Ly Lan, a Vietnamese national living abroad told the Youth Newspaper of her dreams of bringing her culture to other countries through translation into popular languages.
Mr Duc Binh, director of Literature and Arts Publishing House, has signed a contract with Lan to publish one of her stories and a collection of poems in Vietnamese and English in 2007.
“Foreigners are increasingly flocking to Vietnam for business, research, or travelling. If only 1 percent of them wanted to know about Vietnamese literature, for example, the number of foreign readers would be thousands. Besides, many young overseas Vietnamese are in need of finding out their origins, a good way of doing this would be through reading literary works."
"Some Vietnamese literature has been already translated and sold abroad but never in large quantities nor diversity.”
"Actually, demand from the foreign market remains high and there are facilities to produce many books", Lan continued.
Lan said she felt embarrassed when it came to introducing Vietnamese literature to friends at book festivals in America as there were none of real literary value. Sometimes she cannot find Vietnam’s translated contemporary literature in local bookstores and has to buy copied books illegally sold on pavements.
Another reason urging Lan to publish bilingual books is a growing trend in Viet Nam where giving works of literature as a gift is now seen as upmarket. The books, of course, must have interesting plots and be translated into recipients’ own languages.
At present, English is the most popular language over the world while Chinese is spoken by one and a half billion people. For this reason, it is time for us to make a bookshelf of Vietnamese literature in English and Chinese, Lan said.
Ly Lan recalled one anecdote on the issue when she was translating a poem of Vietnamese into English. She gave it to two Americans for their comments. A university professor read it over and over and said it needed no correction on grammar or spelling. For poet Bruce Weigl, he made a few modifications such as changing punctuation, correcting some letters after exchanging views with her. He then said that was an interesting poem. When Lan read the corrected poem in public, a lot of audiences shared the same thought with poet Bruce Weigl. Even the professor expressed his surprise and excitement with the edited poem.
“I think our project’s key of success is to find editors who are talented poets and writers”, said Ly Lan.
She has successfully persuaded two editors and is trying to talk with 3 others.
Source: TT
Translated by Mai Huong