Reading

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Translation updates for Burn (烧) and The Moon Above These Lands (山川月)

I though folks here might be interested to know that

yuerstruly has updated their translation of Burn (烧) by Cho Dao (初岛) and

hazevi has started translating The Moon Above These Lands (山川月) by Su Xian_ (苏弦_)!

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The Beauty's Blade ebook available to preorder!

I was excited to see that The Beauty's Blade is available to preorder on Amazon, Apple Books, and Google Play (at least in the US)!

I'm assuming this means it'll also show up on Kobo and Nook soon.

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Book review: "Concerning My Daughter"

Today I finished book #11 on the "Women in Translation" rec list: Concerning My Daughter by Kim Hye-Jin, translated from Korean by Jamie Chang. This book is about an a widow in her mid-70s who ends up sharing a home with her adult daughter and her daughter's partner. Her contentious relationship with her daughter pits her long-held beliefs and societal viewpoints against her love for her child; simultaneously, she struggles in her job caring for an elderly dementia patient in a nursing home.

The protagonist is a person who values, above all, keeping your head down and doing what's expected of you. She does not believe in standing out; she does not believe in involving yourself in other people's problems; perhaps for these reasons, she believes the only people you can ever count on are family. This is how she's lived her whole life, and she believes it was for the best. However, this mindset puts her directly in conflict with her daughter, a lesbian activist who is fighting for equal employment treatment for queer professors and teachers in the South Korean educational system.

When her daughter, Green, runs out of money to pay rent after a quarrel with the university where she was lecturing, the protagonist allows Green and her partner Lane to move in, despite their fractious relationship.

( Read more... )( Read more... )

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The Empty Ship (空船) by Niu Er Er (牛尔尔): Review

The Empty Ship (空船, pinyin: kong chuan) was in many ways a refreshing change from my standard menu of baihe reading. It's set in a small town, and features determinedly unglamorous main characters. The main interest in the novel is seeing the main characters' journey towards (some degree of) self-realisation and towards a romantic relationship with each other, which for the most part it accomplishes quite gradually, unobtrusively and naturally.

Our protagonist is Jiang Xiaohui, a pre-school teacher's assistant (on account of not having the qualifications needed to be an actual pre-school teacher, nor the ambition to acquire them). A retiring, socially awkward woman who keeps the world at arm's length, her life has been overshadowed by two major tragedies. The first is the sudden death of her parents and her consequent loss of her (Christian) faith, leading to her leaving the close-knit religious community she'd grown up in (I found this fairly detailed, overt depiction of religious life interesting, because I don't see it that often in webnovels). The second is that, seven years ago, she witnessed the brutal murder of one of her students in her own classroom. At the start of the novel, she's sort of marking time, quietly drifting through life in a semi-dissociative state. Things change when she discovers that a strange and rather alarming woman is stalking her in a rather determined fashion.

( some very vague spoilers, one very-early-book reveal )

I read the Chinese original of The Empty Ship here on JJWXC. Unfortunately the author has stopped writing due to what sounds like fairly horrific online harassment (I suspect from the radfems who make up an unfortunately and I suspect disproportionately vocal portion of the baihe readership. They probably objected to the main characters having had prior romantic and sexual relationships with men).

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Okada Yachiyo (1883-1962)

Okada Yachiyo was born in 1883 in Hiroshima, the youngest daughter of a prominent doctor; her older brother was the innovative theater director Osanai Kaoru, and she was also a distant cousin of the painter Foujita Tsuguharu. When she was two years old her father died and her mother moved the family to Tokyo, where they frequently attended the theater and Yachiyo went to Kyoritsu Girls’ Vocational School, graduating in 1902. Encouraged by her brother and his friends, she began to publish her writing (both fiction and theater critique) in various literary magazines, including Yosano Akiko’s Myojo [Morning Star].

In 1906, she married the artist Okada Saburosuke (the marriage was arranged by Mori Ogai, husband of Shige), who used her as a model for several well-received paintings. Yachiyo herself continued to write and became a frequent contributor to Hiratsuka Raicho’s Bluestocking magazine. Her 1912 one-act play Tsuge no Kushi [The Boxwood Comb] is considered an answer of sorts to Ibsen’s A Doll’s House; its heroine O-Tsuna, who has left her home and her husband, longs at one point to return. In addition to writing Yachiyo was, like her brother, involved in theatrical production; she ran a children’s theater which performed from 1922 to 1930, and later a troupe of young actors which was active from 1935 to 1939.

In 1926, the Okadas’ marriage broke down and Yachiyo walked out, briefly taking up with an actor in Osaka; although never officially divorced, she and Saburosuke lived separately until his death in 1939. They made up temporarily in 1930 and visited Paris together; Yachiyo remained there until 1934.

She was a close friend of the editor Hasegawa Shigure, working with her on the first, short-lived version of the Nyonin Geijutsu [Women’s Art] journal and later in the wartime Kagayaku Kai [Shining Group] which supported Japanese troops overseas (she also visited colonial China for this purpose in 1941).

After the war she continued to write essays and playscripts, as well as editing and directing; in 1948 she founded the Japan Women Playwrights’ Association. She died in 1962 at the age of seventy-nine.

Sources
Mori 2008

Seven Seas asking about baihe novels

Seven Seas' August survey again includes a question specifically asking what baihe novels people would like them to license!

(I kinda thought the question last survey would be a one off)

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Kohashi Miyoko (1883-1922)

Kohashi Miyoko was born in 1883 in Shizuoka. (Wikipedia says Kohashi, my other source says Kobashi, it could be either.) She graduated from high school in Tokyo and in 1901 became one of the first entering class of the brand new Japan Women’s University, where she also converted to Christianity.

Upon graduation in 1904, she became the editor of the alumnae magazine, and subsequently also took on the editing of various other journals, including the Christian women’s magazine Shinjokai [New Women’s World], where she worked with Yasui Tetsu. In 1914, she became editor of the women’s page of the Yomiuri Shimbun, then as now one of Japan’s major newspapers, producing articles written by Yosano Akiko among others. The section’s focus on women’s issues and views of general news seen from a woman’s perspective, along with an advice column, became very popular. (Ichikawa Fusae, among its fans, wrote in about her longing to travel to Tokyo. The advice column also catered to readers who were not literate enough to write their own letters, having journalists interview them and formulate their concerns in writing.)

The following year, Miyoko founded Fujin Shukan [Women’s Weekly], expanding on the work she had done at the Yomiuri to address women’s lives from a variety of angles, and writing editorials calling for occupational training for women and the need to raise men’s consciousness in order to improve women’s status. Among her magazine’s writers was the businesswoman Hirooka Asako, who had had her eye on Miyoko since the latter’s college days; Asako also provided financial support for Miyoko’s work, and Miyoko published her autobiography in 1918. She also founded the Women Journalists’ Club and worked with the WCTU to ban prostitution.

In 1919 Miyoko traveled to the US to study journalism and women’s studies at Columbia University. Upon her return to Japan, she continued working as a journalist with a focus on women’s issues, also publishing a collection of interviews with Margaret Sanger. She died of a sudden illness in 1922, at the age of thirty-nine.

Sources
https://kajimaya-asako.daido-life.co.jp/column/43.html (Japanese) Photos and reproductions (scrolls right-left)

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Judge My Upcoming Baihe TBR!

Once again, time for my reading choices to be judged. The candidates this time are:

The Rose in the Abyss (深渊的玫瑰, pinyin: shenyuan de meigui) by Wu Liao Dao Di (无聊到底). By the same author as the alpaca baihe, this is set in a post-apocalyptic world. According to the JJWXC synopsis (which often can't be 100% trusted), the protagonist rescues a silent, feral girl whom she eventually discovers may not be entirely human.
The Pumpkin Coach and Cinderella (南瓜马车灰姑娘, pinyin: nangua mache huiguniang) by Mo Bao Fei Bao (墨宝非宝). A contemporary romance of some sort, by an author who mostly writes yanqing (and has had some of her stuff adapted as live action dramas). I'm reading this mainly because my pack rat tendencies mean I have it as an uncensored print edition — it's the first baihe to be licensed by morefate. Other than that, I know absolutely nothing about it.
Home for the Funeral (奔丧, pinyin: bensang) by Nan Hu Tang (南胡唐). Advertised as folk horror. The protagonist returns to her home village to host a funeral, and eerie things start to happen. I'm not particularly superstitious, but I will take extra care to make sure I'm not reading this during Ghost Month.
Memories of a Shanghai Summer (沪夏往事, pinyin: hu xia wangshi) by Shi Ci (是辞), a Republican Era tragedy (as 90% of them are).
365 Ways of Surviving at a High Difficulty Level (三百六十五种高难度活法, pinyin: sanbai liushiwu zhong gao nandu huo fa) by Mo Ran Piao (莫然漂). Thriller that seemingly begins with one of the leads in a psychiatric institution. Here's hoping the author is at least vaguely normal about mental illness.
Salieri and Mozart (萨列里与莫扎特) by Z Lu (Z鹿), showbiz baihe with a romance between a pop idol type and a classically-trained opera singer.

I wanted to throw in at least one historical but the ones I looked at were just. Too long.

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Rule of Cool: Notes on Translation

I'm writing this mostly as procrastination from translating Chapter 23 of Ning Yuan's Tang Dynasty cyberpunk baihe To Embers We Return (which is a full 6,894 words long in the original Chinese). This is about Chapter 22, which you can read here. Lots of things happen in Chapter 22 (which continue to happen even more in Chapter 23, which has already required me to, among other things, study the biology of box jellyfish), but one thing that happens is that we get introduced to a new character, He Lanzhuo, the Military Commissioner of Muzhou. Or at least, we get introduced to her by name for the first time; she's already been mentioned several times by her title at this point.

This is the key passage which describes He Lanzhuo's appearance for the first time, in the original Chinese:

身边的人都穿着中式宽袖长袍，睦州节度使却是一身干练的西服。

她完全不绾发，柔顺的黑色长发披在肩头，戴着一副将双眼完全遮挡住的特制护目镜。

What this passage says is that He Lanzhuo, unlike most people in this Tang Dynasty AU, isn't wearing traditional flowing robes, but rather a Western-style suit (there is an in-world explanation for this, which the reader may or may not find persuasive; the Doylist reason, I strongly suspect, is that a stoic, super-capable woman in a smart suit is hot). Her hair is loose (instead of being done up in the traditional Chinese fashion), and over her eyes, concealing them completely, she wears a custom-made 护目镜.

A quick search of the usual sources will tell you that 护目镜 is typically translated as 'goggles' or 'safety glasses'. This translation would not be a problem in many contexts. It is, however, a huge problem in this context, because beautiful, stoic, formidable, super-efficient He Lanzhuo is COOL. And also HOT. The words 'goggles' and 'safety glasses' are very obviously neither. In addition, 'goggles'/'safety glasses' are intended to keep stuff out of someone's eyes, while the 护目镜 here are, as the story will eventually reveal, meant to keep something IN (this has to do with He Lanzhuo's superpower, which I won't spoil here). But the more important thing is still that 'goggles' is a profoundly uncool AND unhot word.

So I reached for possibly the most famous pop culture character known for needing to wear things over his eyes to keep their power in check. I reached for Cyclops of the X-Men. The thing that Cyclops wears over his eyes to stop them from involuntarily shooting out destructive beams is a visor. So I decided that was what I would call He Lanzhuo's 护目镜. The thing she wears over her eyes is a visor now.

And that's how He Lanzhuo avoided the profoundly uncool AND unhot fate of the word 'goggles'.

PS:

skuzzybunny has drawn some amazing art of He Lanzhuo here and here (note the second one is tagged 'sexually suggestive').