INTERVIEW/'Taiwan Travelogue' translator proud to bring Taiwan to the world

By Chiu Tsu-yin and Chao Yen-hsiang, CNA staff reporter and writer

Novelist Yang Shuang-zi (楊双子) made history on Nov. 20 when she became the first Taiwanese author to win a U.S. National Book Award. Her groundbreaking achievement would not have been possible, however, without a skillful translation.

Lin King (金翎), who translated Yang's award-winning "Taiwan Travelogue" (臺灣漫遊錄) into English, expressed her pride in helping introduce Taiwan to a global audience.

"Taiwan is a rare place in the Chinese-speaking world where people enjoy freedom of speech. Taiwanese literature, therefore, is the most liberated form of Chinese literature," she said in a recent interview with CNA.

The novel, structured around Taiwan's railway system, follows a Japanese writer named Aoyama Chizuko (青山千鶴子) on a culinary journey around the island in 1938 with her Taiwanese interpreter, Chizuru Wang (王千鶴).

"Taiwan Travelogue," written in Chinese, presents itself as a translation from a foreign language text (that does not actually exist in real life), and it sparked debate when the original edition was published in Taiwan in 2020.

In a wrapper around the bottom of the book's cover, the authorship was attributed to Aoyama Chizuko, the central Japanese character in the story, while Yang was listed as the translator.

Struggles and gains

Though this narrative device may have seemed unconventional to the public, King saw it as "a framework that a translator would be thrilled to engage with."

"The translators and footnotes in the original text gave me plenty of room to participate in Shuang-zi's wordplay, making me a 'character' in the translated work. It was a rare opportunity for translators," she said.

That does not mean King did not face challenges in translating a story that dates back to the late 1930s.

She said it was particularly difficult to find appropriate English equivalents for terms rooted in Yang's meticulously researched portrayal of Taiwan under Japanese rule.

"Take, for example, the food culture of that time, the clothing, family structures, and the Japanese colonial language -- many of those details are unfamiliar even to native Taiwanese," King said.

A big help in overcoming those obstacles was Yuko Miura's Japanese translation of the novel, the translator acknowledged.

Wide-ranging journey

King also gave high praise to Yang and Taiwan Travelogue for taking a travel story and turning it into a poignant narrative that tackled weighty themes such as empire, colonialism, gender discrimination, and race.

It was Yang's use of "everyday life elements," however, that made the story "lighter" and set it apart from many somber contemporary literary works.

"Shuang-zi envelops Taiwan's complex and brutal history in food, romance, and humor. This approach makes the information more digestible for readers and reminds them that history is composed of daily life," King said.

The novel's sweet moments amplified the emotional impact of the painful memories from colonial times or wartime, she said.

The path to a great translator

Born to Taiwanese parents in New York in 1993, King moved to Taipei at the age of one and learned to read Chinese characters before starting kindergarten.

An only child, King described herself as a lifelong bookworm. As an English major at Princeton University, she devoured works by authors from the 18th to 20th centuries, such as Jane Austen, George Eliot, and E.M. Forster.

During her time at Princeton, she learned Japanese and took a course in literary translation, which sparked her interest in the field.

This passion led her to pursue a master's degree at Columbia University, and she later translated Edogawa Ranpo's "The Daydream" from Japanese to English as her first published translation.

King acknowledged the challenges of being a translator in the United States, where translators often act as agents for authors and their works while waiting long periods for payment.

"When I was translating 'Taiwan Travelogue' and waiting for publishers' responses, I supported myself by working as an administrative staffer at the university," she said.

She also worked as an interpreter for Chinese artist Cai Guoqiang (蔡國強) and had to quickly draft a press statement for him. Looking back at those days, King said the high intensity of the job helped her grow a lot.

Next chapter

"To amplify Taiwanese voices in the English-speaking world, I'm now dedicated to translating works either from Taiwan or by Taiwanese descendants," King shared.

In addition to "Taiwan Travelogue," King has also translated "The Boy from Clearwater" (來自清水的孩子, also "Son of Formosa"), a four-volume graphic novel by Yu Pei-yun (游珮芸) and Zhou Jian-xin (周見信).

The series chronicles Tsai Kun-lin's (蔡焜霖) journey from the White Terror era of the Kuomintang's dictatorship in his youth to Taiwan's democratic transformation.

Despite primarily reading English and American literature during her high school and college years, King said she is "not picky" about genres when choosing translation projects, viewing extensive translation as "a way to rediscover Taiwan as a reader."

"I hope we can embrace the diversity and inclusivity of Taiwanese society and share with the world the stories only Taiwan can tell," she said.

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