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Chinese to English translator and interpreter Michelle Deeter joins us for an episode about the world of literature in translation, during which we learn about Amazon Crossing—an imprint that Amazon uses for good rather than for evil—as well as translation slams, which are kind of like poetry slams with less pretension. We talk about the different ways that book translators find work, how Americanizing a novel sometimes means just adding more beer, and how a translator’s role fits into the long and arduous publishing process.

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Foreign

Welcome to the hybrid club Scout podcast with me, Emily

einerlander and me. Corinne kalasky, hello. We're mapping

the frontier between traditional and indie publishing, and either

Today is Halloween or tomorrow is Halloween, but either way,

it's great. We're excited.

And today we have Michelle Dieter with us, who is throwing

a Halloween party tonight. That's right, and we're all

invited.

Welcome to Manchester. Anytime, folks, anytime.

I hope you're in route right now.

Don't accidentally go to the Manchester in Jamaica, the

Manchester New Hampshire. We're in the one in England. Just,

yeah, okay. And then just keep asking for the American redhead.

I'm sure you'll get to my house eventually.

That is that, is that a good thing, that that's how you're

found? Well, I don't know. I don't think that I'm that

famous, but my friend came over from New York, and he's like, I

bet you the guy that sells you train tickets and the person

that's at, you know, the supermarket, whatever, I bet

they remember you as the little American. I'm like, Oh,

I imagine, like when you were in China, that's definitely like,

how people

knew

the redheaded American who can't stop talking, but they didn't

want you

to. All right. Michelle Dieter is a Chinese to English

translator and interpreter. She got started translating short

stories in 2013

and translated her first book in 2015

since then, she has translated a second fiction book to non

fiction books and a whole bunch of boring documents that help

pay the bills. Her greatest achievement was the CO

translation of paper tiger with Nikki Harmon. She lives in

Manchester in a 100 year old house.

That's the most Halloween detail I could think of. I don't have

any cats. That would be my publishing cred, but

unfortunately, I'm allergic. Oh, that's all right.

I also see here that you love translation slams. Do you care

to explain what that is? Yeah, definitely for us. For us

plebes, yeah, translation slams are this kind of event that's

really fun to hold at either a literary festival or at like a

university, college kind of campus. And what you do is you

pick a text, it can be in any language, you know, just

depending on your translators, and then you pick two

translators to do the same section. So I did this once in

Sheffield. We had a part of a short story, and two of us

translated it from Chinese to English. And then you put both

of those translators on stage, they both read their translation

aloud. And then you kind of pick it apart, why people have made

these decisions or those decisions. And if anybody in the

audience wants to ask, Oh, you put this in simple past tense

and you decided to keep this in present tense, why did you do

that? Or, Oh, that's so interesting that your jacket is

brown and that jacket is yellow. Like, does that mean that the

color for brownish yellow is kind of a fluid concept in

Chinese? Why? Yes. So it's a really good way to

kind of promote a book or promote an author, if you have

that, or just help people realize that when it's

storytelling, there's different ways to tell the story, even

though both of them are very like well produced translations.

You're not trying to choose which one is right. Actually,

it's not a competition. It's just showing people how the art

works and giving them a chance to interact with the translator

when otherwise they might just read the work and not have a

chance to ask questions. So it's not the sort of SLAM where

people are booing and cheering and like yelling, oh bird or

Yeah, that's what people at slams do, because they're cool.

I mean,

snap your fingers or something if you were into it.

So listeners, if you if you have deduced from this description,

we are entering the world that not a lot of Americans talk

about a lot, which is literature and translation, and we are

woefully ignorant. A lot of us are of that here in the States,

but I think a lot of us are trying to get better about it.

Michelle is going to help us. I think as long as you're

enthusiastic, we can get you totally on board and ready to go

with just one episode. Yeah, you'll be completely converted.

All you'll be doing is reading in translation.

I'll be kind of impressive, amazing.

We would credit you completely.

Oh yeah, oh yeah.

All right. Well, tell us about your career as a translator and

interpreter, and how you got into it in the first place, just

the entire translation, interpretation thing, not

necessarily books. Sure, I didn't know that I wanted to

learn Chinese until I got into college that was offered as like

a 101 class. And from my first class, I realized, Oh, my God,

this is it. I love Chinese. So, so much. So I did Chinese for

four years, and then I went to China, which is where I met you.

Emily, yeah, that changed my life. And I kept studying

Chinese. I went to study Chinese specifically for translation and

interpreting in England. And then I ended up, I ended up

staying in England. So it's just something that, once I realized

how difficult and yet really cool Chinese is, I thought, Oh,

this is it. This is what I want to

do. So the difficulty was part of the allure. Yeah, it's so

hard that nobody else can do it, and so you feel really good when

you get a single thing right.

That makes complete sense. I mean, I often tell people, I

tell people that Chinese isn't that hard, but I want people to

think that it's hard. So I don't have competition in my job.

If I recall you were like, the most encouraging Chinese isn't

that hard person that I knew other that who wasn't a Chinese

person when we were living there? I mean, yes, no, you

know, I think anybody who wants to try Chinese, please do. And

it's amazing. And even just learning a couple of sentences

can be really, really fun, but, but it takes a lot of work to

make it look effortless,

or to use it actually, like in a kind of office environment,

because otherwise you just,

you don't get past, like, the restaurant level, And that's

frustrating.

Yeah? Well, when, when did you turn from just general

translating, or often office translation, to literature? And

how did you fall into those opportunities, or or pursue

those opportunities? Yeah, unfortunately, there aren't a

whole lot of opportunities to get into literature translation,

but it wasn't something that I knew I really wanted to do

either. It's just when I got to England, there was a woman

called Nikki Harmon who was hosting these translated fiction

events in London, and I just wanted to be part of that scene.

I was like, This is so awesome. So I went down from Newcastle,

took like, a three hour train to just be a part of these

translation little, you know, fun workshop things. And Nikki

Harmon was so awesome. She said, How about you put some

translated short stories on our website, paper Republic. And

then after that, I started to kind of build a portfolio.

Another shout out actually has to go to Amazon crossing because

they're a beast, and so they give opportunities to a range of

translators with different experience. So someone from

Amazon crossing just emailed me, not even sure how they found me,

and said, we're getting books with your language pair on a

platform. If you're at all interested, you know, just put a

bit up there and maybe we'll choose you. Wow. So that was my

first book. Yeah, what's Amazon crossing? Amazon crossing is a

part of it's like a publisher for Amazon.

I assume it's not their only publishing house, so I think the

word here is, aha, you got it, yes, but they only do translated

fiction. So I think every year they publish a whole whole lot,

like more than any traditional publisher, and just about every

language prayer you can think of. So for Chinese, it's a major

source of new translations every year. And they also specialize

in genre fiction. So sometimes you get, like, a university

press translating stuff, but they usually choose something

that's got literary merit or is a classic. And I kind of really

admire Amazon crossing for doing stuff that's just popular or

going to be a good story, rather than something that's stood the

test of time for the past 50 years the way we've always done

it exactly. So you had a good experience with Amazon, yeah. I

mean,

there's many sides. It's a it's a Hydra. Maybe there's a lot of

head to it that we want to cut off. You know that we've

compared it so.

That before, right? Yeah, that's a good point. Oh, I didn't even

think of that, but you used the word Hydra, which was a lot more

eloquent. I think we just said a many headed snake, or a many

snake.

There's just one particular head that's been really nice to me.

So,

because also, I mean, the really tricky part is, with this book,

translation stuff is that it's a risk for the publishers, but

it's also a big risk if the translator is doing it

individually, you know, because for three months that's your

main source of income. So you're really hoping that money comes

in. But I've, you know, I've worked with Chinese clients that

just never ended up paying me. And unfortunately, even Chinese

translators deal with that problem, whether they're going

Chinese to English or English to Chinese. So the bar is low. You

pay on time. You're considered an incredible publisher, you

know, oh my god. And at first they gave royalties, like,

after, like, a threshold of $50 I think it was a translator, got

their royalties, and now they just come, even if it's a check

for like seven cents, which is what it normally is for me, each

month, it just comes through to my bank account. So I think at

least for Amazon crossing every year, they're doing a little bit

better, and the people who know how to

negotiate or lobby for what translators deserve, are getting

what they deserve. So it's pretty good. Wow, yeah, yeah, I

am going to have to look into that more, because I am

completely ignorant of that. Well, next March, keep March

free and London Book Fair together. Oh, my God, Amazon

crossing. They have a whole stand. It's actually pretty

cool.

Wow. You could do that, right? You could come, yeah, yeah, just

hop on a plane,

or be like, climate friendly and get a canoe or

or a kayak.

Well, at that point you could have BuzzFeed pay for your

ticket, right? Like, Oh, that's right, and then I'll just get

there and be like, live streaming. Basically, I have

nothing to prove.

Yeah, yeah, that's our plan. I'm glad we figured this out. Yeah,

no more planning necessary,

exactly.

All right, well, you were talking about

about Nikki Harmon, and so that's she, right? Nikki Harmon,

okay, she was the first author that you worked a full book with

right? Paper Tiger? Yeah. Paper Tiger is non fiction. It's

written by a guy called Xu Zhiyuan, and he's, he pushes the

envelope a little tiny bit. He criticizes the Chinese

government a little tiny bit. So the book was published in

Taiwan, actually, not in mainland China,

but Nikki is the one that everybody knows right in London,

it's like, oh, Nikki, Will you translate my book? Will you

translate my book? And she was the one that said, How about we

do a co translation? And so she convinced the publisher that

even though she does British English and I do American

English, we could mesh our styles and you wouldn't be able

to tell which parts she did and which parts I did, wow, that she

really gave me a leg up. That also was the best selling book

of anything I've ever translated. So it was, yeah,

kind of a stepping stone for my career, for being like a well

known person that does this. That's a really, that's a really

cool move on her part, to give you a leg up like that. She's

such a helpful mentor. She's done that a few times. Right

now, she's doing a fiction book with another translator who's

based in Japan,

but one's Canadian English and one's British English, and it's

still going to be fine, you know, once you've got the

editor, and since both translators look at the other

translators parked,

you can pretty easily smooth things out, and you have a

second pair of eyes that's more likely going to catch mistakes.

So in some ways, it's actually a great approach. Yeah, a lot, a

lot more security, I would think,

yeah. And you know, someone to commiserate with if you have

but yeah, she's just, she's so helpful to the kind of promoting

the community and get people out and talking about translation.

So, so glad to have her. All right, I'm gonna jump in here

and ask a question. Go for it, if that's all right, okay, how

does your translation work? Bring you into contact with the

book community.

Um, so I don't know if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but I

only get sporadic contact with the book community, I think. But

go on double edged sword. So I mean, most of my publishers have

been based in the US. Some of them have been based in the UK.

So that does mean that, you know, going into.

Somebody's office is not feasible at all. Sometimes I'll

talk to the editor. I assume it's the editor that chose to

translate the book, you know, like over Skype. Oftentimes it's

just over email.

But more recently, I was at a symposium hosted by Leeds

University and the genre fiction editors for head of Zeus, which

is

medium sized publisher in the UK, they

came over so we had Nicholas Cheatham and Laura Palmer just

telling us about translated genre fiction from their

perspective, because they've done the three body problem and

a couple of other books that were surprisingly successful,

like real Okay, for a translated book, very successful, yeah,

where did the three body problem come from? That was originally

in Chinese, yeah, came from China.

Oh, why didn't I know that? I knew about the book, but I

didn't know it was from China. That's great. It was, it was

first published by Tor in America, okay? And then head of

Zeus bought the rights, which is so confusing to this brain of

mine,

because it was bought from Tor instead of from a Chinese

publisher or or just the fact that the English rights can

split like that. I don't know how many languages can do that,

but they bought the rights, and then they basically didn't

change anything to the book. I think they just changed the

cover, and that was it. I think sometimes they do that with

Spanish language rights too,

with South America versus Spain, but I don't think that happens

very often. I think they usually go by language rather than

country. But I don't know. I think that one book that Corinne

and I worked on did sell to an individual South American

country

without them having full Spanish language, right? So I yeah, I

guess it happens sometimes, but it's weird.

I should know this too. I worked in foreign rights for like a

year and a half, like, a long time ago, but I unfortunately do

not remember what the deal is with this either. So yeah, try

to keep it murky, though. Do you know what I mean? Yeah?

Probably, yeah, yeah. Well, to negotiate and whatever makes the

publisher the most money. You know that means like, yeah,

being unclear about it, then that's what they'll do. Their

offer is bigger than yours. That's right.

No, no, no, no more than that.

Oh, man, I haven't negotiated in a while.

I bet you're a great negotiator, though. I mean, Michelle was

there. Oh, well, yeah, does she drive a hard bargain? Because

she seems like she would. Oh, I'm one of those surprised like,

before you know it all of a sudden, I'm doing the project

like quite ninjas, but you know what I mean? Yeah, secretive

types. Oh, you're on the team now. Oh, I'm so glad

I just smiled my way into this, and now I'm going to own all of

you bingo. That's my strategy,

girl. I know you.

Well, you know, I mean, couldn't happen to a nice person.

I'll take the next one. Yeah,

it's like, that makes sense. I like leaving spaces for you,

correct? I appreciate that. Thank them. Thank you.

All right, what do you think people who work in the

publishing world should know about book translation?

Um, I think there's,

there's a couple of things that you should know. So one thing is

that a lot of translators are really ridiculously committed to

the book. So if you give us time and resources, we could even win

awards. So back to that three body problem that won the Hugo

Award,

wow, yeah,

for sci fi, that's really prestigious. Or even paper

tiger, the book that I worked on, won the English pen award.

Oh, my god, wow. Congrats. Yeah, wow, yeah. So you know, these

relationships can work well both ways. It's just a question of

kind of communicating to the other side, figuring out what

somebody needs. When you're talking to someone like Ken Leo

or like Nikki Harmon, who are both really big translators in

the Chinese to English field, they know what they need. They

will get what they need by negotiating for it. No problem.

But if you're working with a baby translator, they might need

to understand that, okay, there's going to be the editor

that talks to you about the book, and then there's going to

be maybe another editor, and then there's going to be the

line editor slash proofreader, person,

you know, maybe explaining that you're going to turn in the

book, and then later we need you to do the kind of checking of

stuff.

Often you don't get paid for that, like all that just needs

to be kind of explained in advance, because most

translators don't realize how many people will be involved in

getting a book to press, basically.

And some newbies have really grandiose ideas, like, I want my

name on the cover,

which is awesome. You know, it should be, but it's, yeah, I

mean, it's, it's not always possible, yeah, right, right,

depending on the publisher. So for, for the book that got the

award, like, my name's not on the cover, it's still on the

title page. It's fine. And there's two translators like,

that would just be a lot of space. Yeah, I get it, you know,

I'm like, that's fine.

What's his name? His last name is Ruben. He does Murakami

translations. Like, I think he's one of the J is a J, J, Reuben,

I think, or is that a music producer? So he gets his name on

the cover. He gets his name on the cover. Sometimes he's like,

been his translator for many, many books. Like, what the only

one other than you, Michelle, who I can kind of name, off the

top of my head, only last name, though, apparently

it's a dude. It's fine. Yeah, I've heard, actually, I heard

him talk on this podcast called 88 cups of tea, and he's

delightful. And he was like, You, He didn't learn Japanese

until he got to college, and then he just fell in love with

it and became super absorbed. And he wasn't even like,

starting college. He was about halfway through, and then

discovered it and stayed longer so he could complete a Japanese

degree. So, yeah, it just kind of seizes you. I would imagine,

yeah, oh, I mean, for myself, like, the first time I published

a book, I just felt so I felt the sense of accomplishment and

so proud of myself, and I wanted to tell, you know, my family and

everybody. So I think that translators, like, once they're

on board, they're really excited, and they do want to

work with the publishers. It's just the issue of maybe not

necessarily knowing where to put their energy. So you know how

Corrine, you've mentioned that sometimes an author doesn't know

how to promote themselves. Oh, yes.

Translators don't expect to have to be involved with promotion.

And to be fair, an author kind of needs to earn money from the

book over a longer period. I would think, yeah. But the

translator, you know, like 99.99%

of their payment comes in advance, and that's not tied to

anything like an author's advance, right? So they kind of

assume that they're done at that point. And it's rare that you

get a

that you get a translator that's like, Oh, hey, let's do

translation slams for this. Let me do interviews or, you know,

let's see if the New York Review of Books wants to talk to me,

because maybe the author doesn't speak enough English to promote

that book in the other language.

And that's just all stuff that, you know, you put on the table

and you see what you can manage.

Beijing. Meijing didn't do so well because it wasn't promoted

partially, also, though it was compared to The Great Gatsby,

which I think is just not a good comparison title. Let's roll it

back a little bit. What book is this? Oh, so my very first book

is called Beijing. Beijing, okay, it's very raunchy. It's,

do you know Henry Miller? Yes, yeah.

Tong is basically trying to be Henry Miller.

If I knew that before I started the book, agreed to them, I

would have said,

but it's the first chapter is funny, and he is a good writer.

So, you know, I did the whole thing no regrets. The only thing

is, when I finished, I was like, Dad, maybe don't let grandma

read this book.

Wow, was that a mainland China book? Was it published there

first? Yes, yeah, it was cool. And so there's nothing you know

political about that book. It's just a

schmuck of a guy going around in Beijing and trying to learn

medical stuff because he's a med student,

but also, like, have a lot of sex and a little chauvinistic

and whatever. You know, I had a great conversation with students

who read the book for their class. I couldn't believe it was

assigned. But they had these questions, like, you know,

why did you choose this book when actually it seems to kind

of promote chauvinism and stuff, and it's like, did you ever

think about making changes, or did you talk to the author about

parts? And that's a, that's a really good and serious

question. So

I mean, the first answer I had to give was just, you know, it

was my first book. I needed to get myself out there. And I

didn't realize until halfway through, but I knew once I have

a full book published, then other books are going to follow.

If I can't finish my first book, then maybe there will never be a

second book, right, right? And the other thing that's kind of.

Important is that if this is what the author says, You can't

sanitize it. That's not the job of a translator, right? So even

if they're using the F word and, oh God, the C word, you know,

I put that all in the English version. You know, it's not like

I'm trying to make a cutesy version. I want it to have the

same effect in both languages. Well, in that instance, I would

imagine you're like, Well, my name is not on the cover, yeah.

Oh no, my name is on the cover of that,

yeah. But again, no regrets. You know, I think he did what he did

for a purpose, and he admits that if he ever had a kid, he's

not even sure if he would want his kid to read this book,

this kid would realize what a schmuck he is. Oh, my gosh. Oh,

they'll realize it eventually. Well, he's fine. We all do. I'm

gonna have a kid so it's all set.

Yeah. I mean, I imagine at one point in life if, if we were,

like, if I were to have a kid, Corinne, if you were to have a

kid like they would at some point realize we were schmucks.

I think everyone realizes that about their parents. At some

point, it's just a question of time.

Exactly. Are you a Henry Miller schmuck?

That's the one. Oh, that's funny.

I don't remember where we were, but anyways, yeah, I think that

this the main takeaway is try to communicate more with your

translator and figure out if they need help, because they

won't know what to ask for.

All right,

what do you think people who work in American publishing

should know about global literature?

I guess the trickiest part is that nobody knows what sells.

Or, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, it's someone tried

recently to kind of sum it up in a few words. And it's like,

usually you want a book that has a little bit of the source

culture, so a little bit of a Chinese flavor, in my case, but

also has some universal themes, you know, like family or like

revenge, so that anybody can jump into the story, but you do

feel like you're taken to a new place,

but that's, I mean, so broad that that doesn't really help

you make any decisions, right? So I think the thing to be aware

about if you're working in acquisition, say, or just, you

know, if you're if you're interested in promoting

transited literature, is that everybody is working on limited

resources, and we're making decisions without the full

information, like it takes me

four weeks to, like, four months to finish a whole Chinese book.

Therefore, I don't know what's popular. I don't know exactly

what I like when it comes to Chinese literature. You know, I

have to rely on friends or kind of read around a little bit, and

in most cases, I wait for the book to come to me

because it's just too expensive for me to try to sit and find a

Chinese book that I like and then try to negotiate rights and

all that by myself. Oh, my god, yeah. And that's the case for

most translators. We have one exception. Her name is Helen

Wong, and she did a deep dive on Chinese literature for children.

So she like read all top 20 books, and she made this really

cool PowerPoint about it, realized that this one author

who was, you know, a really big name in China, would actually be

pretty suitable for an English translation. Went ahead and set

that up, and that won the Hans Christian Andersen award. Oh,

damn. Oh, my God. Oh, great thing. Yeah. And then off of

that, she gave speeches at the London Book Fair in China, like,

all over the place, yeah. And the best part is, her real job

is at the British Museum.

Like she's this lovely British lady, and she's actually super

great at translation. But it's not enough to be your day job,

not for anybody. Oh, wow, yeah. So, so you say, when she made a

PowerPoint, you saw her speak at a conference, or, yeah, yeah, it

was actually at Leeds University. Again, they're

putting on all the cool events right now, right? Um, but yeah.

So some people have maybe a little bit more knowledge, or

some people are maybe married to somebody Chinese, and so

that person ends up passing along like, what's popular. But

even if we know what's popular, the right situation is really

bad in China, yeah. So sometimes the same books, those rights,

get sold to multiple groups. Oh, and that, I think, is something

for the American side to be aware of, that it can be a big,

big mess, and it's, it's almost important for the publisher to

do things from a more like official side, rather than

hoping that the translator can set stuff up for you. Because

the last thing you want, of course, is to put a lot of

energy into a project that's not allowed to publish. Yes, right?

Yikes. It sounds like.

Often

to me from where I'm sitting, the way I imagined it to be, the

very little I know is that an editor who is managing the

project would hire a translator, and once the translation was

acceptable, then it would be passed on, however the way

you're speaking makes it sound like

the the translator almost acts as an agent or a foreign rights

sales person, in some cases, which sounds like a lot of

responsibility. Like, is that? Is that kind of a fluid

position, or is that something that translators kind of come to

expect. I think that I would love to do an investigation on

what the percentage is. So for myself, 100%

of the six books I have translated was the publisher

coming to me, and

that's because I like to make money,

so I let them figure out what books they want to translate if

they contact me. Now, I'm smart. I read through the book and

check, I check if I like the book, yeah. And

then we go ahead and sign off on the contract, right? So that's

the way I work. Some people call it the taxi driver method,

right? You just take the next one, the next project in line,

no matter who they are. And then there's the I don't know,

translator as advocate method. So Jeremy Tiong, who is based in

New York, has translated, I don't know, maybe like eight or

nine or 10 books now. And he does it the other way around. He

reads, figures out what he likes, figures out what

publisher might be interested in that kind of work, gets

permission from the author, and then sets things up from there.

That's a lot of work. I don't know how he survives in New

York,

but he's super talented. So again, I think at this point,

he's built a brand for himself, and he's done multiple for the

same author at this point, right? So everybody has been

happy with his work, and that means he gets more work, right?

Yeah, but that's so there's, there's definitely two ways to

do it. I don't think it's fluid, really. I think it's either

track one or track two, okay, and not to put value on one or

the other. Some of us, you know, don't know what we want to

translate, and some of us know exactly what we want to

translate. You know, we're passionate about this particular

author, or we know that this is, this is the kind of story that

Americans should be reading. So, you know, both ways are

possible.

So you sent me a link to something called the Society of

authors in the UK. Can you talk a little bit more about how you

got involved with them and what they are? Yeah, so the Society

of authors is based in the UK. I assume there's something similar

in the US. I just don't know about it,

but it's cool, because it's specifically for writers, and

then they have a subdivision for translators. So that's like my

main way of knowing how publishing works and what's

going on in the market, in the UK,

and so they do a lot of things. They publish guides like,

I don't know how to sign a contract and how to do a

book reading, maybe stuff like that. They provide legal advice

if you realize you're in trouble or you kind of need help with

stuff. And they even give out literary prizes to young

authors, to translators, all kinds of things.

There must be something like that in the US. I know that

there's the Authors Guild. Oh, right, yeah. I don't know if

that's the same thing, but I think it's pretty similar.

They're the ones who make statements when there's some

kind of kerfuffle. Yeah, exactly. And they do that out

here as well. And so again, it's like, there's only so much time

I can devote to anything. So if I can just read their newsletter

and see what the issue of the day is that's really helpful to

me, or to just, you know, realize, like, this is why we

got to be aware of this problem. I can read their kind of

synthesis of the issue and be like, Okay, now I know what's

going on. Now I know what to ask for. Yeah, would you say that

the site of authors, and just generally, the publishing

publications and trade publications, I would say in the

UK, are more connected with the rest of the world and not

necessarily internal

solely. Ooh, do you know I'm still such a newbie, such a baby

in this area. I don't think I could compare country to

country. I do see a lot of news from other countries though. No,

no, it's,

I mean, sometimes, you know, the US stuff comes over just because

it's the same language. I mean, we don't care

Exactly, exactly.

But no, I think what's important.

Is that they can tell you like, oh, this book came out, or this

issue of royalties has come up, this issue of, you know, new

format has come up, and that keeps me informed. But also so

you got to remember, most translators are individuals

working at home, and they have no idea who to reach out to if a

contract goes really wrong, or if they're about to sign a

contract and they can't tell if it's good or not. So if you have

something like the Society of authors or something similar,

where you can just get a gut check from somebody who has

experience, you can get some advice. You can get someone that

can lift you up when you're feeling down. I think all that's

extremely valuable for people that you know have to work from

home and might feel very isolated otherwise.

Yeah, and I mean, that's a that's a growing trend for

editors trans and translators and designers and people who

work in book production in a lot of capacities, to be isolated at

home and to work for themselves, and I can see that as being an

easily exploitable thing by the people who are

managing the projects and doling out the out the books. Yeah,

exactly yes. Some some kind of unification is probably super

valuable, yeah, yeah. So whoever you are, wherever you are,

figure out what that group is and go join it.

Yeah,

unionize

whatever that means.

I know there's a freelancers union. I know some people who, I

think, listen to the show, who are part of it. I haven't quite

listened. I haven't quite haven't quite gotten into it

yet, but I might be they should do a census. How many different

jobs does? Does everybody do in the Freelancers union there?

They might have that actually, I can. I should arrange an

interview with someone, yeah, because there's always,

there's always something to learn, you know, whether it's

the way you combine stuff, right? So the Writers Guild in

the US seems more specific to writers, whereas the Society of

authors kind of folds in the translators. It's like, well,

you know, you're considered an author of that book, and so you

can get the same advice that we do if you become a member, yeah,

well, that's something to learn about, you know. And same thing

like, if you extend to freelancers, and then you can

include, like, the illustrators of a book or something else.

Maybe that's advantageous, yeah. And again, we on the show have

revealed an open place that we still need to explore and add to

our map.

Very good. I'll see myself out.

Well, you sent us two copies of a book that you translated

recently called the untouched crime. And could you say the

name of the author please? Yes, the chin Chen. So you've been so

you've been kind enough to send that to us. We're going to give

one copy away.

So can you kind of sum up what that's about? I know it's a

thriller,

yeah. So tell us a little bit about it. I mean, true learn. I

think it's not nevermind. I will, don't worry.

So I think there's two ways to read this book. You can either

kind of follow it from Chu, Hui, ru perspective, she's a young

migrant worker who accidentally gets involved in a murder, and

then she needs to outwit the police and figure out where she

stands. Or you can read it from Lowell one's perspective. He's

an ex cop. He's like a super smart forensic investigator that

decides to stop working in police, and he gets involved in

a murder, and he's trying to help somebody, and he's also

trying to outwit the police. Well, you got to figure out why.

So I think basically, depending on whether one character is more

interesting to you, you can read it on either of those levels.

But when you look on the back of the book, it's talking about two

other people. Well, not two other people. It's talking about

little Wen and then Professor yen. And for myself, I don't

think Professor Yen is very interesting, but it does add a

good foil. So okay, fine. I'm guessing you didn't write the

back cover copy then, oh no, it was definitely involved. But I

don't,

I don't know how to sell books, and I don't know how to say you

can follow juweru or you can follow Lo and people are trying

to outwit the police. It's just,

it's a really hard job. Selling books is a hard job. But you

could say that again, sister,

yeah.

Yeah, but yeah. So the crimes are set in Hangzhou, and that's

southeast China, and that just adds a couple of interesting

elements into it. So it's a good story, yeah.

And how would you compare it to working on paper tiger?

Okay, so the untouched crime is fiction, and then the paper

tiger is nonfiction. So those are really, that's the main way

that the books are different. For fiction, you need to make it

work, you know, like Tim Gunn says on Project Runway, all

right, oh my god, we finally got a Project Runway reference in

here. Michelle, thank you from the bottom of my heart. I mean

this sincerely. I love Tim Gunn, so much. Okay, go on exactly. So

what I mean by that is like, if it's crime fiction, you need to

hit those beats. Yeah, right, right. The pacing needs to work.

You might need to make little fine changes. So when I accepted

that project, I read a lot of crime fiction, you know, like

the girl with a dragon dragon tattoo, right? And I watched CSI

Las Vegas, and I'm like, Okay, how does this work as a reader,

as a viewer, like, what do I enjoy? What do I find annoying?

And how does the dialog sound? You know, I have to sound like a

police officer. Sometimes. I have to sound like a thug

sometimes.

And so then we picked up on some things that needed to change for

that book. For example, it was originally written as an online

serial, so it would be like last week in this book, this

happened, or just there'd be a little bit of padding, because

the author gets paid by the word

old school. Yeah. So L Ron Hubbard,

one of the most celebrated authors,

I think they were still at the London book fair, man, we gotta

get my god. Practice fair. Practice your canoeing. Okay,

we're going.

Oh, okay, wait, oh, yeah. So we changed the length of the book,

just cutting out the padding that we didn't need. And then we

actually made some minor changes so that the story would be more

believable and just work for the US audience. In Chapter 12, a

character buys a six pack of beer in the Chinese version, and

that's supposed to be like, Whoa, a lot of beer. Like, he

must have bought it for two people. I told the author. I was

like, I think for an American audience, you know, maybe we

could make it two packs of beer. Then probably he wasn't going to

finish that for himself. He wanted to share that with

somebody else. And so that's what we did. We doubled the

amount of beer that that person bought.

I feel incredibly seen right now. No, but

this is, this is behind the scenes, man, nobody else knows

this, but you guys right now, and now all of you, and now all

of you. And then the last thing that we changed that's

interesting is there's a joke about somebody steps into an

elevator with poop in it. I

don't know if you got to that part. No, I'm not there yet. I

had to, I had to translate the word poop so many ways,

turd,

but it felt very long in the Chinese version. And, I mean,

it's funny, but it just felt really drawn out.

Is it all? What's that? What's the what's the Chinese word for

turd? Sure.

Of course, it's Shi like all the other things. Everything is

right, everything.

So anyway, so with fiction, you're making it work. And then

with nonfiction, you kind of have slightly different

priorities, even though you're doing the same kind of job. So

you have to be the super duper fact checker when you're doing

non fiction.

As a really easy example, in the non fiction book, The in the

original Chinese, there was a lot of footnotes to make sure

that the reader knew what was happening and to kind of give

the facts. And so in the English, we kept those

footnotes. We also added more footnotes to make sure that the

UK reader or the US reader could follow and had the facts that

they would need, because they might need a little bit more

background. Yeah,

whereas Amazon crossing has a strict no footnotes ever clause,

because they think that pulls the reader out of the story.

So nonfiction,

Amazon, crossing doesn't do nonfiction. I think they only do

fiction. Oh, oh, okay, I'm sorry. I was, I was, so that's

fair. But anyways, like, that's, that's the most obvious example

is that footnotes are okay for the fiction, for the nonfiction

book, footnotes are not okay. So even if you want to explain

something, you have to do it really secretively, like in the

fiction book, they're all debating like, why would he use

a jump rope as a weapon?

And I

Well, yeah, and I had this feeling that there might be some

American readers being like, why didn't he just shoot the guy?

Why?

Because that really is an effective way of killing

somebody. But in China you can't get access to guns, right? So in

China, actually, the most popular weapon of choice is a

knife.

So I can't add any kind of footnote for that. I end up just

writing just really short. Not

going to look for it. But anyway, so just add a half of a

sentence. It's surprising that he didn't use a knife comma,

since guns were, uh, rare and almost impossible to find.

So he can't add a footnote for that. But yeah, for the non

fiction, um, you don't have like, you still need to be

creative because you want it to be an engaging book still, but

you're not going to be cutting things out. You're not going to

be moving things around, and usually you don't have to deal

with dialog.

You're not a developmental editor, exactly, so it's

creative in a slightly different way. And then at the end of the

day, you're just spending more time on the research side of

things, because you can't get the names wrong. If there's a

quote that was originally said by an American, need to find out

what the original English was, and that's something that you

just don't need to do for fiction. So it's a different

division of work, I guess.

So there's a lot of onus on you to be your own fact checker as

well. Yeah. And, I mean, some, some people are super amazing,

and they catch stuff, and I don't even know how they catch

it,

but usually, unless you're working on the book with a

second translator, nobody else can tell that you've made a

mistake, because nobody else can read the Chinese Right, right?

And the author has finished the book. Usually the author is

available for questions, but you don't want to pester them. So

for the books that I've done, usually it's like 20 or 30

questions, and I got to think real hard, is this one worth

bothering the author for?

Can I find this answer in another way? Basically, yeah,

right. Do you have people that you know from your travels who

you kind of go to with issues like that? Yeah, definitely. You

know some people with maybe more of a math background or more of

a political background, whatever it is, because, oh, I have all

kinds of questions all the time. I do see you trying to

source, crowdsource answers on Facebook sometimes? Yeah. So for

the fiction again, like you're trying to tell the story and

keep people going.

And for me, for me, what that means is, I want the translation

to be interesting, but not so weird that they're like, Oh,

hey, what is that? I want them to be able to picture it. So I

think, oops, the most recent one was a passion E, which is a

super old kind of chair. And one translator really translated

that I respect a lot. He's like, What if you just put chair?

That's probably actually a very effective answer, because the

story is not about furniture. The story is just and then he

had a dream about a cat sitting in a chair.

So

so we don't, you know, we want it to. We want people to know

that it's a little bit bizarre that he dreams so specifically.

So maybe we can say thrown like chair or wooden chair or antique

chair, but we don't want to go so involved and write eight

immortals chair, because then some readers might be like, Oh,

hang on. Is that important? What's What's eight immortals?

It's now what now it? Know it so,

oh yeah, is

good for me to realize it? Well, that's

the thing it takes forever to explain.

It's I gotta know the Chinese culture. We're gonna have to

look it up later. Okay, I'll look it up later.

But basically, so what I do when I ask a question like that on

Facebook is just try to see how a range of different people feel

about it almost like, you know, an online focus group.

And depending on their answers, I can decide whether just one

word, Chair is better, or, you know, if everybody tells me, Ada

Mars chair, that sounds so cool, you know, then I'll change it

and I'll make it the confusing thing.

It's an Easter egg. Yeah, exactly, yeah. So do you have

any more plans or aspirations when it comes to book

translation, and if, which I'm sure you do? If so, what are

they?

Um, there's always stuff to do, but um, for me most right now,

it's mostly little stuff. Yeah. So I'm interested in doing more

book reviews, maybe giving talks at festivals or things like

that. Yeah, and we'll see what comes through. It's not always

something that I can plan, but in March actually, when I give a

talk about translating fiction versus nonfiction. So hurray for

that. I'm looking forward to that. Yeah, that's exciting.

Yeah.

Yeah, I also have a dream book that I'm holding on to. So we

were talking before about taxicab method versus translator

as advocate method.

And so I have this author that I've read, and I've translated a

short story of hers before. It's on paper Republic called 49

degrees. So you can read that for free. If you're interested,

send us the link. Yes, I'll send you the link. I just find that

she's a really compelling author. She describes things in

a really vivid way, and for me, her work is what I want to see

in English. She's the one that gets me really excited, because

more often we translate male authors from Chinese. We

translate people that get awards. And that's only a tiny

section of all the different kind of literature that comes

out in China.

But for me, this is my first time trying to organize a pitch

and trying to

find the right publisher that would be interested in a short

story collection. There's a lot of different things to figure

out and get right before I go send that out. So Emily, I might

be sending that along to you once I'm ready. Okay, yeah,

good. And

if you don't mind, I might ask around to to people, oh my gosh,

yeah, who might have some tips as well, if that's okay with

you? Yeah? So that's, that's the dream right now, is, as soon as

I finish this second short stories, have a good sample for

people to look at.

I want to send that round and see if anybody's interested in

taking it up. But it's awesome. It might work. Fingers crossed.

We'll have to see. Yeah, yeah. I mean,

the thing that kind of popped into my mind, and I'm not sure

that this is accurate, is that in

in the United States, when we see books coming from China, we

want to read about the political situation or the history, and

not necessarily, like, this person just wants to write a

cool story and then have it translated into English. Like,

yeah, we should be able to read authors who just want to write

about something fun,

and she's still, like, sometimes the characters go back in time.

Or, you know that there's a little bit of Chinese culture. A

lot of her characters paint and, like the traditional watercolor

style. So there still is elements of China, but it's not

that kind of book of like, oh, this is super sexy. Aren't you

going to be surprised that Chinese literature is like this?

Or, Oh, this book is red. Now, you know, it's from China.

So many like tropes, almost, in this area of fiction. And I

think we can get out of that. We can try some tell me more about

those. Because, yeah, tell me more tropes, because I feel like

I've probably seen them and just not even registered, yeah. So

number one, don't make your cover red. Number Two, don't put

anybody in a cheap haul, you know, a Chong Sam on your cover,

like that, button up dress, oh yeah, with the high collar.

That's the wood. That's a trope for a while. You used to just

put band in China on the cover. The

government doesn't want you to read this book

that was big for a while.

Oh, what else? Yeah, and for a while, every single story

happened in Beijing, as if there was no other city in the whole

country. I think New York City exists also.

I think that's the only city in the world, excuse me.

Well, that's exactly it. So like, for this story that we're

going to give away, guys definitely participate. Um, it

takes place in Hangzhou, and there are plenty of people that

have been there before. It's a fairly big city, and it's cool

that it's set in the south, like that's kind of part of the

story. But I heard recently that someone changed the city from

the original Chinese to Chengdu, and it's like they're not even

eating spicy food, and Chengdu is known for its spicy food like

awareness publishers just they want to make sure that it's

something that's palatable, but what they end up doing is making

everything look like vanilla, or just look like, yeah, no, like,

yeah, just all the same stuff. And once you've read enough,

you're like, I see what you're doing. That's disappointing.

This again, yeah, exactly, exactly. So those are the

tropes. That's all I could think of. Well,

if you think of any more, just post them on the Facebook page.

Yeah, oh yeah. Actually, I'll ask some people to weigh in. Oh,

you can do, you could do one of those, like listicles,

top 20. I'm sure that I'm tired of seeing, Oh yes, exactly

in a format.

We're all tired of reading. It would be so ironic,

really,

I bet you didn't notice these things. Turns out, click here to

learn more.

It's not a clickbait headline.

That's just a Read More link, it's fine.

All right, is there anything other than that that you would

like to promote for our listeners to follow or see?

Oh, actually, before I forget, I have one question for you guys.

Oh, sure. I want to know how you guys keep track of what you've

read, because I've realized that, you know, sometimes I

can't pull out a book of something. I'm like, Yeah, I was

a Welsh author, and that's the only detail I can remember of

that book. I do good reads you do? Yeah, I don't like it as a

social media platform, but I do use it as like, a aggregator,

yeah, yeah, pretty much. And I, I started before it was an

Amazon thing, and then I feel locked in well, which I know

isn't as much of a problem for you, which I respect for the

record, everybody's got to make a living, and it sounds like

they're, they're serving a need that I'm not sure if I know

everything that I've read, though. Like, fair enough.

Yeah, they're already and what about you? Corinne, I do the

same thing. I mean, I feel like the main difference between

me and Emily, sort of activity and good reads is that she

actually finishes all the books that she

there. I also try to give them stars and review, yes, and she

does that, God bless her. For all of them, all of them, well,

I'm hypocritical in some ways, but that's the one way I don't

want to be hypocritical, yeah, yeah. And like, a reputation,

yeah.

So I will like list every book that I'm reading, but I would

say I finish about 25% of so I just have a list that I mark is

read, and then I add it to the list that says stopped, which

means I didn't finish it. Oh yeah, okay, so then I can check

it off the list without feeling bad, but then I'm still being

like, this was a book I didn't like and wasn't interested in,

right, right? Yeah, and then you don't have to give it a one star

review. You just kind of set it aside. Yep, yeah, that's

massive. Exactly. I get so frustrated by people that decide

to write a review after, you know, getting three chapters in

and never finishing. Yeah, I have left a couple. Well, I

think I only left one scathing one star review for dead girls.

Oh, God, but a lot of people agreed with me,

in fairness. But other than that, I try to be more positive.

It's not even about being positive or not positive. It's

like, if you didn't give the book a good shake and get past

the halfway mark, like, oh yeah, maybe don't, don't write a

review because,

but also, I don't know, I'm a sensitive, you know, baby author

over here just

done so much, and now I know not to, like, look at reviews. So

that's, yeah, it's good that you've already, you've already

done two without getting too,

already done too emotionally, too cynical. Yeah, exactly,

yeah. So that'll come later.

She's not kidding.

Creepy

Oh, I just wanted to throw this, and I don't know if I'll keep

it, but like, we went and saw the Blair Witch Project at the

kind of old historical theater in Portland last week. Wow.

Yeah. It gets better, though. The producer, one of the

producers, was there and did a Q and A and this is reminding me

of the author who wrote Beijing, Beijing that you were talking

about, talking about his children thinking he was a

schmuck. This guy brought his the producer brought his kids to

the showing, and they had never seen it before. And they were

like, I think they were like, 1212,

pretty young. Yeah, they look pretty young. And so it was

like, these are the first time, this is the first time my kids

are seeing the Blair Witch Project. So

let's all have a good time.

I was like, I wonder how they feel about this. Well, okay,

that just proves, again, the point that eventually your kids

will figure it out, like you can't hide from them. What kind

of a schmuck yard I would love to have been in the car on the

way home.

Yeah, quiet, completely silent cry. I have nothing to say to

you.

That's funny, Dad, why

did you torture those people

who.

Yeah.

Oh, Michelle, are you reading like anything for your leisure

right now? Or are you just reading for work? I am reading a

lot for work at the moment. I'm trying to pass a test, so, yeah,

but yeah, but I recently finished Funny Girl by Nick

Hornby. Oh, okay. Author, yeah, yeah. I'm in the middle of

think, like a white person, have heard of this book? No, that's a

great title, though. It just came out in 2018

Okay, and it's

like kind of satire, irony style, so it's not fiction,

really. I mean, I would hope so. Yeah, go drop dead. Funny. It is

so good, so you should check that out. All right, I can send

you a link, and then what's the oh, I've been reading a little

collection of short stories

that is called

somewhere this way. It's published by the fiction desk.

Okay, so I know one of the authors in there, but it's just

really impressed at how different they all were, and two

of them had a Halloween bent. And I was like, yes, very cool.

Really excited to read it. So those are all short books. So I

find that sometimes it's hard to get through stuff, or I've

recently bought four books mostly based on recommendations

from your podcast. Oh, my god, that's amazing. So they're all

sitting around hoping to get the feather thief. One of your

guests recommended the feather thief. Yeah, I haven't read it,

but I remember that was, was that Artie I read on the plane?

Oh no, it was, remember who recommended Francis? Yeah, yeah.

And then we have the library. Remember that one, the one that

burned down the library book? Sorry, that burned down and

you can't see behind me, but there's just this huge stack of

books from all these different places. I can't remember what?

That's fine,

yeah? But yeah, I feel you. Corinth, there's, there's books,

like I'm running out of space at the moment. Yeah, they're

everywhere. I know, I know everywhere, yeah?

But it does. It feels so good when it's like, you know what?

This hour, I'm just gonna open one of these. Doesn't matter

which one just gonna sit and read. Feels so good. Yeah, it

does.

Sounds like you don't put too much pressure on yourself. Well,

well, I make pressure on myself in other ways, yeah, but like,

in terms of your reading, you're not going, like, I have to

finish this one, and I can only, like, read this other thing that

I want to read if I read this book first. And although, yeah,

I mean, I think I remember the first time that I was like, I

don't have to finish this book.

You know, like before you'd read books for school or something,

and it's like, you really, really had to finish it. Yep, I

know.

Not working for me.

Just go down. I know I go ahead. Sorry. No, go ahead. I was just

gonna say I only recently discovered the same thing. And

such a liberating feeling to be like, I'm gonna read 50 pages of

this book, and if by the 50th page, I don't give a shit, I'm

just gonna put it down and not feel guilty about it. And like,

I really, truly don't feel guilty about it anymore. It's

amazing, yeah, yeah, it's a whole new world. So anyway, I

totally understand beautiful. Yeah, not everything is for

everybody. No, it's true. True. Bingo.

Well, Michelle, thank you so much for being on favorite pub

scout. Yeah, it's been a complete pleasure. It's been so

awesome. Yeah? Well, I hope you have a wonderful day and that

you have a wonderful Halloween party. Yes, the

party too. We don't have to post them. I just want to see them. I

mean, if there is one that you want us to post, that would be

fun, yeah? Okay, I'll do two different emails. We'll do the

same email, and then the for Emily and Karina exactly be the

one we want to put one on Instagram.

Oh yeah, of course.

No. I mean, it'll be a team party, but I will send them to

you. Definitely awesome. I just want to see the costumes. Yeah,

me too.

Wait, what's your costume gonna be? I forgot, gonna be Anna from

Frozen. That's right. And you went, like, on a run as Anna

from Frozen, right? Yes, the costume is ready to go.

It's one of the easier costumes, but the cost per wear is going

down every time I put it on, so you're

getting all the value. That's it. That's it.

And you can follow us on Facebook at hybrid pub scout on

Twitter, at hybrid pub scout on Instagram, at hybrid pub Scout

pod. Please give us a review on any of the listening platforms

that you use, or just give us a five star rating if you do leave

us a review on iTunes. How?

However, we will read it in a funny voice. We're not getting a

lot of takers on that, but you know, if you my feelings aren't

hurt at all, try harder. People. Try harder. If you can do your

taxes, you can do an IT, where's my Oscar? That's what I want

to know. And go to our website. Check out our blogs that we're

starting to have more of. If you are part of our publishing

community, you have a success coming up, book that's coming

out, so book that you edited that's coming out, or a business

that you're starting anything of that type, then just drop us a

line, Emily at hybridpub, scout.com or Corinne at

hybridpub scout.com

and we'll try to include you in our newsletters that go out,

because we like celebrating our community victories. Yeah.

You got anything else, Corinne, I don't think so. Happy

Halloween. That's it. If you want to find me, basically just

go to my website, Michelle dieter.com, and you can ask me

any questions you want.

Fantastic. All right. Again, Happy Halloween, everyone. Yay.

Happy Halloween. And

thanks for giving a rip about books. You.