10 Questions for May Huang

- By Edward Clifford

In the same spot where Father died, the dead body of a deer lay prostrate in the rain. Raindrops collected on the ground, flowing like a river. Invisible to the naked eye, electricity trickled into the moist soil as if through the veins of leaves, electrons packed closely together. Micro-organisms gnawed away quietly, exchanging trace elements, absorbing the weaker monomers to form new substances, or nutrients for the plants and soil.
—from "Raining Zebra Finches" by Chiou Charng-Ting, Translated by May Huang, Volume 64, Issue 1 (Spring 2023)

Tell us about one of the first pieces you translated.
I translated Ya Hsien’s poem “Chicago” as an undergrad studying abroad in Chicago, reading and learning about the city. Translating a poem by a Taiwanese poet, written about the new city I was living in at the time, felt really intimate and intentional. It made me realize that I always want to work on projects that I feel connected to across time, identity, geography.

What writer(s) or works have influenced the way you write now?
Derek Chung, the writer I’ve translated the longest, has had a monumental impact on how I write just because I’ve spent so much time with his words. For example: I went through a phase of translating a few sestinas he wrote from Chinese into English a few years ago. The experience influenced me to write a sestina of my own, which will be published in an anthology of Hong Kong poets this year.

In general, I’m very drawn to works that have non-linear narratives, explore family history, and incorporate different literary forms. One book that does all three of these things is Michael Ondaatje’s Running in the Family, a fictionalized memoir that I first read in high school and recently re-read as an adult. Ondaatje’s line in the book about how it “is not a history but a portrait or 'gesture’” influences how I think about the work I produce.

What did you want to be when you were young?
I always wanted to be a writer. When I got to college, I took some truly formative poetry classes, but in my second year of college was hit by an unprecedented case of writer’s block. Literary translation helped me get out of that slump, and find my way back to poetry. I’ve been translating ever since!

What drew you to write a translation of this piece in particular?
A couple years ago, I received a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant to translate Chiou Charng-ting’s short story collection Young Gods into English. I was reading more of her work that was available online at the time, and came across this story, “Raining Zebra Finches,” which had won a short story award in Taiwan.

I was immediately hooked by the opening sentence, which seemed to translate itself as I read it: “in the same spot where Father died, the dead body of a deer lay prostrate in the rain.” I was drawn to the sense of intrigue it promised and the starkness of the narrator’s tone. The story revolves around the complicated relationship between a mother and daughter, a theme you also see in Young Gods, and I was interested in exploring this thread further in this story.

I love translating writing about the natural world, and this story gave me an opportunity to do so—including translating technical, sometimes obscure biology terms from Chinese into English!

Is there a city or place, real or imagined, that influences your writing?
Hong Kong, the city I grew up in and called home for most of my life, permeates everything I do—my writing and otherwise. Now that I live in the Bay Area, I still see Hong Kong everywhere, in San Francisco’s skyline and in the meals I cook for myself. I was born in Taiwan and relate strongly to my Taiwanese heritage, but Hong Kong has been, and will always be, at the heart of my writing.

I’ve been listening to Fleetwood Mac’s “Silver Springs” on repeat lately and the lyric “you'll never get away from the sound of the woman that loves you,” which Stevie Nicks wrote about her relationship with Lindsey Buckingham, captures this feeling well: Hong Kong will follow me down and haunt me, in a way.

Do you have any rituals or traditions that you do in order to write?
Do procrastinating, scrolling Twitter, and having the sudden urge to clean the house count as rituals?

All jokes aside, I will always write and edit my first draft in a “fugly font,” then proofread the near-final copy in a “fancy font” (e.g. Garamond). This method has the double effect of making me work harder to improve the first draft (because it “looks” bad) and then feel as if I’m reading the published version with fresh eyes (once it “looks” better).

Who typically gets the first read of your work?
I’ve been fortunate throughout my writing life to benefit from the careful eyes of many different first readers. When I was a member of Chicago’s Third Coast Translator’s Collective, I’d often bring first drafts to the group and benefit from their thoughtful feedback. I know some translators may not like to share their translated work with their authors, but I also benefit from sharing my translations with the authors, and have found the exchange to be mutually beneficial. It makes the task of translating less lonely. My mom is also the first person I go to for any gut-checks, whether it be for a line in a story or even an email.

If you could work in another art form what would it be?
I construct crosswords in my spare time and consider it an art form! Like translation, crosswords are deeply concerned with how we interpret words, how language evolves over time, and wordplay. When making crosswords, I most enjoy putting the people, places, and things I love on the page—and that’s similar to how I feel about translation, too.

What are you working on currently?
I’m in the final stages of editing A Cha Chaan Teng That Does Not Exist, my translation of Derek Chung’s poetry forthcoming from Zephyr Press this year.

Also, more generally, working on becoming more resilient.

What are you reading right now?
Catching up on books I wish I read in 2022: Ling Ma’s Bliss Montage and Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow.