Watching the British-Belgian detective drama TV series Patience (2025), and was inspired to do a search on novels featuring protagonists with autism. The most famous case is obviously The Rosie Project (2013) by Australian author Graeme Simsion. While I once tried and failed reading this novel, I do remember feeling impressed by the author’s approach when the book was translated into Traditional Chinese.
Legend has it that when Text Publishing sold the book’s Traditional Chinese rights to the newly established Emily Publishing Company, Ltd in Taiwan in 2013, Simsion was able to have much say about the translation process. Instead of having a second translator hired to proofread the Chinese translation, which is the approach most commonly taken by anglophone authors who are unfamiliar with the Chinese language — Simsion decided to have the Chinese translation “back translated” to English and then compare that to the original English text. This is certainly an unusual approach, but one that helps to detect how “true” the translation is in terms of faithfulness, fluency and elegance.
Meanwhile, a book that is often said to be similar to The Rosie Project is American author Helen Hoang’s The Kiss Quotient (2018). This one is on my TBR list, although I doubt any reasonable comparison can be made between the two books without having read both of them. Mmmm. Perhaps I should try harder.
(Day 44 #WarmWinterRead #WWR25 via @librarieschangelives)
Voices under the Sun 陽光下的聲音 