THIS IS AN IN-PERSON EVENT AND WILL NOT BE LIVE STREAMING.

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

Translating the Multilingual will focus on the translation of texts that are not linguistically homogeneous: texts that mingle Mandarin with Cantonese and English, for instance, and as such present peculiar challenges to the translators. The aim of the symposium is to learn about the diverse strategies adopted by the translators and to brainstorm on how to reconceptualize translation in light of these practices.

The symposium will comprise two parts: a 90-minute panel conversation among Jennifer Feeley, May Huang, and Tammy Lai-Ming Ho, moderated by Nicole Liu (Ph.D. student in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations); and a keynote lecture by Tammy Lai-Ming Ho at 5 pm.

The program will be followed by a reception.

The Seminary Co-op Bookstores will have a bookseller on-site to sell copies of the following titles:

If I Do Not Reply (Tammy Lai-Ming Ho)

A Cha Chaan Teng That Does Not Exist (Derek Chung, trans. by May Huang)

Tongueless (Lau Yee-Wa, trans. by Jennifer Feeley)

Mourning a Breast (Xi Xi, trans. by Jennifer Feeley)

RELATED EVENTS

Tammy Lai-Ming Ho will participate in a poetry reading on Thursday, November 21st at the Center for East Asian Studies Conference Room (319). Learn more about the reading by copying and pasting the following link into a browser:

https://tammy_lai_ming_ho_poetry_reading.eventbrite.com

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

May Huang is a translator and writer from Hong Kong. Her translation of Derek Chung’s A Cha Chaan Teng That Does Not Exist was published in 2023 via Zephyr Press. Her writing and translations have appeared in Words Without Borders, World Literature Today, Circumference, Electric Literature, the Massachusetts Review, and elsewhere. She is also a crossword constructor, and her day job is in communications.

Jennifer Feeley holds a PhD in East Asian Languages and Literatures from Yale University and currently serves as a part-time Faculty Mentor in the International MFA in Creative Writing & Literary Translation Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her original writings and translations from Chinese have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies, including Two Lines, PEN America’s Glossolalia, Epiphany, Cha, Mekong Review, Chinese Literature Today, World Literature Today, and Creating Across Cultures: Women in the Arts from China, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan, among others. In 2019, she was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellowship to translate Xi Xi’s semi-autobiographical work Mourning a Breast.

Tammy Lai-Ming Ho is a Hong Kong-born scholar, editor, poet, and translator. She is editor-in-chief of Cha: An Asian Literary Journal, the first English editor of Voice & Verse Poetry Magazine, translation editor of The Shanghai Literary Review, and founding co-editor of Hong Kong Studies. Her poetry collections are Hula Hooping (2015), which earned her the Young Artist Award in Literary Arts from the Hong Kong Arts Development Council, Too Too Too Too (2018), and If I Do Not Reply (2024). Her academic book Neo-Victorian Cannibalism was published in 2019. Tammy’s translations have appeared in World Literature Today and Chinese Literature Today. She was a writer-in-residence at the University of Iowa's International Writing Program in 2023 and a fellow at the Käte Hamburger College for Cultural Practices of Reparation (CURE) at Saarland University in 2024.

SPONSORSHIP

This event is co-sponsored with the University of Chicago Library, the Seminary Co-op Bookstores, Translation Studies, the Arts and Politics of East Asia (APEA) Workshop, and the Center for East Asian Studies with support in part by grant funding from the U.S. Department of Education’s Title VI National Resource Centers program. This event's content does not necessarily represent the policy of the U.S. Department of Education, and one should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.

PHOTOGRAPHY/VIDEOGRAPHY

Please note that there may be photography taken during this educational event by the University of Chicago Center for East Asian Studies for archival and publicity purposes. By attending this event, participants are confirming their permission to be photographed and the University of Chicago’s right to use, distribute, copy, and edit the recordings in any form of media for non-commercial, educational purposes, and to grant rights to third parties to do any of the foregoing.

Translating the Multilingual Symposium