Executive Overview
Literary translation is often romanticized as a seamless bridge between cultures, a straightforward alchemy turning one language into another. Yet, behind every published work of international literature lies a complex labyrinth of logistics, institutional hurdles, editorial interventions, and serendipitous reconnections. Such is the remarkable trajectory of acclaimed Taiwanese author Ping Lu’s novel To the East of the East, which recently found a new lease on life through an English translation by award-winning writer and translator Jeremy Tiang.
Commissioned nearly a decade ago by a Taiwanese literary agency, Tiang’s translation was completed, edited, and subsequently consigned to digital obscurity. For years, the manuscript languished in a state of institutional dormancy, a victim of the shifting tides of international publishing and a lack of a willing overseas publisher. It was only through Tiang’s proactive intervention—checking in with the project’s original funder, the National Museum of Taiwan Literature—that the translation was rescued from archival oblivion. By placing the manuscript into the hands of World Editions, Tiang successfully revived a cross-cultural endeavor that spans centuries, geographies, and linguistic registers.
This feature explores the genesis of To the East of the East, examining Ping Lu’s thematic preoccupations with misrecognition and geographic alienation, the intricate challenges Tiang faced in rendering multi-layered Chinese dialects and historical registers into English, and the broader implications for Taiwanese literature making its way into the global Anglophone market. Through exclusive insights from both author and translator, this article traces how a book about mirrors, borders, and fragile human connections finally made its way to the world stage.
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Detailed Chronology: A Decade-Long Odyssey to Publication
The journey of To the East of the East from its original conception to its eventual rescue by World Editions reads like a case study in the persistence required to bring international literature to English-speaking readers.
Phase I: The Spark and the Original Composition
Long before a single sentence was translated, To the East of the East existed as a constellation of ideas in the mind of Ping Lu, one of Taiwan’s most celebrated contemporary writers. For Ping, the foundational spark of the novel was rooted in a deeply human paradox: the prevalence of misrecognition and misreading across human interactions. Whether examining the friction between men and women, parents and children, husbands and wives, or probing larger geopolitical and physical divides—such as the barrier between the ocean and the land, the experience of being adrift versus scattering apart, the duality of imprisonment and escape, and the tension between borders and freedom—the author envisioned a vast, varied imaginative landscape.
While writing, Ping often immersed herself in the minimalist, meditative compositions of Estonian composer Arvo Pärt, specifically Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirror in the Mirror). The piece served as a structural and thematic blueprint for the novel. Just as Pärt’s music utilizes simple, repeated intervals to create an infinite sense of reflection, Ping sought to construct a narrative of mirrors within mirrors—different perspectives and historical epochs set at varying angles, reflecting and distorting one another.
Phase II: The Initial Translation and the Lost Decade
Roughly ten years ago, the novel’s potential caught the attention of a Taiwanese literary agency, which initiated plans for an English-language edition. Recognizing the book’s ambition, the agency commissioned Jeremy Tiang—a seasoned translator with a formidable reputation—to undertake the English rendering.
Tiang completed the translation over the course of a year, working closely with editor Anna Holmwood, a prominent translator and editor known for her keen literary sensibilities. Following a thorough editing process, the manuscript was handed over, and Tiang, moving on to other demanding literary projects, eventually lost track of its whereabouts.
Unbeknownst to the translator, the project stalled. Despite initial institutional backing—the translation itself was funded by the National Museum of Taiwan Literature—no commercial Anglophone publisher could be secured to champion the book. The manuscript drifted into the publishing netherworld, where countless funded translations quietly sit, victims of risk-averse acquisition strategies in Western publishing markets.
Phase III: The Resurgence and the Match with World Editions
The turning point arrived nearly a decade after the translation was first commissioned. While conducting routine follow-ups, Tiang reached out to the National Museum of Taiwan Literature to inquire about the status of the long-dormant manuscript. To his surprise, he learned that a publisher had never been found and the project was effectively dead.
Refusing to let a year of labor and a vital work of literature fade away, Tiang asked for permission to take matters into his own hands. Armed with the finished manuscript, he approached World Editions, an independent publishing house with a proven track record of championing bold international fiction. Knowing the press’s appetite for sophisticated, globally expansive literature, Tiang submitted the work. As he suspected, the novel was an ideal fit. World Editions immediately recognized its literary weight and eagerly agreed to give the book a permanent home.
Supporting Context & Metrics: Translating the Labyrinth of Regional Voices
Translating To the East of the East was far from a routine lexical conversion. The novel’s scope presents a formidable set of structural, linguistic, and cultural hurdles that demand deep creative engagement from the translator.
Navigating Dialects and Historical Epochs
One of the defining characteristics of Ping Lu’s narrative is its geographical and temporal fluidity. The novel roams seamlessly between Taipei, Macau, and Beijing—three distinct urban centers, each utilizing its own unique variant of Chinese. Furthermore, the narrative bridges the contemporary world and the 17th century, requiring a deft handling of historical registers alongside modern vernacular.
To capture these distinct voices, Tiang had to constantly pivot between different linguistic registers. The challenge was not merely translating words from Chinese to English, but ensuring that the stylistic shifts in the original language—marking geographical distance and historical passage—resonated with an Anglophone readership without feeling artificial or overly academic.
The Riddle of the Heart: A Case Study in Cultural Translation
Perhaps the most acute challenge in the translation process involved a specific scene where two characters engage in a linguistic riddle. In this passage, a female character playfully flirts with a man by asking him a riddle that hinges on the structural composition of Chinese characters.
The riddle involves taking the characters for "burnt troops" (representing a violent, fiery battle) and adding the "heart radical" (心) to them, which transforms the characters into the word for "fragile." For readers literate in Chinese, the visual and semantic pun is immediately clear: the character is subtly alluding to her own inner vulnerability and emotional fragility as a sophisticated gambit of flirtation.
For a translator working into English, this moment presents an acute dilemma: how to convey a joke rooted entirely in the pictographic and radical-based mechanics of the Chinese writing system to an audience that cannot read Chinese.
Faced with this hurdle, Tiang made a deliberate and courageous editorial choice. Rather than halting the narrative momentum with an exhaustive, academic footnote explaining the mechanics of Chinese character formation—which risked bogging the reader down in dry linguistics—he chose not to over-explain the mechanics. Instead, he trusted the emotional resonance of the passage to carry the scene. The precise mechanics of the riddle, Tiang reasoned, were secondary to the images they evoked: a deliberate movement away from a violent, fiery battlefield toward something infinitely more delicate and intimate. By prioritizing the emotional subtext over literal linguistic exposition, the translation preserves the natural cadence and playful tension of the original scene.
Official Statements & Perspectives: Author and Translator in Dialogue
The creative relationship between Ping Lu and Jeremy Tiang offers a fascinating look at the divergent ways authors and translators interact with a text. While some translations involve exhaustive consultations between the writer and the translator, this project unfolded through a quiet, almost telepathic distance.
The Independent Process
Reflecting on the creation of the English edition, Ping Lu noted the distinct autonomy granted to the translation process:
"The translator worked independently, and I wasn’t involved in the translation process."
For his part, Tiang found that this hands-off arrangement did not hinder his work. Because Ping Lu’s fictional universes are constructed with meticulous precision, he felt that every narrative clue, tonal shift, and atmospheric detail required to complete the task was already embedded in the source text:
"Although I had no communication with Ping Lu during the translation process, the world(s) of the book are so fully and vividly realised that I felt everything I needed was right there on the page."
Metaphors of Identity: Mirrors and Painted Zebras
Asked to encapsulate the essence of To the East of the East through a metaphor, both author and translator offered striking imagery that speaks to the core themes of the novel: deception, identity, and reflection.
Ping Lu returned to her foundational musical inspiration, Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel:
"When I’m writing, I often listen to Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel (Mirror in the Mirror), because I love its central image—and that’s exactly what I hoped to convey in To the East of the East, one mirror after another arranged at different angles, reflecting each other. Mirrors within mirrors."
Jeremy Tiang, meanwhile, pointed to the striking cover art chosen by World Editions, which serves as a visual thesis statement for the novel:
"The image on the World Editions cover is a pretty great metaphor for the entire novel. It appears to be a zebra, but on closer examination, turns out to be a white horse with stripes painted on. This deceptive creature is only briefly mentioned once in the book, but it has a potent symbolic connection to the wider themes of the narrative, in which no one is quite who they pretend to be, even to themselves."
Future Outlook: The Impact on Taiwanese Literature Abroad
The eventual publication of To the East of the East by World Editions is more than just a personal victory for its author and translator; it represents a vital milestone for Taiwanese literature within the global publishing ecosystem.
For decades, literature from Taiwan has faced systemic hurdles in breaking into the Anglophone market. While works from mainland China and Japan have historically enjoyed robust institutional pipelines and commercial support, Taiwanese literature has often relied on institutional grants, academic advocacy, and the tireless efforts of independent translators to find overseas audiences. The fact that a heavily funded translation could sit dormant for a decade underscores the fragility of these cultural pipelines.
Tiang’s successful advocacy demonstrates the transformative power of proactive literary translation networks. By taking the initiative to rescue the manuscript from the archives of the National Museum of Taiwan Literature and placing it with a dedicated independent press, Tiang has provided a blueprint for how lost or overlooked translations can be salvaged.
As To the East of the East finally reaches English-speaking readers, it expands the global footprint of Ping Lu’s literary legacy. Already an accomplished titan of Taiwanese letters—having earned the National Award for the Arts, the Taiwan National Literature Award for The Gaps (尋思路), and the Golden Tripod Award for Heart Mandala (顯微戲院), alongside translations in French, Japanese, Korean, Russian, and Czech—Ping Lu’s inclusion in the Anglophone market via World Editions marks an important expansion of her international profile.
Ultimately, the journey of To the East of the East serves as a testament to the resilience of literature. It reminds the literary community that a great book, much like the painted white horse on its cover, may hide in plain sight for years, wearing different guises and waiting patiently for the right moment to reveal its true, brilliant colors to the world.
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