"Presence" Season 3 Press Conference Roundtable Preview｜From Chinese to the World: My (our) Nonfiction Writing Accent

"As a native Chinese speaker, I choose to write in English. But this is not my flaw, but my contribution to the English-speaking world. Because I use my growth experience and the thinking formed in my native language Habits have enriched and expanded the vocabulary and expressions of the English world."

At the 2023 "Presence" New York offline event, Cheng Yangyang, a speaker who engages in particle physics research in the United States and writes publicly in English, once shared this.

In fact, we often encounter audiences sharing their confusion about language use and writing at various events. Some people shared that "you still have to use your native language to write very delicate and intimate things"; others liked that "you can think more calmly and clearly by using an unfamiliar non-native language." Among the winners of the Three Seasons Present·Non-fiction Writing Scholarship, there are also many writers from ethnic minorities or Chinese writers who have been overseas for a long time. Language processing is almost a common background and theme for everyone.

"Presence" is a Chinese writing scholarship. The greatest common denominator of the languages ​​used by everyone is Chinese, but every author has many other languages ​​that are widely used in daily life and work . As Cheng Yangyang said, the culture and history behind different languages ​​interweave and expand everyone's Chinese writing.

In terms of international communication, such writing in Chinese is becoming more and more important; but for individual writers, when writing in Chinese, they may at the same time be interacting with dialects, minority languages, Mandarin, professional languages ​​in colleges, and other countries. language convergence. How to deal with multi-language scenes? How to translate, expand and further communicate stories in different cultural languages?

The third season of the "Presence" roundtable conference started from these observations and reflections, inviting scholars, writers, and journalists who span multilingual life, communication, and writing to share with us their "from Chinese to the world, and from the world to Chinese." accent"--

The "accent" here can refer to a person's special writing style: a writer will have his own unique writing strategies when facing different groups of people and interacting with different languages ​​and cultures (that is, he needs to deal with and translate the speech accents of one group of people to another) a group of people). It also points to the development of one's own writing methods in different contexts and life encounters.​

We also invited two senior editors from the publishing industry from mainland China and Taiwan to share their observations in the professional field, as well as their experiences on how to find and cultivate Chinese-speaking authors and how to build bridges between the Chinese and non-Chinese worlds.

[Roundtable information of press conference]

Time: 2024/1/20 (Saturday) 9:30~12:00 (Taipei time)​

Zoom: 859 0375 9120

Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/82966017131

Guests (sorted by number of strokes of last name)

• Wu Qi, editor-in-chief of Shandu

• Eileen Chow, director of the East Asia Institute at Duke University and director of the Duke Story Lab

• Zhuang Ruilin, Chief Editor of Spring Mountain Publishing

• Liu Shaohua, anthropologist, writer, researcher at the Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan

• Tam Hui-yun, independent journalist, lecturer at School of Journalism and Communication, Chinese University of Hong Kong

host

• Zhang Jieping, Founder of Present·Nonfiction Writing Scholarship

▚ ▚ ​▚ ▚ ​New awards will be announced on the day of the press conference, look forward to seeing you! ▞ ▞ ▞ ▞

About presence

Matters, in conjunction with the Hong Kong Renaissance Foundation, launched the "Presence·Nonfiction Writing Scholarship" in 2021, hoping to provide professional and resource support to documentaries who insist on being at the forefront of the times. For three seasons, we have been committed to encouraging Chinese writers around the world to write real stories that must be written and must be written by you at the connection between individuals and the world. We have also provided bonuses, one-to-one editing, publication and publishing for authors' writing proposals. Derived IP support.

"Presence" is not only a passive state of reality, but also an active choice: to understand oneself at the scene of the times, refuse to return to the normal state, consciously observe, record, and question, use writing as action, uncover problems, and see the truth .

Such "presence" requires a keen awareness of history, an openness to the curiosity of the unknown, resistance to inertia and constant questioning, and more importantly, honest and courageous writing and recording.

When uncertainty and crisis still hang over our lives, we want to face it head-on with you.

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For the three-quarter report and award-winning articles, please visit the official website: https://www.frontlinefellowship.io/

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