Professor Interview

I didn’t come here to study as an international student—I graduated in 1992 and in 1994 married an American who got a job at Berkeley’s history department, so I followed him here. I spent my first years in the US reading and attending Chinese extension courses before applying for a Master’s degree in 1998 because I really loved the environment. 

In 1995 when I came, there were not that many Americans in Hanoi—most of those who I knew were grad-students, professors, journalists, etc—so I experienced a lot of culture shock. I remember looking out the window at the Honolulu airport and seeing Americans doing manual labor—being young, I was shocked because I’d always thought that all Americans had office jobs. Afterward, I came to Berkeley and on Telegraph, I saw  people with colorful dyed hair for the first time, which you never saw in Vietnam back then. Ten days later, I went to Castro in San Francisco for Halloween—it was a very eye-opening and fun experience. 

Because I’ve been doing translation for more or less 30 years, my philosophy has changed. It’s very hard to be completely accurate [to the original]. But sometimes, when you are completely accurate, you lose some of the stuff, like the beauty. For example, if you concentrate on trying to convey the exact meaning then your translation is going to be very stiff. But at the beginning, that was my most important goal. 

Now, I think that translation is for those who can’t read the original language. So what’s important is making the text accessible and resonate with that audience. Then, you don’t care too much about [complete accuracy]—of course that doesn’t mean you can do whatever you want—but if you lose one meaning from the original work and gain a different kind of meaning in the translation, then that's good to me. 

The key is, for any reader, they are not turned off by the book. If you care too much about being so accurate and you turn the reader off, then you fail. All the beautiful things in the original language are for the people who can speak that language.

Here's an example, in Dumb Luck (Số đỏ) there's a character called Mr TYPN—short in Vietnamese for “I Love Women”—he signs every one of his works “TYPN”. It’s very funny in Vietnamese because you can't really say the word, but when you translate “TYPN” then it doesn't really mean anything in English. So instead of “I Love Women” we change it into I Love Lady—so “ILL”. He becomes Mr ILL in English. It's different, but we kind of played with the words in English. In that way, we lose the consonants in Vietnamese but we gain something in English, and that's how I approach translation now.

After being here for a long time, what about Berkeley stands out the most to you, and what is one thing that you would like to change?

I love Berkeley. I didn’t recognize how lucky I was at the beginning because Berkeley was the first place I stopped at when I came to the US. I thought every place was the same, but it wasn’t. I love the weather at Berkeley—it is just so gorgeous all year round. I love the food—it’s so diverse, you can find so many different country’s good food in Berkeley. And I love the diversity of people. In Berkeley, especially in UC Berkeley, people are very friendly and supportive. Going out, I don't feel stood-out at all. Sometimes, when I travel to other places in the US, I'd be the only Asian around. Here, I feel so at home, not just because the Asian community is large but there are also many other groups of people and everybody seems to be at ease. The longer I stay, the more I love it.

Well…one thing that I would like to change is the homelessness situation around Berkeley. I wish we had more money to help them. You know, to provide a system—because when you drive around Berkeley and Oakland, you see them and try to help a little bit, but it's inadequate. So if I could do something then I'd wish Berkeley had more money to help them.