A review by nini23
Frontier by Porochista Khakpour, Chen Zeping, Karen Gernant, Can Xue

Did not finish book. Stopped at 8%.

I picked up Can Xue's Frontier due to the pundits predicting she would win this year's 2023 Nobel Prize for Literature. I don't have a lot of experience reading Chinese contemporary literature but my understanding is that Can Xue is one of China's most celebrated surrealist literary authors. Unfortunately I encountered major problems with the English translation, which is really 🫤 given the translated novel won a translation award (?!). The anglicized names which the translators said are 'similar to the Chinese' were a major problem. Shi Miao became Sherman, Ayi became Amy, Niansi became Nancy, Hu Shan became José etc. This is frankly atrocious. Chinese names are imbued with meaning, even a syllable that sounds the same depending on the actual written character and intonation can have vastly different meanings. Niansi, the protagonist's mother's name, for instance, means year and missing wistfulness. Replacing it with bland nondescript 'Nancy' strips it of any poetic significance. I kept having to flip to the beginning of the book to check what the original name was supposed to be and got tired of that. Translators should bridge the distance of the original text with the author's intent meaning, not widen it. I will just have to improve my Chinese to a level where I can read the original text to appreciate it.