Translating Taiwan and Riding the Iron Horse of Fate in Nature: An Interview with Darryl Sterk

On October 7, 2022, Darryl Sterk, a prolific Chinese-English literary translator, paid a virtual visit to my translation course at the University of Hong Kong. Students came ready to discuss Sterk’s translations of Wu Ming-yi’s The Stolen Bicycle (Danche shiqie ji, 2017), Sakinu Ahronglong’s Hunter School (Shanzhu feishu Sakenu, 2020), and Kevin Chen’s Ghost Town (Gui difang, 2022). I curated these three texts to consider the relationship between translation and minority issues in Taiwan from environmental, indigenous, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender angles. But my students had their own questions, which they later transcribed and edited, along with Sterk’s responses. The result is an eclectic mix of topics that deal with the technical aspects of Chinese-English translation, such as code-switching, machine translation, translation of Chinese topolects (fangyan), relay translation, romanization, and translator’s notes, as well as the cultural, historical, and even environmental aspects of Chinese-English translation.