Carlos Rojas (born 1970 in Atlanta, Georgia) [1] is an American sinologist and translator. He is currently Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at Duke University's Trinity College of Arts & Sciences. He is a cultural historian and his work and teachings primarily focus on Chinese culture. He also teaches the subjects of film, gender, sexuality, and feminist studies. He received a B.A. from Cornell University in 1995 and a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 2000. [2] Before his professorship at Duke, Rojas was Assistant Professor of Modern Chinese Literature and Film at the University of Florida. [3] Rojas lives in Durham, North Carolina. [1]
Carlos Rojas and Eileen Cheng-yin Chow translated Yu Hua's novel Brothers . Their translation was shortlisted for the 2008 Man Asian Literary Prize. [4] Rojas has also translated several books by Chinese novelist and short story writer Yan Lianke. [5] [6] [7] His translation of Yan Lianke's The Four Books was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker International Prize. [8] Isabel Hilton of The Observer called it "impeccably" translated. [9] His translation of Yan Lianke's The Explosion Chronicles was longlisted for the 2017 Man Booker International Prize, [10] the 2017 Pen Translation Prize, [11] and the 2017 National Translation Award in Prose. [12] The Economist praised Rojas' "robust and well-paced translation." [13] The Guardian called his translation a "model of clarity." [14]
Rojas served on the jury of the 2015 Newman Prize for Chinese Literature and the 2020 Dream of the Red Chamber Award.
In 2010, Rojas published The Great Wall: A Cultural History through Harvard University Press. The book is a survey of the Great Wall of China and its function and significance. In it, Rojas examines allusions to the Wall from various historical texts and cultural works. [15] [16]
Guan Moye, better known by the pen name Mo Yan, is a Chinese novelist and short story writer. Donald Morrison of U.S. news magazine TIME referred to him as "one of the most famous, oft-banned and widely pirated of all Chinese writers", and Jim Leach called him the Chinese answer to Franz Kafka or Joseph Heller. In 2012, Mo was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for his work as a writer "who with hallucinatory realism merges folk tales, history and the contemporary".
Edith Marion Grossman was an American literary translator. Known for her work translating Latin American and Spanish literature to English, she translated the works of Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez, Mayra Montero, Augusto Monterroso, Jaime Manrique, Julián Ríos, Álvaro Mutis, and Miguel de Cervantes. She was a recipient of the PEN/Ralph Manheim Medal for Translation and the 2022 Thornton Wilder Prize for Translation.
Jia Pingwa is one of China's most popular authors of novels, short stories, poetry, and non-fiction. His best-known novels include Ruined City, which was banned by the State Publishing Administration for over 17 years for its explicit sexual content, and Qin Opera, winner of the 2009 Mao Dun Literature Prize.
Love and Duty is a 1931 Chinese silent film, directed by Bu Wancang and starring Ruan Lingyu and Jin Yan. Long considered lost, it was accidentally rediscovered in Uruguay in the 1990s, and almost immediately hailed as one of the greatest Chinese silent films. Like many Chinese silent films, it features both Chinese and English intertitles.
Yan Lianke is a Chinese writer of novels and short stories based in Beijing. His work is highly satirical, which has resulted in some of his most renowned works being banned in China. He has admitted to self-censorship while writing his stories in order to avoid censorship.
Howard Goldblatt is a literary translator of numerous works of contemporary Chinese fiction, including The Taste of Apples by Huang Chunming and The Execution of Mayor Yin by Chen Ruoxi. Goldblatt also translated works of Chinese novelist and 2012 Nobel Prize in Literature winner Mo Yan, including six of Mo Yan's novels and collections of stories. He was a Research Professor of Chinese at the University of Notre Dame from 2002 to 2011.
"Tianya genü", or "The Wandering Songstress", is one of two theme songs from the 1937 Chinese film Street Angel; the other being the "Four Seasons Song". It was composed by He Luting based on an older Suzhou ballad, with lyrics by Tian Han. The song was sung by Zhou Xuan in the film, playing the role of Xiao Hong.
Brothers is the longest novel written by the Chinese novelist Yu Hua, in total of 76 chapters, separately published in 2005 for the part 1 and in 2006 for part 2 by Shanghai Literature and Art Publishing House. This was Yu Hua's first novel after a decade of dormancy from writing and publishing works. It has over 180 thousand characters in Chinese, more than the 100 thousand characters that were originally planned for the book. It intertwines tragedy and comedy, and Yu Hua himself admits that the novel is personally his favorite literary work. Brothers was a new realm of literature for Yu Hua, with the novel often being described as extremely crude and expletive. Brothers has experienced great success with nearly 1 million copies sold in China. By 2019, Yu Hua's works had been published in 38 countries and translated into 35 different languages. This success may be contributed to his success publicity tour to gain attraction towards the novel after his hiatus from writing. While reception among Chinese critics was generally negative, the novel was shortlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize and awarded France's Prix Courrier International in 2008. It was translated into English by Eileen Cheng-yin Chow and Carlos Rojas in 2009, a couple from the Middle Eastern department at Duke University.
Rey Chow is a cultural critic, specializing in 20th-century Chinese fiction and film and postcolonial theory. Educated in Hong Kong and the United States, she has taught at several major American universities, including Brown University. Chow is currently Anne Firor Scott Professor of Literature in Trinity College of Arts and Sciences at Duke University.
Julia Lovell is a British scholar and prize-winning author and translator focusing on China.
Dream of Ding Village is a 2006 novel by the Chinese writer Yan Lianke. The 2011 English translation by Cindy Carter, published in the UK by Grove Press, was shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.
Anna Gustafsson Chen is a Swedish literary translator and sinologist. She is notable for translating the work of Mo Yan into Swedish. Her translations are directly tied to Mo Yan becoming the first Chinese person to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. She has translated over 20 other notable works including the writing of Yu Hua and Su Tong.
Sheng Keyi is a contemporary Chinese novelist, short story writer, and artist.
Jeremy Tiang is a Singaporean writer, translator and playwright based in New York City. Tiang won the 2018 Singapore Literature Prize for English fiction for his debut novel, State of Emergency, published in 2017.
The Day the Sun Died is a 2015 novel by Yan Lianke, published in Taiwan. Carlos Rojas translated the book into English, and the translation was published in 2018 by Grove.
The Years, Months, Days is a collection of two novellas by Yan Lianke. It was translated into English by Carlos Rojas and published in 2017 by Black Cat, as well as by Text Publishing in Australia.
Serve the People! is a 2005 novel by Yan Lianke. The English version, translated by Julia Lovell, was published in 2010 by Black Cat/Grove.
Esther Tyldesley is an academic based in the School of Literature, Languages and Cultures at the University of Edinburgh, where she is a professor in Asian Studies. She has also translated Chinese literature, as well language textbooks and translated academic articles for various journalists. In addition to this, she is also a member of the Society of Authors.
Eileen Chengyin Chow is a sinologist, Chinese translator and University Teacher. She works for the Duke University and for the Shih Hsin University in Taipei, Taiwan.