Translator describes the experience of adapting violent scenes

Very few, if any, people think that translating literature is easy.

And Nicky Harman is no stranger to its challenges, having spent the twenty years translating Chinese novels.

Even if you’re fluent in both languages, your author may not be, and often there are cultural differences that only a native would be aware of.

But still, Harman’s latest job stood out: bringing Jia Pingwa’s Broken Wings into English meant handling the depiction of sexual violence.

If you’d like to see how she prepared herself mentally and addressed the task, you can read her column in Writer’s Digest.