Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Fred Lobb: Bringing Taiwan's folk stories to an international audience (Culture.tw)

Every student of the Chinese language takes his or her studies in a particular direction, usually in anticipation of a career in business, translation or academia. Fred H. Lobb [pictured right], a writing coach in California, has used his skills in Mandarin Chinese rather differently. For over 30 years he has been exploring myths, legends and folktales written in Chinese, and translating many of them into English.

Having lived and studied in Taiwan, and married to a Taiwanese woman, he has paid particular attention to Taiwan's own folktales. Some are variations on stories told on the Chinese mainland; some, however, are unique to the island. Since 2007, Lobb has been posting his translations of Chinese folk stories at http://chinesefolktales.blogspot.com.

Earlier this year, BooksfromTaiwan.com, a specialist book seller based in Taiwan, released a compilation of Lobb's translations, Taiwan Folktales: Proverbs, Folk Sayings, and Folktales from Taiwan.

"The book contains the stories and proverbs that I personally enjoy and have found interesting. All my translations come from original Chinese-language sources. For a few of the stories, other English versions exist in print and online, but I didn't read those translations or utilize them in any way," Lobb says...

The complete article can be read here. Fred Lobb's book is published by BooksFromTaiwan.com, which also published the second edition of my first book, Keeping Up With The War God

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