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The Guest for Today’s Episode is Tiffany Tsao.

Tiffany Tsao is a writer and literary translator. She is the author of the novel The Majesties  and the Oddfits fantasy trilogy (so far, The Oddfits and The More Known World.)

She has translated five books from Indonesian into English. For her translation of Budi Darma’s People from Bloomington, she was awarded the 2023 PEN Translation Prize and the 2023 NSW Premier’s Translation Prize. Her translation of Norman Erikson Pasaribu’s ‘Happy Stories, Mostly’ was awarded the 2022 Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses and longlisted for the 2022 International Booker Prize.

Born in the United States and of Chinese-Indonesian descent, her family returned to Southeast Asia when she was 3. She spent her formative years in Singapore and Indonesia before moving to the US to study at a university. She has a B.A. in English literature from Wellesley College and a Ph.D. in English literature from UC Berkeley. She lives in Sydney, Australia.

Conversation:

Harshaneeyam: Welcome to our podcast, Tiffany. 

Tiffany Tsao: Thanks for having me. 

Harshaneeyam: What was your inspiration for getting into translations? 

Tiffany Tsao: I used to be an academic. I got a PhD in English literature and taught English and world literature at the university, including Indonesian literature. And then, I decided to change fields, and around that time, I was looking for various jobs in other industries including editing, and things like that. At this time, my agent, who represents my written work, gave me the good news that they had found a publisher interested in my novel but also asked me at the same time if I would be interested in translating some Indonesian writers because that year, that upcoming year was the Frankfurt Book Fair, where Indonesia was the guest of honour. So that’s how I got started. 

Harshaneeyam: At the time you were living in Australia? 

Tiffany Tsao: I was already living in Australia. 

Harshaneeyam: So any part of your life you lived in Indonesia? 

Tiffany Tsao: When I was six years old  – I grew up in Singapore and Indonesia, and my parents would always work in Indonesia. Still, for a time when we were very young, they would commute between Singapore and Indonesia. My family is Chinese-Indonesian. 

Harshaneeyam: Tell us about your reading. Who are your favourite authors, any favorite novels or short story compilations? 

Tiffany Tsao: Oh, that’s interesting. I feel like it often changes. It’s another work of translation. It’s called Human Acts. That’s the English title. It’s by Han Kang, who’s a Korean writer, and it was translated by Deborah Smith. I read that last year and I’ve just really been thinking a lot about it since. Yeah, that’s the first one that comes to mind. In terms of general favourites or constant favourites, I really like Kazuo Ishiguro. I like to tell people I liked him before he won the Nobel Prize. Yeah, so you know, I was always on the bandwagon. I don’t think I have his writing style myself, but I’m very impressed with the deceptive simplicity of his language. I feel like the language is very bare, but it can convey quite a lot.

And when you look at what details he tells and what details he doesn’t, he’s Always really good at giving you an idea of what’s going on, an idea of the scene, but also importantly, I think the inner character of people, like he’s not that concerned with the intricacies and the ornateness of physical life and physical details.It really gets right to the heart of the matter. 

Harshaneeyam: Do the books you like, the writers you like, and the themes you like, influence the way you translate or the books you choose to translate? 

Tiffany Tsao: I think I do like creepy things, like things with a little bit of a creepy bent, and maybe that is why I like, Ishiguro.  I think that’s why I was drawn to writers like Buddhidharma and writers like Norman Erickson Pasaribu. There is a hint of the speculative and of the unfamiliar of the slightly eerie.. So I think that’s probably does influence my taste a little bit. Not that I always get to pick what I translate, but most of the time – I do. 

Harshaneeyam: You wrote a novel The Majesties. Can you tell us about the novel? 

Tiffany Tsao: Yes. it’s about, A woman whose sister has killed all of the guests and her family at their grandfather’s 80th birthday banquet. And she is in a coma and she is the only survivor. she’s sifting through her memories to try and figure out why her sister did it. It’s set in a wealthy Chinese Indonesian family. And during the transition from the Suharto era to I guess the false democratic era that we find ourselves in now. 

Harshaneeyam: It’s more of a political novel, a political commentary kind of a thing? 

Tiffany Tsao: There’s a bit of politics in it.It’s in the background. The reviews and critics have called it. It’s very evasive in terms of genre. So it seems like a thriller, but it’s actually a family drama. But there’s a lot of like political historical stuff, but there’s a speculative bent as well, because there’s like a sort of a fantastical business that the two sisters run. So it’s a bit of a blend of all of those things. 

Harshaneeyam: When did you write this novel? 

Tiffany Tsao: It was published in Australia in 2018 under a different title, ‘Under Your Wings’, which I think was a very boring title, but we couldn’t think of a better title. then it was picked up for the U. S. market and the U.S. co-agent came up with the idea of the title ‘The Majesties’, which is a quote from the book. And so that worked out really well because it’s a better title. And that came out in 2020 in the US and UK. 

Harshaneeyam: What is the first book that you translated from Indonesian and how you came across the book and tell us about its publishing journey?

Tiffany Tsao: So the first book was ‘Perahu Kertas’ by Dee Lestari in English that translates to paper boats. That was a Indonesian novel and it was a bit of a kind of a lighthearted campus romance. I think it came out in 2016, if I’m not mistaken. That was thanks to my agent, who asked me and that’s how I got into translating.  she asked me, “are there any Indonesian writers that you like, and, that maybe I could represent? For the upcoming Frankfurt Book Fair, where Indonesia was the guest of honor, and if so, maybe, we could work together. You can help me put together a proposal sample.” 

So I helped her out with that. And Amazon Crossing, which is Amazon’s translation imprint, picked it up. And so that was that was my first job, a book length job. 

Harshaneeyam: How was the reception like? for the first translation. 

Tiffany Tsao: I think it was pretty good. With Amazon published books, and it was the same way for my first novel you don’t get as much reception from traditional outlets unless you’re with their literary imprint.

This was more of a commercial fiction book than a literary fiction book. Reader reviews were very good, and it has a very good rating on Amazon. But it’s been interesting to see the difference between publishing with Amazon and publishing with a more traditional publisher who will send it out to the usual review outlets.But I can’t complain. It was a pretty good reception for the book, and I was pretty happy with that. 

Harshaneeyam: When you translate a book, the feedback that you get. Will there be any feedback besides using general adjectives like fluid prose, great translation and all? Was there any specific feedback for your translations?

Tiffany Tsao: For those, I would have to seek out people who know the Indonesian language. 

Harshaneeyam: Okay. 

Tiffany Tsao: And then I get a bit more feedback there, but it is difficult. On its own, it will never come because they will not be in that position, and I understand because how can I also comment on the translation of another work, but I do appreciate the fact that I still do appreciate it when people call my translations fluid or enjoyable or seamless because I do like to think then that at least that element of the translation is okay, So it’s funny because I know a lot of Indonesianists who study Indonesia and, sometimes they’ll be like, Oh yeah, this didn’t capture the exact meaning of it because it’s quite specific.

So then you’d be like, Oh how would you translate it? And then you look at, some of them have produced translations, and you look at the translations and you’re like, it doesn’t sound very good. So I think it’s sometimes like you have to lose one and gain in the other area.

Harshaneeyam: I think that’s the most difficult part about translating, especially literary translations. How well are you equipped with the commercial side of translations, Tiffany? 

Tiffany Tsao: I think I know a little bit, but it is one of those things where the more you know, the more you know, the less you know.

So I would say that the longer I do it, the more I think I know. And then all of us, occasionally something will happen and I’ll be like, Oh, that is completely what I didn’t expect. Or I’ll find a clause in a contract, and I’m like, Oh, what is this doing here? I’ve never seen this kind of thing before.

I work with my agent who represents my written and also a lot of my translated work. Not all of it, a lot of it. So she’s actually based in Bangalore, Jaya Priya Vasudevan. 

Harshaneeyam: Yeah. She’s a publisher, too, right? 

Tiffany Tsao: No. Back in the day. She used to run a bookstore back in the day.But now she just does agenting. She doesn’t do publishing. There’s also a publisher called ‘Jacaranda’, but it’s unrelated and in the UK, so that’s different. So we’ve been working quite closely with a lot of things. So I learned some things from her as well. When I get my own Contracts or when translators get together, they often will exchange news. So then you’ll get to know what deals people are making, contracts contract terms they had versus yours and which editor is nice to work with and which isn’t and all of that kind of thing. All the gossip kind. 

Harshaneeyam: But that’s one of the activities for professional translators, the commercial side of it. You get to spend a lot of time on that. 

Tiffany Tsao: I think you do because you have to prepare. Even with my agent, I have to prepare the pitch. I have to help her with the pitch. I have to do the sample, and the synopsis, because she doesn’t have access to the original material. Whereas I do.And even if she’s working with, the author’s publisher who may hold the rights for English language translations. Then in that case, I’m often there to double check, to clean things up a little bit, if to make sure that it really looks very nice, for any publisher who’s considering.

Yeah, so in a way, you’re acting like a little agent yourself. And then you have to think about the author’s side as well. Depending on the arrangement, the publisher or the author who holds the rights.If the author holds the rights, you do have to work quite closely with them. If not, you may work through an intermediary, like the publisher, but contact the author on the translation process itself if you have any questions that need clarifying. 

Harshaneeyam: For our listeners, please introduce contemporary Indonesian literature and translations into English and any recommended books to read.

Tiffany Tsao: I like the writer Intan Paramadita. She wrote, in English it’s called ‘The Wandering’, and it’s really cool. It’s a sort of gothic, contemporary, choose-your-own-adventure novel. It’s a meditation on migration global nomadism, but how class, gender, education status, and economics, all of those are affect how people move through the global landscape.

So I think that’s a very clever one. Hopefully, there’s going to be another English translation of her latest book coming out as well, but I won’t talk about that because I’ll just talk about ones that people can read immediately. Another one that she wrote is the English title ‘Apple and Knife’.

And that’s a short story collection. Both of those were translated by Steven J. Epstein. So those are very good. I would highly recommend both of those. Another one, I would recommend, just because it’s quite recent, ‘24 Hours with Gaspar’, translation was by Laura Norgaard, and written by Sabda Armandio. 

 Harshaneeyam: An interesting one. I loved it. It’s beautiful. 

Regarding your work, what are you currently working on? Tiffany. 

Tiffany Tsao: So I just finished a novel manuscript for my my own written work and I’m currently working on translating two novels. So one is a very short, almost a novella thriller, and that’s actually for an Indonesian publisher. So that’s interesting. The English edition will be released, and they said it’s because they want readers who read English to either improve their English language skills or compare the Indonesian and English editions. So that’s quite interesting. And it does speak actually to how English is moving through the world, right?

There’s a colonisation—that’s a linguistic colonization that is happening, right? Yeah. Many Indonesians, middle class and above, or who like to read, are quite fluent in English and consume a lot of English language literature and translations as well. So that’s been very interesting, and that one’s cool because it’s a thriller.

And I think the inspiration is from a very particular type of Japanese thriller genre. I forget what’s particular about it, but it opens with a report about the murder, a mass murder of a family. And of course, because ‘the Majesties’ my novel opened with the mass murder of a family.

So I was like, Oh, this is very exciting. It’s like a match made in heaven. So that one is called Pasien or patient, and it’s by Naomi Midori, who’s actually an Indonesian author. Who’s I think currently living in Guangzhou in China? So that’s cool. It’s quite international as well. And then the next one I’m working on is also another book by Budi Dharma, who wrote ‘People from Bloomington’ that one’s called Olenka, and it’s quite different in flavour, but it’s a bit slower, a bit more meditative.

Stylistically it broke, tt was very famous for breaking ground in Indonesia because it did a lot of things that one could describe as ccollage-like So, the narrative itself is of one piece. In it are interspersed news reports, and and events. The Original had actually a lot of photos and news clippings.And there were a lot of very long footnotes and there’s a lot of allusions and external references. So it’s a very interesting novel in terms of that. So I’m very excited to be bringing that. Passien, or Patient, will be coming out this year., for Olenka,  harder to gauge because that might be one or two years from the delivery date.I think my translation is due at the end of this year, beginning of next year. It will probably be one and a half to two years after that because, the publishing schedule. So they like to have a lot of lead time and publicity and all of that. 

Harshaneeyam: Now we’ll talk about two books that you translated which has got a lot of recognition.

One is by Norman Erikson Passaribu, ‘The Happy Stories Mostly’. 

Tiffany Tsao: Yeah, so it’s a short story collection focusing on the queer experience in Indonesia. Norman is a queer writer. they’ve described in interviews that it was a book written for, with and for Indonesian queers in mind.So I think it’s very uncompromising in that. It’s this blend of absurdism and a bit of sci-fi as well. All of the stories are quite different in their own ways. There’s a sort of dark humor that runs through all of their work. And of course I think almost all are about Batak characters because Norman is ethnic Batak, an indigenous ethnic group in Indonesia.Yeah I really enjoyed translating it. it was a big challenge because stylistically there are some similarities, but I really had to quite, one has to change quite a lot with each story because Norman would alter, the perspective alters quite a lot and the subject matter and I felt they’re always keeping the reader on their toes.

Harshaneeyam: And even there are some phrases, I think, Batak phrases. 

Tiffany Tsao: Also, for the Indonesian reader who would be majority is Javanese, right? it would be like they would also not know the words necessarily, right? So you want to keep the Batak flavor strong and uncompromising and also create the same effect, as for a reader in Indonesia.

Harshaneeyam: Yeah, it’s a wonderful collection of stories. 

Tiffany Tsao: Yeah, I’m glad you liked it. 

Harshaneeyam: Of course, the other one is’ People from Bloomington, ‘ which won the Penn Translation Prize. You are also translating his other book. Tell us about the author. Take us through ‘People from Bloomington’, too. 

Tiffany Tsao: Budhidharma was actually quite an established literary figure, and he was already quite well known when he wrote the short story collection.I don’t know how it is, in India, but in Indonesia, until fairly recently, until I’d say the past, maybe one, two decades, maybe three now – short stories used to be like, it’s perfectly normal to just write short stories. they would be published in newspapers and in magazines, and everyone would read those newspapers and magazines. I have had podcast interviews about Budidarma, and there have been people who get it wrong, and they say Oh after ‘People from Bloomington’, which was a short story collection, he then published a novel, which then got him famous. And I was like, no, you’re just imagining that because he was actually already very famous before even the book was published. published of his short stories and before the novel. So he was very well known for his short stories already. And this was around, around the the 70s, 1970s.

He was also an academic. At some point, he Went to the States, specifically to Bloomington, Indiana, the University of Indiana, to study English literature and get his Master’s and his PhD. It was while he was there that he decided to write ‘People from Bloomington’, which is, in fact, about people from Bloomington.

And it’s, I remember reading it or hearing about it for the first time. And I was thinking like, Oh, that’s so interesting. That’s just something that you would not think of an Indonesian writer is writing because we said in Indonesia and he has written a lot of other things set in Indonesia, but people from Bloomington, and it’s funny too, because even now I was at a book launch recently and then they mentioned ‘people from Bloomington’. It came up and  I was just so interested. “you translated as ‘people from Bloomington’ it’s actually – About migrants in Bloomington or Indonesia. and I was like ‘NO’.  It was on zoom.  So I didn’t get a chance to reply, but I really wanted to say no, it’s not.

It’s actually about people from Bloomington except for one.  The writer himself told me as I wasquite active in corresponding with him on the translation. And it says so in the foreword, I think except for the first two stories, the rest are about people from Bloomington.

So they’re meant to be white Americans in Bloomington,or I guess their ethnicity is never stated.  I think that’s cool because it reverses the usual the other way, right? So we have Rudyard Kipling writing about people in the colonies, and pretending, taking on the native voice. I think Joseph Conrad does it as well with his Malay fiction if I recall. And I remember reading this book and being really excited. It wasn’t just the only merit of the book, right? It’s such a creepy, darkly humorous book plus this really absurd situation the characters get in. See, it’s not just white people writing about brown and yellow people, right? Brown and yellow people can also write about, these white people, too. 

Harshaneeyam: You talked about your choice of books about murders, creepy experiences and all. Do you have any creepy experiences with ghosts or something similar?

Tiffany Tsao:I do have dark thoughts. I think I’ve always had a very morbid streak. Even when I was younger, I think I always had just dark, darkly humorous thoughts, macabre thoughts. I think I’ve always been inclined that way. When I was in graduate school, I used to work at this natural history store. And they were doing a lot of animal taxidermy and we used to sell human skulls. At that time the owner would order the human skulls on eBay, he would bid for them on eBay. But most of them came from t two guys. One was named Gao, and another guy was named Kevin in China. And we would get these giant shipments of human skulls. As I was the newest employee, my job, aside from cleaning the mouse cages, and feeding the snakes, I had to clean all the human skulls. And, I remember, actually, it was funny. There was this Chinese guy who came in as a delivery guy.

And I think he thought I spoke Chinese and I don’t, my Chinese is very bad.  But he asked me in Chinese, are you afraid to work here? It never occurred to me to be afraid. I was like, ‘Oh no, it’s okay. It’s not so bad here. It was certainly interesting.  But I remember those human skulls, they would be like larval cases because larvae had been buried somewhere for a long time. I have no idea where. And then sometimes you’d have to pick out bits of gum from the top of the teeth. You’d have to pick it off and it would be really rubbery from age. But yeah, it never occurred to me to be scared of that kind of thing. 

Harshaneeyam: It never occurred to you to write about it? 

Tiffany Tsao: Yeah, no, actually, it did influence a bit. ‘The Majesties’ my novel,  the bugs in it there’s a little bit of influence, but I am conscious of not treading on that because the partner of the boss, who’s also the manager, she was at the time writing a screenplay about, based on the store. So I remember it’s always in my mind.That’s her material. I can’t take it. It’s her right to write about it. 

Harshaneeyam: Thank you, Tiffany, for such a lovely, enjoyable, and humorous conversation. 

Tiffany Tsao: Thank you so much. It’s been a pleasure.

*****

You can buy her work using the links in the Show Notes.

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To buy ‘People from Bloomington’ –

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To Buy ‘The Majesties’ –

https://harshaneeyam.captivate.fm/majesties

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