He brings Fortress Besieged, Mo Yan to Myanmar readers

While he was a top student at school, his father was doing business. After graduation, he became a doctor but soon quitted his job for his interest in translation. And he happened to be translating Mo Yan’s works when the Chinese writer won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Taw Kaung Min, a post-1980 young translator, is the first to bring the famed Chinese novel Fortress Besieged to readers in Myanmar. "Those within the fortress want to escape, but those outside of it want to rush in. And this is the state of most affairs, be it marriages or jobs." Thanks to Kaung Min’s translation, Myanmar readers sensed the humor and wisdom in Chinese language.

Kaung Min’s home was filled with his translations from the Chinese language, including traditional classics and awarded modern works: The Man Who Changed China: The Life and Legacy of Jiang Zemin, The Analects of Confucius, Fortress Besieged, Confucius from the Heart: Ancient Wisdom for Today's World by Yu Dan, and To Live by Yu Hua. What’s more, he translated Mo Yan’s major novels (Frog, Life and Death are Wearing Me Out, Big Breasts and Wide Hips, and the Red Sorghum series).

Taw Kaung Min first showed zest in Chinese literature in his childhood. In learning Chinese, he frequented the library, where he realized that reading Chinese books is a good way to improve the language. Chinese literature impressed him in his teenage years.

In college, Kaung Min came across Fortress Besieged by Qian Zhongshu, and he was greatly impressed by a sentence in the novel: “Marriage is like a fortress besieged: those who are outside want to get in, and those who are inside want to get out.” There and then, he got the idea of translating the novel.

Following his graduation, Kaung Min served as a doctor but used his free time to translate Fortress Besieged. "By translating modern Chinese literature, I also got to know the life of Chinese people and their emotions,"he said.

In 2009, the Burmese version of Fortress Besieged was published in Myanmar, making a hit among readers. “At first, I took translation as a sideline. As times goes by, however, I got increasingly in love with translation. Whenever I read a beautiful literary work now, I got the lust to translate and share it with others in Myanmar." Finally, he quitted his job as a doctor and became a freelancer.

Taw Kaung Min is a fan of Chinese writer Mo Yan. He set down to translate Mo’s work of "Frog" in 2012, and it is sort of a coincidence that the Chinese writer was granted the Nobel Prize in Literature in the same year. When the Burmese version of "Frog" came out in 2013, Mo Yan was better known to people in Myanmar.

To offer Myanmar readers more choices, Kaung Min went on translating the "Red Sorghum" series, Life and Death are Wearing Me Out, Big Breasts and Wide Hips, and more. “I spent 44 months and 3 days in translating Life and Death are Wearing Me Out,” said he. “To translate, you have to master two cultures, and translation calls for both faithfulness to the original work and expressions natural to the eyes of the target reader.”

For his effort, Taw Kaung Min won the Myanmar National Literature Award for Translation in 2008 and the Special Book Award of China for Young Scholars in 2015. He put the two awarding certificates on his antique book shelf, together with his translation works.

By Gateway staff reporters