[Review] An Ode to Translation: Micael Berry's Translation, Disinformation and Wuhan Diary

Emma Zhang*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalReview article

Abstract

When Michael Berry took on the project of translating Fang Fang’s Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City in 2020, he did not anticipate that his translation would unleash a tsunami of online attacks. “Your family will live in hell forever and never get peace,” one attacker claimed; “Your son will die in three days,” said another (74). Unlike Berry’s previous works, in which he has maintained objective critical distance, his new book Translation, Disinformation, and Wuhan Diary: Anatomy of a Transpacific Cyber Campaign (2022) is much more personal, immediate, and emotional. The trauma and pain of being unwittingly swept into the centre of a massive cyber-denouncement campaign is palpable. “[J]ust as readers can create meaning from texts that the author never intended, so too the act of translation itself can carry meaning never before intended by a translator,” he laments (199).

Original languageEnglish
JournalCha: An Asian Literary Journal
Publication statusPublished - 17 Sept 2023

User-Defined Keywords

  • Wuhan Diary
  • Fang Fang
  • Michael Berry
  • translation
  • information authoritarianism

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