China pressured Munich institute to cancel author event

LOST IN TRANSLATION: An interpreter refused to translate comments to Yang Shuang-zi and would not translate certain Mandarin words such as ‘Taiwan’

The Chinese consulate in Munich last week unsuccessfully pressured a local literary institute to cancel a talk by Taiwanese author Yang Shuang-zi (楊?子), said Chao Yen-ching (趙彥清), director-general of the Munich office of the Taipei Representative Office in Germany.

Tanja Graf, managing director of Literaturhaus Munchen, which organized the event, confirmed the attempted interference, Chao said.

Ahead of Yang’s talk on Thursday last week, officials from China’s consulate in Munich contacted the institute and asked it to cancel the event, offering to fund and arrange an alternative featuring a Chinese author, he said.

Author Yang Shuang-zi, left, attends an event in Munich, Germany, on Sunday.

Photo: CNA

The institute refused the request, he added.

Yang’s public reading and discussion about her International Booker Prize-winning novel Taiwan Travelogue (臺灣漫遊錄) was overshadowed by controversy involving her interpreter.

Tsao Chang-chen (曹昌振), the Chinese interpreter hired by Literaturhaus Munchen, did not bring a pen or paper on stage for Yang’s talk and said before the event that there would be some political topics he would be “unable to translate,” Chao said.

As Yang’s talk took place during Oktoberfest, the institute hired a local translator who had been recommended by an association of Taiwanese expatriates in Berlin to save money, he said.

Tsao failed to translate the participants’ German remarks for Yang and, when Yang spoke, avoided translating terms such as “Republic of China,” “Taiwan” and “China,” Chao said.

Tsao translated Yang’s reference to China’s “cognitive warfare” as “misinformation,” and when Yang spoke of “the immense threat from China,” Tsao rendered it as a threat from “a very big neighbor,” prompting the organizer to clarify that the neighbor was China, he said.

After receiving complaints from Taiwanese attendees, Chao said he lodged a complaint with Tsao and raised the matter with the event’s moderator, the book’s German translator and Literaturhaus Munchen.

“The organizers were shocked and embarrassed” to learn what had happened, he said.

Several people in the audience tried to ask politically “sensitive” questions during the event, although Yang “answered very well and was not affected by it,” Chao said.

While he said he had no evidence of Chinese involvement in the interpreter controversy, the Chinese consulate had tried to get the event canceled and might also have “exercised influence” over people attending it.

Yang later said the alleged Chinese interference in her event only proved that “literature and politics cannot be separated.”