japanese crime mystery novels.

The Tattoo Murder by Akimitsu Takagi is a legendary whodunit.

Kaoru Takamura’s Lady Joker offers a bleak portrait of post-war Japan.

The horse’s role in history, from farm to battlefield, covered in a fascinating book

A prehistoric drawing cave of a horse. Horses might have gone extinct after the Ice Age had man not domesticated them, after which they played a decisive role in human history, as a new history of the horse recalls. Photo: Shutterstock

The cover of Winegard’s book.

A rock painting of a man on a horse in battle. Photo: Shutterstock

Horses were the deciding element in the Battle of Hastings. Photo: Historic England

Breakfast recipes from hidden China open ‘new world’ in British-Chinese author’s cookbook

Hongyou chaoshou – red oil dumplings – is a popular breakfast dish in Sichuan province. The recipe features in Michael Zee’s cookbook Zao Fan: Breakfast of China, among others for little-known breakfast dishes from across China. Photo: Bloomsbury Publishing

Michael Zee, author of Zao Fan: Breakfast of China. Photo: Michael Zee

A selection of steamed breakfast items at a shop on Zhoushan Island, China. Photo: Bloomsbury Publishing

Congyou banmian, or Shanghainese spring onion oil noodles, as featured in Zao Fan: Breakfast of China. Photo: Bloomsbury Publishing

A child eats dumplings for breakfast in Xiaogan, in China’s Hubei province. Like in the West, breakfast is an important meal in China, but is underrepresented in cookbooks. Photo: Getty Images

The cover of Zee’s book. Photo: Bloomsbury Publishing

Zee takes inspiration from traditional Chinese dishes for some of his more innovative recipes, such as coffee eggs. Photo: Bloomsbury

A photo from the early 20th century shows Chinese men eating noodles and dim sum. Although dim sum culture originated in Guangzhou, it evolved at a greater pace in Hong Kong. Photo: Getty Images

Lifestyle

Arts & Culture

Culture

Books

Author and translator Jennifer Croft shares her four new must-reads, and explains why a translator is ‘the co-author of the translated book’


Award-winning translator Jennifer Croft shares her top translated reads – and explains why a translator should be seen ‘as the co-author of the translated book’.
