Words are cheap, art is not

I am by profession an instructional designer, helping professors use technology. The work involves staring at the computer during much of the day. After finishing my professional work, I go back home, have dinner, wash dishes, and read a book to my kids. And then I go back to my computer to get a few more hours of screen tan - this time translating novels. The lack of physical activity means it isn't a balanced lifestyle.

Well, translators don't have a life anyway. One has to be slightly crazy to get into it, and even crazier to keep doing it. Translation is literally back-breaking work, which requires intensive mental effort and minimal external distraction. You sit quietly at the computer for so long that a passing alien might mistake you for a sculpture. Translation is difficult, too. Some books are so difficult to read that even one of my long time supporters said she was there for moral and spiritual support, not linguistic assistance.

Since 1997, I have translated a dozen or so books, including V.S. Naipaul's A Bend in the River, Betty Smith's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Colum McCann's Let the Great World Spin and Joseph O'Neill's Netherland. Some of these books have won prizes. Let the Great World Spin, for instance, won the 2010 Weishanhu Prize, the highest literary award for an international author. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn won China Times's Books of the Year Award in the Youth Reading category at the end of 2010.