Translating Ye Si's 也斯 essay collection'Hui ge shi fei - Xianggang biji 灰鴿試飛：香港筆記'(The grey pigeon's pilot flight - Notes from Hong Kong)

This talk aims to shed light on the process of translating and publishing Hong Kong writer Ye Si's essay collection 'Hui ge shi fei-Xianggang bii 灰鴿試飛：香港筆記'（The grey pigeon's pilot flight - Notes from Hong Kong)", first published in 1972, into German.

I will reconstruct the give-and-take in the course of translation and translational decision making and analyse the encounters between the various social agents involved in this specific process. I will also ask about the position of the translation as a 'cultural product' in the target context of Germany, as compared with the Sinophone publication's position in the source context.

Monika Gaenssbauer is professor of Chinese language and culture at the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies, Stockholm University. She did her PhD in Chinese Studies at Bochum University. In 2016 she was appointed Associate Professor for Chinese Studies at the University of Erlangen. In 2017 she joined Stockholm University. During the years 2014-2017 she had been Honorary Professor at the Open University of Hong Kong. Her areas of research are among others contemporary Hong Kong literature and translation in theory and practice.