Liliana Arsovska: Telling China Stories for Latin American Readers

In 1981, 18-year-old Yugoslavian girl Liliana Arsovska faced an important decision in her life. After graduating from high school with honors, she was offered a scholarship to study abroad by her country's Ministry of Education. Where to go? China, US or UK? Despite not knowing much about China, she blurted out, "I want to go to China". From learning and teaching Chinese to writing Chinese grammar books, from interpreting for the leaders of China and Mexico to translating Chinese literature, she has grown from a "novice" in Chinese culture to a true "China hand" in the past decades. Looking back, Liliana said, "Studying in China is one of the best things I do in my life."

Her love of Chinese culture through A Dream in Red Mansions

"Confucius said at the age of 50, one knows the mandate of Heaven. And now I have long passed the age. What is my 'mandate of Heaven'? I think it is everything I have done with China." Liliana said. Indeed, her education, family, translation and academic path are all inextricably linked to China.

From 1981 to 1985, Liliana studied at the Beijing Language Institute, where she received care from Chinese teachers and felt the friendliness, kindness and warmth of the Chinese people. During her undergraduate studies, she completed her thesis on "A Comparison of the Role of Women in One Hundred Years of Solitude and A Dream in Red Mansions".

Why did you choose this topic? Liliana recalled, "The first time I read A Dream in Red Mansions was in a Chinese literature class, and with my Chinese proficiency level at that time, reading A Dream in Red Mansions was an extraordinary struggle. In particular, it was difficult to understand the poems, character relationships, and titles in the book, such as whom the first elder sister, second elder sister, third elder sister, and fourth maid referred to and how they addressed each other."

As she read further, she felt the great charm of A Dream in Red Mansions. Liliana said, "A Dream in Red Mansions is an encyclopedia about Chinese society, and its deep philosophical ideas and the Chinese view of family and country embedded in it reminded me of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude."

Thus, she conducts a comparative study of these two literary classics from different eras and regions, specifically addressing the differences and similarities between the rise and fall of the family, tragic consciousness, and female figures such as the Lady Dowager and Ursula, and identifying the differences between the two works in terms of the relationship between elders and children and the expression of love. Her dissertation enabled a spanning space-time dialogue between these two classics of Chinese and foreign literature, laying the foundation for her decades of sinology research and literary translation to come.

While studying in China, Liliana also met Roberto, an international student from Mexico, with whom she fell in love. They married and had children. Her youngest son is married to a Chinese girl and has settled in Xiamen. After her undergraduate studies, Liliana moved to Mexico, where she first worked as an assistant to a renowned sinologist, Professor Flora Botton, at the College of Mexico, before becoming a regular faculty member and teaching there to this day.

Her contributions to Chinese learning and promotion

With the increase of China's comprehensive national power, Chinese has become popular in the Spanish-speaking world. Liliana has accumulated a wealth of experience in Chinese language teaching and translating through teaching Chinese language, Chinese grammar and translation courses, and working as a simultaneous Chinese interpreter for foreign affairs of Mexican government.

Considering the difficulty of learning Chinese for Latin Americans, she started editing a Chinese grammar book after 2000. In 2011, this Practical Chinese Grammar was released. "For Spanish-speaking learners, the four tones of Chinese are extremely confusing and there are many characters with the same tone. The grammar is also very complex and very different from Spanish. I hope this textbook will be an introductory guide for Chinese language beginners." Liliana said.

Practical Chinese Grammar, an introduction to Chinese grammar from a foreigner's perspective, was published to great popularity. The most important feature of the book is the in-depth explanation of systematic grammar and vocabulary knowledge with active sentence pattern examples. The book's approach to explaining Chinese characters is unique, centering on the Chinese character "道(dào, Taoism)", seeing each Chinese character as a "道(dào)" that can take on new meanings through its combination with other characters, its use in different contexts, and its change of position in speech.

According to Liliana, the semantic richness and flexibility in the use of Chinese characters constitute their unique characteristics and are the greatest difference from Western languages. Through this philosophical and unique approach, students can more easily understand the differences between Chinese and Western languages. In addition to her teaching and research work, Liliana is proud to have served as the Mexican principal interpreter for many meetings between Chinese and Mexican leaders. Liliana often feels that it is the Chinese language that has changed her life, allowing her to apply her learning and make her contribution to the exchange between the two countries.

More explanation than translation

In addition to teaching, Liliana's efforts are mainly devoted to translating contemporary Chinese literature. In 2012, after the news of Mo Yan's Nobel Prize in Literature reached Mexico, a leading Mexican newspaper called to ask Liliana who Mo Yan was. "In those days, you couldn't find Mo Yan's books in any bookstores all over Latin America." Liliana said. In contrast to Marquez's popularity in China, she found that Mexicans were so unfamiliar with contemporary Chinese literature.

For this reason, Liliana is committed to the cultivation of translators and offers Chinese translation courses at the College of Mexico. In the past five years, Liliana, with her own graduate students in Chinese translation, has formed a team of translators of Chinese literature and has translated works by Liu Zhenyun, Xu Zechen, Jia Pingwa, A Lai, Chen Ran and other contemporary Chinese writers for publication in Mexico.

Liliana said, "I love teaching and interpreting, but what I love most is translating." In her opinion, translating Chinese literature into Spanish is more explanation than translation, with the aim of making Latin American readers know China and the reasons behind its development through literary works. 

Therefore, many of the works translated by Liliana are realistic works. For example, her translation of Xu Zechen's Running Through Beijing aims to restore the spirit of realism. "I think Xu is not writing, but painting." In her opinion, the book depicts the survival and mental state of "Beijing Drifters", those who lived and worked in Beijing while without Beijing registered residence at the end of the last century, similar to the young people who first came to Mexico City to study and seek jobs. Liliana felt that despite their hard life, they were motivated and full of aspirations for the future. Therefore, she tries her best to fit the current situation in Latin America and guide the readers to find themselves in her translations.

In her practice of translating Chinese literature, Liliana is deeply aware of the cultural differences that exist between China and Mexico, between China and Latin America. What she does is to restore Chinese history and culture, traditional customs, and character allusions, which Latin American readers do not know, to the Spanish language context, so that local readers can get to know China better. When translating Liu Zhenyun's I Am Not Madame Bovary, she noticed that if Chinese certain addresses such as "老陈(lǎo chén)" were translated directly into "Old Chen", foreign readers would not be able to understand them, and it would even cause jokes about Chinese people classifying 30-year-olds as old people. Therefore, she adopted the practice of transliteration or paraphrasing.

For example, for the phrases "旗袍(qí páo)" and "中山装(zhōng shān zhuāng)", she advocated that they should not be simply translated as "Chinese dress" and "Chinese men's suit". Rather, she suggested that the words should be translated as "dresses with Chinese charm" and "Chinese modern men's official wear" from the perspective of cultural differences, so as to cultivate the Spanish readers' perception of Chinese culture. For the translations of idioms, proverbs, and epigrams, Liliana was against simply adding notes, but tried her best to translate them in literary Spanish.

She said, "It's a great life to do the work you love and then to be recognized and encouraged by the outside world."

Today, Liliana continues to translate, and has even planned to conduct the dissemination of contemporary Chinese literature after retirement. "My dream is to recreate the Tower of Babel through literary translation, so that Chinese culture can really walk into Mexico." Liliana said.