“A Sandwich of Heroes, an Excellency of Ants”: Jennifer Feeley talks literary translation at SYSU

Source: School of Foreign Languages
Written by: Austin Woerner
Edited by: Wang Dongmei

On the evening of 11 April, American literary translator Jennifer Feeley spoke to a full room in the School of Foreign Languages at Sun Yat-sen University (SYSU). Her new book of translated poems by the Hong Kong writer Xi Xi, Not Written Words (published by Zephyr Press, 2016), took center stage, and Feeley led a lively conversation in which she invited audience members to attempt to translate some of Xi Xi’s whimsical, wordplay-driven poetry themselves.
 

Literary translation, Feeley pointed out, is an act of creative writing. Though the Chinese-language author created the originals, the translated poems are entirely the handiwork of the translator. Holding up her dog-eared copy of Not Written Words, she said, “This is 100% my words, even though the ideas aren't mine.”

 Jennifer Feeley talks literary translation at SYSU.
 

With a poem called “Murray Building,” she guided audience members in pointing out that the whole thing hinges on the idea that in Cantonese and Mandarin the name of the building sounds similar to the word for “beautiful.” The speaker lives in the famously squalorous Murray Building in Hong Kong, and a beloved is sending her letters there, always misspelling the name so that it is addressed to, ironically, the “Beautiful Building.” 
 

In a way, Feeley said, “this poem made me think of the absurdity of my own language.” It also suggested to her the rich possibilities of using the wrong measure words in Chinese as a form of play. “It made me think,” she said, “that more novice Chinese speakers should try writing poetry.”

"It makes me think,” she said with a smile, “that novice write poems!”