Monika Gänssbauer

„I cannot help but translate what I love“, as Gayatri Spivak once put it.

I have been translating and publishing – mainly – Sinophone literary texts in German and English translation since the 1990s. I like to translate in cooperation with colleagues and I have also been involving many students in translation projects, some of them leading to publications and public events.

The Buddhist monk Zan Ning has once described translating with the turning of a piece of brocade. I love it when a piece of beautifully woven text(ure) takes on a slightly different pattern, appears in another language and becomes accessible to a completely new audience.

Wang Xiaoni’s poetry collection “Nachtflug ueberm Meer” in my translation was shortlisted for the LiBeratur Prize in 2022.