The peculiarity of snow – its impact on the landscape and on anybody walking through it – lends immediate atmosphere and crunchy quiet to the opening of Twelve Nights by Urs Faes, translated by Jamie Lee Searle (Harvill Secker, 84pp, £10.99). But snow also hides threats and each step must be a wary one.
So it is with Manfred as he revisits a German town near the farm on which he grew up and where his estranged brother still lives. Like all returning natives, he is keen to see what he remembers and what has changed. Above all, he needs to discover how much, if anything, has altered in his brother’s life and attitude towards him.
The following translation is an account of activist Lu Yuyu’s recent expulsion from Guangzhou. In 2017, Lu, a citizen journalist who documented labor unrest across China on the “Not News” (非新聞) blog and @wickedonnaa Twitter account, was charged with “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” and sentenced to four years in prison. His online prison memoir, “Incorrect Memory,” was translated in full by CDT. He currently tweets from @darkmamu6.
Translation: Lu Yuyu, “Goodbye, Guangzhou!”
“Up until that moment, I held onto the flukey hope that they’d get tired of yelling and leave, like last time; that afterwards I’d again pack my suitcase in the dark of night and escape to the next city.”
You’re not welcome in Guangzhou, the Guangzhou Domestic Security Department [DSD] agent said to me. There was no reason behind it, but in a sense it was entirely true.
Before 2021, I’d been to Guangzhou twice, and the DSD drove me out both times, which meant I didn’t have a particularly good impression of Guangzhou beyond the delicacies in its teahouse and a few friends.
The thing that pushed me to visit Guangzhou a third time was harassment by the Guizhou police. When my lease ran out in late December of last year, I started surreptitiously searching for a new place, partly because my landlord ruled out extending my lease under duress, and partly because I wanted to escape their harassment, to escape the feeling of panic and fear each time someone knocked on my neighbor’s door. The police once promised that they’d stop seeking me out, but I don’t think even they believed that. I used only cash to pay for breakfast and went to the farthest supermarket to buy anything, all in hope that they wouldn’t be able to find me. It was useless, surveillance cameras are everywhere.
Only one week passed between rejecting their demand that I meet them at my apartment and them knocking on my door. Of course I knew that they wouldn’t actually do much if they entered. But my fearful instinct, as well as a disgust that went beyond fear, made me unresponsive. I hid behind the door, waiting for them to leave. Luckily, after knocking for a bit, they left. Then I quickly packed up everything I could carry and once again set off for the city that had already expelled me twice—Guangzhou.
After arriving in Guangzhou, I didn’t immediately rent a house. I tried out a couple different places to feel them out. After realizing that all was okay, I tramped over to an island on the outskirts of the city to sign a one-month lease on an apartment. This might have been a bit too extravagant on my part—New Years was right around the corner, and that’s the moment they expel people. But on occasion the unexpected occurs, as it did this time. Not a single person came to kick me out through the New Year, possibly because they were responding to the new “Stay-At-Home New Year” slogan.
The only thing that scared me so badly I didn’t dare to return to the apartment for two days was when the landlord asked me to register my ID card again. What else would happen?
Apart from that one incident, everything was picture perfect: sunlight, scenery, petting the wild cats that roamed everywhere, hiking with friends, riding sharebikes through the lanes along the river and romping in the fields. When, for example, the auntie in the corner store said thanks after I paid for my things, or when the waitress at the pork and goji berry soup [a popular Hakka dish] place said that we need to add pepper to make it delicious….
After New Year, I stumbled upon an old house in the village. Even though it was dirty and broken down, it had a big open sun porch. With a little bit of touching up it would be an ideal place to live. I was a bit hesitant. I feared that I’d be forced to move before long, but after a few days of agonizing I decided to rent it. I busied myself for a week wiping down the walls and windows, washing the floors, buying second-hand furniture.I even asked my old landlord to send me my guitar. Everything went smoothly until the afternoon of March 9.
At noon of that day, I watched my landlord and two strangers walk past from my balcony. I assumed it had something to do with renting a room, but when my landlord called it raised my suspicions. She said, “Are you there? If you are, open up the door and I’ll come up to get the bed frame.”
I said I wasn’t there and hung up the phone.
After she left, I decided to go downstairs to have a look around.
I was living in a stand-alone two floor bungalow. I had the entire second floor to myself, and the stairwell between the first and second floors was closed. The stairwell’s first floor entrance had a door that could be locked from outside and in.
I couldn’t open the door, so I ran back up to the second floor sunroof to look down. The door had been fastened shut. For a moment I was dumbfounded. The people with the landlord were almost certainly from the Domestic Security Department [DSD], but why didn’t they directly identify themselves instead of instructing my landlord to pretend to grab a bed frame?
I thought about jumping from the building to escape, but my backpack would be too heavy, not to mention my slight fear of heights. I had no choice but to abandon that train of thought. After a while, a guy renting a room in the building behind mine walked by and I asked him for help. It was too late, the DSD agents had already purchased their own padlocks and locked the door.
I went back into my room, and sent out a call for help on Twitter while I lay on the bed waiting in despair.
Not long after, the rattle of activity picked up outside. They’d come back, this time with more people in tow. The sounds of knocking and yelling tumbled together. A neighbor turned me in, saying, “He’s inside.” Not long after, a yell came from the building behind ours: “Lu Yuyu, we are Huangpu Public Security Bureau police…” What a familiar phrase.
It shows up during hostage crises, right before the police put a bullet through the hostage taker’s head and the crowd claps. Or maybe during some huge drug deal case, right as armed police prepare to lob smoke bombs and breach the door.
I became even more terrified. I completely missed what was said afterwards. It was chaotic—the sounds outside made my brain uneasy.
Up until that moment, I held onto the flukey hope that they’d get tired of yelling and leave, like last time— that afterwards I’d again pack my suitcase in the dark of night and escape to the next city.
But they were tough and wouldn’t give up easily. They climbed up to see me—not sure if they used a ladder or directly scaled the building—but anyways, they climbed right up. Next they went downstairs to open the door, making way even more to come up. Right as I began to wonder about whether I should open the door and leave, the door opened. They had a key!
So many people, three standing in front of the store, one cop carrying a gun, two plainclothes guys who were obviously DSD agents, the cop with the gun in the middle, the two plainclothes by his sides, I’m face blind, all I can remember is one was a bit taller, the other a bit shorter.
I had nowhere left to run.
I loudly asked them: “What sort of people are you? You’ve barged into a private person’s home without permission, what do you plan to do?”
They didn’t answer
I kept at it: “How about your documents? Please take out your documents!”
The taller of the two DSD agents said: “Why do we have to take out documents!”
“If you don’t take them out, how will I know what sort of people you are?”
“He’s wearing a uniform. He’s police. He doesn’t need to show his documents,” said the taller of the DSD agents while pointing at the cop with the gun.
I didn’t know what to say all of a sudden. It was awkward.
The cop with the gun pulled out his documents.
“Fine. What do you want to do? If I’ve violated one of your laws, please show the warrant for my arrest.”
Nobody answered my question. The taller one said they wanted to speak with me.
I thought it over and then told him: “So come in and let’s talk then.”
The shorter one came in first. The taller one held back at first, but after seeing the shorter one step inside, came along as well. The two in police uniform came in after. Somebody in casual clothing kept coming in and out, obviously irritated. There were a couple more outside, probably about eight people. Afterwards my neighbors, that peanut gallery, told me it was a huge scene, with lots of cars and over a dozen people.
The conversation was led by two DSD agents: one tall, one small. The entire thing was chaotic. In the middle of it, people came in and quietly took away my scissors and cleaver. At one point I was on the phone with my older sister. I’ve approximated the rest of the conversation as follows:
Their demand was: I must immediately take everything I have and get out of Guangzhou, whatever I can’t take with me is not their responsibility. In the future, I will never be allowed into Guangzhou. Where I go is my own choice. I can leave with dignity or without it. They also asked whether I wanted to see the people [police] who had come from Guizhou to see me, that was also my choice.
I asked them why they were telling me to leave Guangzhou, and under which law? Or were there no official documents?
They didn’t give a reason. Instead they repeated incessantly that I was not welcome in Guangzhou.
I again asked, “Are you not welcoming me, or is it Guangzhou that isn’t welcoming me? If it’s private people not welcoming me, what right do you have to force me to leave? If it’s Guangzhou not welcoming me, can you give me an official statement?”
They couldn’t answer and again said the landlord doesn’t want to rent to me.
I have an agreement with the landlord, what does that have to do with you?
We went on in this meaningless struggle for some time. The conversation drifted to why I didn’t open the door. I asked them why they barged in.
I told them I didn’t open because I didn’t know who they were, and I was afraid. One of them said, “What’s there to fear from the police?” I said I fear police; I’ve suffered much at their hands.
I again asked them why they barged into a private residence, whether they had a warrant or not. The taller DSD agent said, “You are a renter, we can come in as we please, we don’t need to show a warrant.”
The obviously irritated DSD agent who kept coming in and out butted in and said: “It’s because you’ve committed crimes against the state.”
“How have I committed crimes against the state? Do you have any evidence?”
“You know exactly!”
“I don’t know! Please tell me.”
He turned and exited, like a spinning top.
After they received a call, their tone got warmer. They started calling me Mr. Lu. I was aware that carrying on like this was too tiring, too consuming, so I suggested everyone go downstairs, except one person who could speak with me. They insisted that two people stay. I thought it over and agreed.
Afterwards, we reached an agreement—well, in actuality I was forced to make an agreement— because I wanted to “leave with dignity”:
I must leave, but I don’t have to immediately give up the lease, the stuff inside can remain here and be taken care of later; they’ll pay the money for a bus ticket, and I can choose the place to go. No need to see the people who had come from home.
As I was packing, I saw the guitar I had sent for not a few days earlier, which I of course had no means of taking with me.
In the process of walking out of the alley, a tall woman with the air of a minor leader appeared.
I got in the car with them and, as they put it, “left Guangzhou with dignity.” During the ride, one DSD agent told me to carefully consider my own life, if whether doing this has any meaning. I didn’t care to argue. The other one told me that my expulsion was due to my online following, that if I delete my Twitter account nobody will harass me, that they’d discovered me while I was living in XX apartment.
The people who came from back home called me nonstop, demanding that I go to Guangzhou South Station to talk, but I refused.
The meaning behind Selena Gomez's Adiós lyrics explained.
Selena Gomez is giving Selenators everything we want with her Revelación EP but what do her Spanish 'Adiós' lyrics mean?
'Adiós' is Track 6 on Revelación, it's a kiss-off bop in which Selena Gomez calls out an ex who won't accept that she doesn't want anything to do with them anymore and still calls her at "three in the morning" even though they've split. 'Adiós' literally means 'Goodbye' in Spanish and the song sees Selena remind her ex that she's already said "goodbye" to them.
READ MORE: 13 hidden meanings in Selena Gomez's De Una Vez music video
In the chorus, Selena sings: "Adiós, esto no es pa' tí / La foto que subí, te lo quería decir 'Adiós'." In English, this translates to: "Bye, this isn't for you / The picture I posted, I wanted to tell you 'Bye'." She later adds: "No quiero drama / Quiero ir a la cama, con quién me dé la gana," which means: "I don't want drama / I want to go to be with whoever I desire."
What do Selena Gomez's Adiós lyrics mean? Read the full English translation below.
Selena Gomez Adiós lyrics: English translation. Picture: @selenagomez via Instagram, Interscope Records
VERSE 1
Your friends already told me
That you don't want to know about me
You don't miss that routine anymore
That your life is going better without me
PRE-CHORUS
But then, why do you claim me?
Asking me how and with whom
If you call me at three in the morning
When I've already forgotten you
CHORUS
Bye, this isn't for you
The picture I posted, I wanted to tell you "Bye"
It's fine, it's not ill-intentioned
This isn't personal, there's nothing to explain, bye
If they say that they saw me with someone else
It's probably true, yeah
Calm down, calm down, bye
I already said bye, bye
VERSE 2
Because there's nothing left here
You have me all wrong
Don't drown me with words
If I leave you on read, why do you call me?
No, no, don't play dumb
If I have you cray-cray
It's because I don't, I don't want drama
I want to go to bed with whoever I want
PRE-CHORUS
But then, why do you claim me?
Asking me how and with whom
If you call me at three in the morning
I already forgot you
CHORUS
Bye, this isn't for you
The picture I posted, I wanted to tell you "Bye"
It's fine, it's not ill-intentioned
This isn't personal, there's nothing to explain, bye
If they say that they saw me with someone else
It's probably true, yeah
Calm down, calm down, bye
I already said bye, bye
Speaking to Zane Lowe on Apple Music about Revelación Selena explained: "This has been something I've wanted to do for 10 years, working on a Spanish project, because I'm so, so proud of my heritage."
Check out the English translations of Selena's other Revelación tracks below.
Read the English translation of Selena Gomez's De Una Vez lyrics
Read the English translation of Selena Gomez's Buscando Amor lyrics
Read the English translation of Selena Gomez's Baila Conmigo lyrics with Rauw Alejandro
Read the English translation of Selena Gomez' Dámelo To' lyrics with Myke Towers
Read the English translation of Selena Gomez's Vicio lyrics
Read the English translation of Selena Gomez's Selfish Love lyrics with DJ Snake
Are we sure this is a cromulent thing to do, Dictionary.com?
Dictionary.com has updated its database with a slew of new entries and definitions, many of which were inspired by the COVID-19 pandemic, or the last year’s social and cultural movements. But some of the words that have been added are — for lack of a better word — not really words.
As part of its latest update, Dictionary.com has embraced three terms inspired by jokes from sitcoms that aired in the mid-‘90s. Two of the words, "cromulent" and "embiggen," were inspired by a 1996 episode of "The Simpsons," during a scene which hinged both terms being nonsense words. But now, the digital dictionary is legitimizing both of these non-words with official definitions — "cromulent" meaning "acceptable or legitimate," and "embiggen" meaning "to make or become bigger" — and perhaps ensuring that future generations, looking back at ‘90s TV, won’t get the joke.
Dictionary.com credits the popularity the third questionable word — "supposably" — to the character of Joey Tribbiani of "Friends," who definitely didn’t invent the term, but may have helped to popularize it in a 1995 episode. Supposably.
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Surprisingly, Dictionary.com isn’t the first reference database to adopt these entries, either. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary already has an entry for "embiggen," while the Oxford English Dictionary already has entries for all three.
Other new entries to the Dictionary.com database include terms that entered our lexicon amid the pandemic, including "hybrid learning," "superspreader" and a new definition for the word "Zoom." And some entries, like "doomscrolling"(obsessively checking the internet for bad news, or "sleep hygiene" (trying to get a maintain our quality of sleep) were directly inspired by habits that many of us were partaking in during lockdown, too.
As part of its latest update, Dictionary.com has embraced "cromulent" and "supposably" among hundreds of other new words. (iStock)
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In addition, Dictionary.com is adding several new words pertaining to race, social justice or identity — topics that came to the forefront of the news cycle in 2020.
"Our update also reflects how our society is reckoning with racism, including in language," said John Kelly, Managing Editor at Dictionary.com, in a press release issued Thursday morning. "We have added such terms as BIPOC, Critical Race Theory, and overpolice, which have risen to the top of the national discourse on social justice. Another significant decision was to remove the noun slave when referring to people, instead using the adjective enslaved or referring to the institution of slavery.
"This is part of our ongoing efforts to ensure we represent people on Dictionary.com with due dignity and humanity."
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A representative for Dictionary.com told Fox News that its database is augmented with new words and definitions regularly (and not only annually), but confirmed that its latest update marks its first new additions for 2021. According to the site, the lexicographers at Dictionary.com revised, added or otherwise "touched" more than 7,600 entries in this update, in total.
It’s unclear when they plan to embiggen the database once again.
Dictionary.com has added a crop of new words to its website. Per CNN, the new update includes a specific focus on race, social justice, identity, and COVID-19’s effect on our culture.
The outlet writes, “In the latest batch added to Dictionary.com, the online dictionary has included multiple African American Vernacular English words such as ‘finna’ and ‘chile.'” Other words added include BIPOC, Zoom, antiracism, superspreader, unmute, and reparation.
In total, there are 450 new words, 7,600 updated entries, and 94 new definitions of existing words.
In a statement, the managing editor at Dictionary.com said, “We have added such terms as BIPOC, Critical Race Theory, and overpolice, which have risen to the top of the national discourse on social justice. Another significant decision was to remove the noun slave when referring to people, instead using the adjective enslaved or referring to the institution of slavery. This is part of our ongoing efforts to ensure we represent people on Dictionary.com with due dignity and humanity.”
CNN also included some of the new definitions that will accompany these new words. For “finna,” they wrote, “A phonetic spelling representing the African American Vernacular English variant of fixing to, a phrase commonly used in Southern U.S. dialects to mark the immediate future while indicating preparation or planning already in progress.”
The definition for “chile” will be “A phonetic spelling of child, representing dialectal speech of the Southern United States or African American Vernacular English.”
History is a wonderful, thought provoking subject. I am always glad when Britain can claim to be the first when it comes to setting a historical precedent. This, however, I’m in two minds about.
A team of British academics have received £1 million in government funding to compile the first ever index of investors in Britain’s role in the slave trade. The Dictionary of British Slave Traders will document in great detail the estimated 6,500 Britons who took part and invested in the practice between the 16th and 19th century.
Speaking to CNN, the project leader, William Pettigrew, said: “We’re looking at the entire population of investors in the slave trade – not just independent investors, but also the corporations that were involved.” Some of the corporations with historic ties to slavery include the Bank of England and the pub chain Greene King. In keeping with historic firsts, the dictionary will also include detailed biographies of lesser-known shareholders and smaller investors.
While one always welcomes new contributions to knowledge in any discourse, I must question the motivation and timing for such a database, set to be published and made available online in 2024.
In explaining the rationale for the dictionary’s existence, Pettigrew, a Professor of History at the University of Lancaster, argues that the Black Lives Matter movement “made it even more important that people have a resource of high-quality information to go to to obtain data about the breadth of Britain’s involvement in the slave trade”.
Pettigrew is correct. The British Empire was directly involved. As a nation, we were intimately involved in the morally reprehensible practice of trading slaves. Of the estimated 12.5 million slaves shipped out of Africa, our ancestors transported around three million people, predominantly between 1660 and 1807, to the Caribbean and southern colonies of North America. Most were forced to work on sugar and cotton plantations in the scorching heat for 12 hours a day without pay and no legal recourse against physical abuse and mistreatment. Shipped in appalling conditions, packed in tight and with little to no fresh air, dehydration and disease befell many on the six-week crossing of the Atlantic ocean. One estimate has it that between 1672 and 1687 as many as a quarter were “lost in transit”. Human beings were treated like any other commodity. When no longer of use, they were disposed of. The bodies were simply thrown overboard.
It seems a truism to say that any modern day discussion of slavery will inevitably have a Eurocentric vision of history. In reality, slavery is an evil that has plagued every corner of the globe for thousands of years. Narmer, the first pharaoh of Egypt, held slaves circa 3,000 BC. In Ancient Greece, slavery was so common that Aristotle saw the practice as essential to Greek society. During the Roman Empire, it is estimated that by the beginning of the Christian era, almost half of Italy’s population were enslaved. Slavery began in the Islamic world in the 7th century, while in the 8th and 9th centuries Vikings captured Eastern Europeans and sold them to slave markets in Egypt.
Throughout history, people from just about every continent have enslaved others: for centuries, Asians enslaved fellow Asians and Africans enslaved other Africans. Nor were Europeans the only people guilty of transporting slaves from one continent to another. The historian Robert C Davis estimates that between the 16th and 18th century over a million Europeans were captured by North Africa’s Barbary coast pirates.
A salient part of the BLM movement is to dismantle capitalism. It was explicitly stated in their manifesto. They see capitalism as an inherently racist, “systemic” ideology. Slavery, we are told, was the British Empire’s “start up” money, leading Martin Luther King to state that “…capitalism was built on the exploitation and suffering of black slaves…” In other words, capitalism was conceived in sin, the sin of slavery. And more often than not, cotton is cited as the progenitor of capitalism.
In 1830, American per capita GDP was already one of the highest in the world. But the huge advance in wealth and prosperity came after 1865 when the country abolished slavery. In the 150 years since the Civil War, America’s population has grown 900 per cent and its national GDP has increased 12,000 per cent. It was innovation and ingenuity, not capital accumulation, that ushered in the global rise in human prosperity. This exponential rise is something the classical liberal economic historian Deirdre McCloskey calls “the great enrichment”. It was the birth of property rights and a liberalised free market that led to extraordinary advances in technology and engineering. It was only when human labour was supplanted by steam and mechanised agricultural machines that Americans could dispense with slavery. As Guy Sorman writes:
“The replacement of labor with capital investment helped usher in the American industrial revolution, as the first industrial entrepreneurs took advantage of engineering advances developed in the fields. The southern states made a great economic as well as moral error in deciding to keep exploiting slaves instead of hiring well-paid workers and embracing new engineering technologies. The South started to catch up with the rest of the nation economically only after turning fully to advanced engineering in the 1960s as a response to rising labor costs.”
So, contrary to popular opinion, slavery did not play an important role in the industrial revolution. Some have argued that slavery in fact delayed the industrialisation of the southern states, handing an exceptional advantage to the North during the Civil War. Economic historians Alan L Olmstead and Paul W Rhode tell us that “US cotton played no role in kick-starting the industrial revolution.” They argue that although cotton played an important role in antebellum export-led growth, the overall contribution to the nation’s GDP was just five per cent. Important, but far from providing the seed capital for a nation as large as the United States. Whereas King Coal helped give birth to the first Industrial Revolution, in Britain, as in America, cotton was less the king and something more reminiscent of a courtier.
As Deirdre McCloskey has explained, only a small fraction of foreign trade in Britain came from the products of slave labour. Conversely, the amount of money spent on eliminating the trade was immense. Historian David Eltis believes the cost to British taxpayers to suppress the trade (adjusting for inflation) was £1.5 billion. As he writes:
“In absolute terms the British spent almost as much attempting to suppress the trade in the forty-seven years, 1816-62, as they received in profits over the same length of time leading up to 1807.”
If slave labour really was responsible for a nation’s prosperity, we only need take a look at a country that enslaved a similar amount of people.
Between 1500 and 1866, the Portuguese Empire is estimated to have exported six million slaves out of Africa — four million of whom were sent to Brazil. Both countries are replete with vast natural resources — cotton accounted for 30 per cent of Brazil’s exports in 1870. So a cursory, comparative analysis should reveal immense prosperity in Brazil — after all, the country abolished slavery a full 23 years later than the U.S. Brazil’s GDP is $2 trillion, whereas that of the United States is $21 trillion. As for GDP per capita, as Angus Maddison shows, Brazil’s is $5,563 while that of the US is $28,458. At both the individual and national level, slavery has not made Brazil rich.
Although very few gained immense wealth from slavery, it would be naive of me to assume that no British individual gained financially from the slave trade. If we are to be morally consistent then the Dictionary needs to include John Edward Taylor. Taylor was a cotton merchant whose wealth was irrevocably intertwined with the slave trade. His personal fortune came directly from the forced labour of enslaved African men and women who worked on cotton plantations in the southern colonies of America. In 1821, he founded the Manchester Guardian, now the Guardian — the newspaper that persistently inveighs against British institutions for their involvement in the slave trade. One headline ran “A shameful period of English history”, slamming Barclay’s Bank and the brewers Greene King among others for financial gains from slavery.
While on the subject of hypocrisy, what of the near silence from both academics and activists like BLM when it comes to modern day slavery? The United Nations International Labor Organisation (ILO), states there are three times as many in slavery now than were captured and sold during the 350 year life-span of the transatlantic slave trade. With an estimated forty million people held in debt bondage and forced marriage across the globe, “new slavery” as the ILO call it, is big business. Criminal networks earn upwards of $150 billion annually. According to Siddharth Kara, economist at Carr Centre for Human Rights Policy, “Modern slavery is far and away more profitable now than at any point in human history.”
While I welcome the potential contribution the Dictionary will bring to future historical enquiry, I question its timing and motivation. I feel this is an implicit exercise in appeasement of an overtly radical political movement. Other than legitimate academic debate — which should always be encouraged — what else could this database be used for? It has the potential to be weaponised by activists, for the purpose of inducing guilt to derive both ideological and financial advantage against individuals and small business owners who may not be aware of their family history. I ask, what can they do to remedy this? There is little more these companies, corporations and individuals can do to address the despicable moral comportment of their ancestors. Other than offering financial compensation in the form of reparations (which is in itself a highly questionable), I see little that can be done. I fear that the Dictionary of British Slave Traders will merely incite racial division and exacerbate resentment.
The sins of the fathers — even slavery — should never be visited on the children.
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In 399 CE, Faxian — a monk in China’s Jin Dynasty — went on a pilgrimage to the Indian subcontinent to collect Buddhist scriptures. Returning after 13 years, he spent the rest of his life translating those texts, profoundly altering Chinese worldviews and changing the face of Asian and world history.
Faxian illustrated as visiting the Palace of Asoka in 407 CE, in modern-day Patna, India, in the 19th century English book series, Story of the Nations.archive.org
After Faxian, hundreds of Chinese monks made similar journeys, leading not only to the spread of Buddhism along the Nirvana Route, but also opening up roads to medicine men, merchants and missionaries.
Along with the two other great translation movements — Graeco-Arabic in the Umayyad and Abbasid periods (2nd-4th and 8th-10th century) and Indo-Persian (13th-19th centuries) — these events were major attempts to translate knowledge across linguistic boundaries in world history.
Transcending barriers of language and space, acts of translation touched and transformed every aspect of life: from arts and crafts, to beliefs and customs, to society and politics.
Going by the latest casualty in the heated — but necessary — debates around representation in our creative and cultural arenas, none of this would be possible today.
Last month, Marieke Lucas Rijneveld, the youngest writer ever to win the International Booker Prize for The Discomfort of Evening (with translator Michele Hutchison), was chosen to translate 22-year-old American poet laureate Amanda Gorman’s forthcoming collection, The Hill We Climb, for Dutch publisher Meulenhoff.
Gorman selected Rijneveld herself. But amid backlash that a white prose writer was chosen to translate the work of an unapologetically Black, spoken word poet, Rijneveld resigned saying,
I understand the people who feel hurt by Meulenhoff’s choice to ask me […] I had happily devoted myself to translating Amanda’s work, seeing it as the greatest task to keep her strength, tone and style. However, I realise that I am in a position to think and feel that way, where many are not.
This week, meanwhile, the poem’s Catalan translator Victor Obiols told AFP he had been removed from the job by Barcelona publisher Univers.
They did not question my abilities, but they were looking for a different profile, which had to be a woman, young, activist and preferably black.
We live in a world rife with controversies around cultural appropriation and identity politics. The power differentials created by the twin forces of colonialism and capitalism are being interrogated in every realm today.
It was only a matter of time before these burning issues ignited the art of translation.
Usually invisible and taken-for-granted, acts of translation take place around us all the time. But in the field of literary translation, questions of authorial voice and speaking position matter.
Marginalised creative practitioners and their growing audiences assume importance in a global publishing regime controlled by a dominant minority wielding majority power over issues of representation.
So it is fitting that some have drawn attention to the myriad spoken word artists eminently qualified to undertake translation in the Netherlands. And Dutch agents, publishers, editors, translators and reviewers could certainly broaden their horizons and embrace diversity.
Nevertheless, if humans only translated the familiar, how would we ever have an inkling of the astonishing world out there that is not familiar?
The task of literary translation entails grappling with profound difference, in terms of language, imagination, context, traditions, worldviews.
None of this would enter our quotidian consciousness but for the translators who step into uncharted waters because they have fallen in love with another tongue, another world.
Translation is resistance
Translators ferry across the meaning, materiality, metaphysics and all the magic that may be unknown in the mediums and conventions of their own tongue. The pull of the strange, the foreign, and the alien are necessary for acts of translation.
It is this essential element of unknowingness that animates the translator’s curiosity and challenges her intellectual mettle and ethical responsibility. Even when translators hail from — or belong to — the same culture as the original author, the art relies on the oppositional traction of difference.
Through opposition and abrasion, a creative translation allows for new meaning and nuance to emerge.
Noaki Sakai, a Japanese historian and translator at Cornell University, writes about the historical complexity of this process. The practices of translation, he says, are “always complicit with the building, transforming and disrupting of power differences.”
Translation is domination
Translation has, however, been a tool for domination in colonisation. La Malinche, for instance, acted as an intermediary and interpreter for the conquistador, Hernán Cortés, in the 16th century Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire.
In this drawing by an unnamed Tlaxcalan artist c. 1550, La Malinche (far right) is acting as translator between Hernán Cortés and Moctezuma II, the ninth ruler of the Aztec Empire.Bancroft Library, UC Berkley
Patyegarang was Australia’s first teacher of Aboriginal language, to early colonist, William Dawes, and crucial for the survival of the Gamaraigal language in Eora country. At 15, and as an initiated woman, she was Dawes’ intellectual equal, learning English from him and negotiating a relationship of mutual translation while holding on to her own cultural legacy.
In each of these cases, European imperialists learnt how to survive the lands they were conquering through the processes of translation. Moreover, they used the same languages to fabricate the story of their own superior Western civilisation, at the cost of Indigenous cultures.
As translation theorist Tejaswini Niranjana explains, translation:
shapes, and takes shape within, the asymmetrical relations of power that operate under colonialism.
Translation is not a neutral activity. It functions in a complex set of socio-political relations, where parties have vested interests in the production, dissemination and reception of stories and texts.
Academics Sabine Fenton and Paul Moon have written about the deliberate mis-translation of the Treaty of Waitangi, a strategic example of colonial omissions and selections that achieved “the cession of Maori sovereignty to the Crown.”
One egregious interpolation was the replacement of the word mana (sovereignty) with kawanatanga (government), which misled and induced many Maori chiefs to sign the treaty.
Read more: Explainer: the significance of the Treaty of Waitangi
In situations of conflict and war — and the displacements that result from them — translation again becomes a weapon privileging the powerful, as seen in the impenetrable bureaucratic paperwork, in the dominant language, governing asylum and refugee seeker decisions.
In this charged context, the case of Gorman and Rijneveld becomes a lightning rod for addressing historical disempowerment and injustices.
Translation is diplomatic
In the absence of a level playing field for writers to have their voices heard in the global publishing market, there does need to be historical awareness and post-colonial sensitivity.
To Rijneveld’s credit, this sensitivity has been demonstrated. After stepping down as Gorman’s translator, they composed a poem:
never lost that resistance, that primal jostling with sorrow and joy,
or given in to pulpit preaching, to the Word that says what is
right or wrong, never been too lazy to stand up, to face
up to all the bullies and fight pigeonholing with your fists
raised, against those riots of not-knowing inside your head
Still, while representation is the moral imperative of the 21st century, it is my modest proposal that in the realm of literary translation, the pull of the unknown and the unfamiliar is one of the most important truisms: Rijneveld’s “riots of not-knowing.”
Already the world is losing a language every fortnight; 7000 languages are expected to be extinct by the end of this century. Yet it has often been argued that linguistic diversity is an indicator of genetic diversity, the latter being critical to the survival of the species.
If humans only translate what is known within their own four walls, or what is familiar to them within the boundaries of their own imaginations, something essential is lost both to translation — and to the profligate tongues that proliferate our humanity.
Translation is activism
We do not live in a post-racial world. We do not live in a borderless world — as brought to the fore powerfully by the COVID-19 pandemic. For translators in transnational times, it is of the essence that we break down ethno-linguistic borders, accepting the challenge of the confronting.
In my own work, I have collaborated on translations of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander, and tribal & Dalit Indian poets. This has necessarily involved the hard work of understanding historical incommensurabilities.
Yes, structural inequalities mount by the day in the face of capitalism, which is a faithful handmaiden to the ongoing machinations of colonialism. Translators do not live in a vacuum. We are not immune to the forces of structural racism.
But why is it that Rijneveld had to renounce the commission as an individual? Why does this recent story become about individual actions, rather than the entrenched patterns of operation of publishing houses like Meulenhoff?
To achieve equity, transformation must be structural — it cannot fall on the shoulders of one translator alone, making them a fall guy for the business of books as usual.
The directors and CEOs of dominant global (read: Western) publishing companies are predominantly white. Which begs the familiar question: what if editorial boards reflected the multiplicity of society across the axes of class, gender, race, sexuality and ability?
Imagine the scenario if even one of Australia’s mainstream publishing houses was led by a non-white head and/or board?
Read more: Diversity, the Stella Count and the whiteness of Australian publishing
It is precisely the duty of heads of publishing houses, literary and review magazines and cultural institutions, to invite a teeming world of translators to take charge of what needs to be done.
The biblical story of the Tower of Babel, painted here by Pieter Bruegel the Elder in 1563, tells of how all of humanity once spoke one language and tried to build a tower to Heaven, before God acted to make the people unable to understand each other, and unable to collaborate.Kunsthistorisches Museum/Wikimedia Commons
Still, a translator must attend to the demands of integrity and imagination as much as the demands of history and society. She must throw herself into the challenging task of being in another time and place, of rubbing against the grain of her own aims and assumptions.
Only in imagining such a Babelian world of difference can a truly radical set of possibilities become alive.
This is not to argue that translators who come from similar backgrounds will not be able to engage in the task of translation in ways that wrestle with the creative resistance entailed in such a task. But the field must remain open to whoever is called to the task.
Literary translation is often a matter of happy accidents and passionate engagements. Han Kang’s The Vegetarian (2007) became a runaway success in the United Kingdom and United States in 2016, when Deborah Smith, who had been learning Korean for only six years, embarked on the task.
Author Han Kang (R) and her translator Deborah Smith (L) won the Man Booker International Prize in 2016 for The Vegetarian.EPA/Hannah McKay
There have been critiques of her translation, but representation is not the issue. Part of the beauty of translation is that texts can be critiqued, and translated again and again.
Translation lore is enriched continually by examples of re-translations, such as the ten translations into English of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina alone, or the two of Orhan Pamuk’s The Black Book.
The act and the art of translation requires the permission to transcend borders, the permission to make mistakes, and the permission to be repeated, by anyone who feels the tempestuous tug, and the clarion call, of the unfamiliar.
To rein in such liberty through categories and compartments that imprison our creativity is a disservice to the human imagination.
So let a thousand translations bloom: that would be a start and not an end to translation as we know it now.
