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Annelous Stiggelbout at a lecture of the 2015 Visiting Program for Young Sinologists. [Photo/chinadaily.com.cn]

The rapid development of China's economy in the past three decades has not only drawn the world's attention to its economic sphere, but also caused the world to notice its unique culture. Chinese literature, though an important part of the Chinese culture, was not widely read by others outside China until Mo Yan became the first Chinese laureate of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2012.

But to Sinologists and translators, who have long devoted their time and passion to the worlds woven by Chinese writers, Chinese literature is not something new. "Since the 19th and 20th century, Sinologists and Chinese scholars have been promoting Chinese literature overseas, and they have helped the world to understand China through their lens," said Zhang Longxi, a professor teaching at Hong Kong City University.

In this ongoing series about the translation of Chinese literature, we invited some Sinologists to share with us their observations about how Chinese literature is received in their countries, their opinions on the promotion of Chinese literature and their stories during their translation. In this article, we invited Annelous Stiggelbout to talk over these issues.

Annelous Stiggelbout is a Dutch translator and a sinologist. She participated in the 2015 Visiting Program for Young Sinologists hosted by China's Ministry of Culture and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Q: Why did you become interested in Chinese literature? What are the literary works that introduced you to the world of Chinese literature?

A: I have always loved to read and when I started studying Chinese, one of my long-term goals was to come to enjoy Chinese novels in Chinese. I started out reading Chinese works in translation, from works of contemporary authors including Zhang Jie, Zhang Xianliang to classics like The Story of the Stone.

Q: What is the first book that you read in Chinese? How come you chose this book as your first work of Chinese literature? How do you like this book?

A: Tackling a complete novel seemed rather daunting, so as my first book I picked King of Chess by Zhang Xiguo. I had read the first few chapters in class, and its use as a textbook made me want to try this novel, so I felt this was a book I could handle and it seemed interesting. It's about two men who discover a boy who can see into the future. The boy uses this knowledge mainly to get really good at Wuziqi, or gobang, and the men try to get him to cooperate to win fame and fortune for them. I quite liked the book.

Q: When did you start to have the idea of translating Chinese literature, and when you actually get started?

A: Translation is something I had been interested in ever since I knew more than one language and after studying Chinese for some years I started to translate for Het Trage Vuur, a periodical for Chinese literature in Dutch translation. My first translation was an excerpt of Mian Mian's Panda Sex, published in 2006.

Q: What is the biggest problem in translating Chinese literature? Can you give us an example?

A: There are many translation problems big and small: how to handle Chinese ways of addressing people (translating 小王(xiaowang) to 'little Wang' is rarely the best idea, and forms of address like 老板(laoban，or boss) or 师傅(shifu, or master) don't really exist in Dutch); how to handle cultural differences where something is completely obvious for a Chinese person but completely foreign for a Dutch reader; and others. But the problem that I encounter the most – and that is actually the core of my work – is that Chinese sentences often just don't work in Dutch. If I translate literally, it's correct but looks awful, so I have to find some way of saying the same thing but in a way that still looks good in Dutch. The story Ququ Ququ (Criket Criket) by Bi Feiyu for example contained the sentence "活人与亡灵之间依旧存在一种捕捉与防范的关系" (there exists a relationship of capture and precaution between living people and the souls ). Not difficult to understand, but it took me many tries to shape this into a Dutch sentence that was both beautiful and correct.

Q: How do you choose the works that you want to translate? Is it more of a personal preference or a decision based on other factors?

A: I keep a number of writers in mind that I would like to translate, consisting of a mix of authors that I know are important or representative of Chinese literature and authors I happen to like and would like to share with other Dutch readers. So far, publishers have come to me with their projects before I could come to them, but fortunately they often pick authors that would have been on my list anyway.

Q: What are the authors that are popular with the Dutch translators?

A: Authors like Su Tong, Bi Feiyu, Mo Yan and Chan Koonchung are much translated. Other translators work on older Chinese literature, but I myself am not very familiar with that field.

Q: Is Chinese literature popular with the Dutch readers? Do you see a rise of interest in Chinese literature since Mo Yan won the Nobel Prize in literature?

A: My impression is that in the last years there has certainly been more and more interest in Chinese literature, and this was probably helped by Mo Yan's win. But the growing interest is likely also caused by the fact that people are becoming more interested in China in general as the country is becoming more and more powerful and a bigger player internationally.

Q:You said in an interview that sinologists have a big influence on the publishing house in deciding what Chinese literary works to be introduced to the Netherlands. Can you talk more about the current situation of Chinese literature's introduction in the Netherlands?

A: Dutch sinologists are well placed to keep an eye on Chinese literature and recommend interesting works to publishers, and they regularly do so. In addition, the Confucius Institute in the Netherlands works together with sinologists in introducing Chinese authors to a Dutch audience. In the past few years, collections of work by Su Tong and Bi Feiyu have been published as a result of this cooperation, and we are currently working on a book by Xu Zechen. Of course, publishers also often choose books they hear about through other channels.

Q: Do you have any plans of translating some Dutch literature into Chinese?

A: It's always best to translate to your mother tongue, not from it, so I won't be translating Dutch books to Chinese. Fortunately, there are a number of excellent Chinese translators who translate Dutch literature, and a lot of books have already been published.

Q: Now you have your own translation team, how do you do your work? What are the works that you are working on right now?

A:I am self-employed and often translate alone, but two books I have translated together with my colleague Mathilda Banfield. We usually each translate different chapters and then check each other's work. It's very helpful to have a second person look at my work, since the publisher usually doesn't understand Chinese and can only check for spelling mistakes in the Dutch. Throughout the translation, Banfield and I keep in close contact to discuss problems we run into and to make sure we translate everything consistently. This was especially important on our latest book, Liu Zhenyun's I am not Pan Jinlian, because Liu likes to repeat words a lot. We kept a list of words that were repeated a lot, to make sure we translated them the same throughout the book. By the end we had a list of over 400 words and phrases.

Annelous Stiggelbout could be reached at astigg@hotmail.com.

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