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What, exactly, is a translation? Literary translator Andrea Lingenfelter likens it to a series of conversations between the translator and the original text, and between its author, its editors, and its eventual readers. Beyond these smaller conversations we can see a wider one taking shape between two different literary traditions and languages. Yet unlike conversations, which can be undertaken without much preparation or effort, Lingenfelter suggests that literary translation should also be considered a form of criticism-one that is written in the same genre as the original upon which it stands as a rigorous interpretation.

The translator of two novels by Lilian Lee, The Last Princess of Manchuria and Farewell My Concubine, and more recently the novel Candy by Mian Mian as well as a new book-length selection of work by the poet Zhai Yongming, Andrea Lingenfelter is one of America's most seasoned translators of contemporary women's writings from China. In this essay she reflects on the ways in which gender filters through the prism of different languages, cultures, genres, and idiosyncratic styles to inflect the process of translation itself.

This excerpt is Part Two of Hong Kong novelist Dung Kai-Cheung's 2018 novel Beloved Wife. Part One is told from the point of view of Seh Zi Yin, a university professor, and begins with Seh seeing off his wife, Lung Yuk Man, at the airport as she begins a sabbatical year at Cambridge in the United Kingdom. Part One describes Seh's life in his wife's absence, including his encounters with a mysterious foreigner who is researching technology that will allow for the duplication, uploading, storage, and downloading of human consciousness. Part Two, composed entirely of dialogue between Seh and his wife, turns Seh's world on its head. Dung's novel, inspired in part by Ghost in the Shell, is at once the story of a marriage and a philosophical exploration of what it means to be human.

Acclaimed Shanghai writer Wang Anyi narrates a sketch about a mysterious white horse (and its equally mysterious master) that periodically visits a particular longtang (network of lanes) in central Shanghai (the old French Concession). Weaving history and memory, Wang describes a particular moment in the life of the city while also relating stories about the city's past. Wang's tale suggests that the history of the city, like the relationship between the longtang dwellers and the visiting horse and man (who are clearly originally from somewhere else) is, to no small extent, the history of the relationship between native Shanghai people and non-Chinese \"others.\" While the true origins and pedigree of man and horse remain an open question, this epistemological exploration allows Wang to ponder Shanghai's complex history.

[...]it is precisely such separations and chance meetings that I was trying to describe when I wrote Reality and Fiction. Like Chan Buddhism, it can't be expressed in words. [...]if you take the mistake that is language and add it to the formless entities of Time and Space, the result you'll get is the novel Reality and Fiction. The stern library guard would search my things, because you were not allowed to bring in anything that could leave a stain or mark on paper, which included pens, containers of hot tea, and damp handkerchiefs. [...]the book has often been viewed as a family history and autobiography, one that also happened to coincide with the literary trend of multi-generational family sagas.

Wang Anyi traces Shanghai in map and memory as she revisits its lanes, a mental flâneur.

In his acceptance of the 2013 Newman Prize for Chinese Literature, poet Yang Mu offers a detailed and passionate portrait of the poetry written in Taiwan from its first contact with mainland China over four hundred years ago, on through years of refinement leading up to the present. Yang Mu argues that this history has endowed the tradition with a unique power and beauty.

Zhang Qinghua was one of the first Chinese literary critics to promote Mo Yan's work in China. In this essay, Zhang asks whether the awarding of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature to Mo Yan can finally put to rest the dichotomy that praises modern Chinese literary accomplishments by pre-WWII writers like Lu Xun while summarily dismissing the accomplishments of contemporary writers. Zhang argues that Mo Yan's international recognition offers an opportunity to take down such reductive divisions within Chinese literature so that the rich complexities of the entire modern era can be appreciated. The real question for Zhang lies not with whether contemporary Chinese literature has upheld the promise of China's \"New Literature,\" but whether the upcoming generation of writers-whom he sees as being less serious-can live up to the aesthetic and intellectual rigor of writers like Mo Yan.