Nicky Harman

Nicky Harman is a UK-based prize-winning literary translator, working from Chinese to English.

Life and career

Nicky Harman taught on the MSc in Translation at Imperial College London until 2011, and has been a full-time literary translator since then. She focuses on fiction, poetry and occasionally literary non-fiction, by authors such as Chen Xiwo, Han Dong, Hong Ying, Dorothy Tse, Xinran, Yan Geling and Zhang Ling. She is a regular contributor to the literary magazines Chutzpah, and Words Without Borders, and also organizes translation-focused events, mentors new translators and was one of the judges for the Harvill Secker Young Translators Prize 2012. She is also a contributor to the website Paper Republic,^[1] and founded the China Fiction Book Club in 2010.^[2] She is currently Co-Chair of the Translators' Association of the Society of Authors.^[3]

Awards and honors

Longlisted for the 2015 Best Translated Book Award Fiction BTBA Longlist, with Dorothy Tse's Snow and Shadow.^[4]
Winner of first prize in the 2013 China International Translation Contest, Chinese-to-English section, with Jia Pingwa’s "Backflow River" (贾平凹: 《倒流河》)^[5]
Won a PEN Translation Fund Award (2006) for her translation of Banished! by Han Dong, which was subsequently long-listed for the Man Asian Literary Prize 2008.^[6]

Translations

Novels

Chan Koon-chung: The Unbearable Dreamworld of Champa the Driver (2014)
Han Dong: Banished! (2009)
Hong Ying: K – The Art of Love (2002)
Yan Geling: Flowers of Nanjing (2012)
Zhang Ling: Gold Mountain Blues (2012)

Collections of short stories

Chen Xiwo: The Book of Sins (2014)
Dorothy Tse: Snow and Shadow (2014)

Short stories and novellas

Bai Hua: The Eye of the Eagle
Anni Baobei: Goodbye to Anne (2012)
Chen Xiwo: The Man with the Knife (2012)
Ding Liying: Family Secrets (2012)
Han Dong: A Tabby-Cat’s Tale (2014)
Han Dong: This Moron is Dead (2012)
Sun Yisheng: The Stone Ox that Grazed (2014)
Sun Yisheng: Dad, Your Name is Bao Tian (2013)
Sun Yisheng: The Shades who Periscope through Flowers to the Sky (2012)
Dorothy Tse: Woman Fish (2013)^[7]
Xu Zechen: Throwing Out the Baby (2012)
Xue Mo: Old Man Xinjiang (2012)^[8]
Yan Ge: White Horse (2014)^[9]

Collections of poetry

A Loud Noise, poems by Han Dong (2014)
A Phone Call from Dalian: Selected Poems by Han Dong (2012)

Non-fiction

Cao Jinqing: China Along the Yellow River (2004)
Deng Yingtao: A New Development Model and China’s Future (2014)
Leung Man-Tao: Urban Control and the Modernist City (2013)
Xinran: Message from Unknown Chinese Mothers (2010)
Xinran: China Witness (2008) - co-translator with Esther Tyldesley and Julia Lovell