Tuesday, June 16, 2015

Nothing can stop a good story, however badly told

Collective translations into Vietnamese of Chinese network-generated fiction have caused outrage in the press – but their popularity is undeniable

trang ha
Writer and translator Trang Ha has condemned the quality and translation of Chinese fiction in Vietnam.
In a report for China’s state-run television channel CCTV in March, the Vietnamese writer and translator Trang Ha condemned the conservatism of Vietnamese literature, and the paucity of good-quality fiction available to her compatriots. She was speaking in response to the increasing availability of Chinese novels in Vietnam – works which have often taken a convoluted and heavily mediated route to market. These have been appearing in such quantity that Tuoi Tre, one of Vietnam’s leading newspapers, felt compelled to publish an editorial decrying the “rubbish Chinese fiction rife with mawkish and sexual elements” which has “cast an insidious spell on large numbers of Vietnamese teenagers and young adults”.

The novels in question originate in China’s vast wangluo wenxue (literally “network literature”) communities, online forums and discussion groups which have produced thousands of pieces of fiction, many of which have gone on to become bestsellers. Alongside traditional narratives, network literature includes multimedia texts containing graphics, photos and videos, and stories with multiple authors, with hundreds of contributors in extended threads which may roll on for years on message boards.
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