CHAPBOOKS
Currently available titles, priced at £5.50 inc. p&p:
Du Fu (2011) Quickent i the Hairst-Time Trilingual Scots-English-Chinese( 杜甫《秋兴》) OUT OF PRINT
Anon (2011) The Mossflow: Preambill in Scots ( 《水浒传》Shuihu Zhuan Prologue)
TENTIE TRANSLATIONS
Brian Holton traded under this name as a literary translator until July 2014. He is still available for freelance literary translation work, and happy to consider your proposal if you are happy to treat him as a professional practitioner and pay him at an appropriate rate.
WHO IS BRIAN HOLTON?
Brian Holton was born in Galashiels in the Scottish Border country, but grew up partly in Nigeria, the son of an Irish father who was bilingual in English and French, fluent in Hausa and West African Pidgin, and competent in Yoruba and Swahili; his mother was a natural Border Scots speaker.
After an old-fashioned Scottish education in Latin, French and Classical Greek, he studied Chinese at the universities of Edinburgh and Durham, two institutions where he later taught Chinese language and literature. He was the first programme director of the Chinese-English/English-Chinese translation programme at Newcastle University; he then went on to teach translation for ten years at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
He began publishing his Scots translations of Shuihu Zhuan 《水浒传》 in 1981, and in 1992 began a continuing working relationship with the poet Yang Lian, which has so far resulted in a dozen books of translated poetry.
As a literary gent, he was lucky to slip in the back door of universities when no-one was looking, but he would have been happy to do nothing but literary translation, had it been possible to earn a decent living from it. As it is, he continues to translate into both English and Scots, and he regularly reads at literary festivals and poetry readings with Yang Lian, and also leads master-classes and workshops on poetry translation.
He has been described as “The foremost translator from Chinese of his generation.” (The Scotsman, 1996), and his work has received a Commendation in the Times Stephen Spender Poetry Translation Prize, 2012, and he was Runner-up for the Modern Poetry in Translation Prize, 2011.
He has twice been awarded a Henry Luce Chinese Poetry Translation Fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center (2013, 2014), has served on the jury for the Henry Luce Chinese Poetry Translation Fellowship (2015), and has held a Bogliasco Fellowship to the Centro Studi Ligure, Genoa (February 2014). In 2017 he won First Prize for an original poem in Scots in the inaugural Tannahill Poetry Competition. In 2019, he was awarded an Emily Harvey Venice Residency to work on finishing another poetry collection by Yang Lian.
He plays Scottish traditional music on whistles, smallpipes, guitar, and dulcimer.
Currently available titles, priced at £5.50 inc. p&p:
Du Fu (2011) Quickent i the Hairst-Time Trilingual Scots-English-Chinese( 杜甫《秋兴》) OUT OF PRINT
Anon (2011) The Mossflow: Preambill in Scots ( 《水浒传》Shuihu Zhuan Prologue)
TENTIE TRANSLATIONS
Brian Holton traded under this name as a literary translator until July 2014. He is still available for freelance literary translation work, and happy to consider your proposal if you are happy to treat him as a professional practitioner and pay him at an appropriate rate.
WHO IS BRIAN HOLTON?
Brian Holton was born in Galashiels in the Scottish Border country, but grew up partly in Nigeria, the son of an Irish father who was bilingual in English and French, fluent in Hausa and West African Pidgin, and competent in Yoruba and Swahili; his mother was a natural Border Scots speaker.
After an old-fashioned Scottish education in Latin, French and Classical Greek, he studied Chinese at the universities of Edinburgh and Durham, two institutions where he later taught Chinese language and literature. He was the first programme director of the Chinese-English/English-Chinese translation programme at Newcastle University; he then went on to teach translation for ten years at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
He began publishing his Scots translations of Shuihu Zhuan 《水浒传》 in 1981, and in 1992 began a continuing working relationship with the poet Yang Lian, which has so far resulted in a dozen books of translated poetry.
As a literary gent, he was lucky to slip in the back door of universities when no-one was looking, but he would have been happy to do nothing but literary translation, had it been possible to earn a decent living from it. As it is, he continues to translate into both English and Scots, and he regularly reads at literary festivals and poetry readings with Yang Lian, and also leads master-classes and workshops on poetry translation.
He has been described as “The foremost translator from Chinese of his generation.” (The Scotsman, 1996), and his work has received a Commendation in the Times Stephen Spender Poetry Translation Prize, 2012, and he was Runner-up for the Modern Poetry in Translation Prize, 2011.
He has twice been awarded a Henry Luce Chinese Poetry Translation Fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center (2013, 2014), has served on the jury for the Henry Luce Chinese Poetry Translation Fellowship (2015), and has held a Bogliasco Fellowship to the Centro Studi Ligure, Genoa (February 2014). In 2017 he won First Prize for an original poem in Scots in the inaugural Tannahill Poetry Competition. In 2019, he was awarded an Emily Harvey Venice Residency to work on finishing another poetry collection by Yang Lian.
He plays Scottish traditional music on whistles, smallpipes, guitar, and dulcimer.
