Bulletin Autumn 1975

Chinese culture, presenting to him materials originally intended for Chinese eyes." Content Analysis The first five issues of Renditions carried a total of 72 items, not counting notes and fillers. These may be categorized as follows: Articles 29 Short stories 11 Novels (excerpts) 7 Poetry 15 Drama 10 The category "Articles" includes all prose pieces that are not fiction or drama. Under "Poetry", an item may consist of one long poem or a large number of poems. So, together with other kinds of breakdown, this provides a rough profile of the magazine. Of the 29 articles, the breakdown by subject- matter is as follows: Art 2 Art of translation 7 Biographical 10 Drama 3 Literary criticism 7 Essentially a translation journal, Renditions publishes original material from time to time when it fits into the editorial scheme. Of the 72 items printed, 10 were originally written in English. Again, while Renditions is mainly a vehicle for new translations, it has reprinted in its first five issues articles or translations already published elsewhere but little known or not easily available to its readers. These add up to 8 in number. The relative proportions as to the dates of source texts, roughly classical or contemporary, are as follows: Classical 32 Contemporary 40 A Note on Contributors A composite of the 61 translators and writers who have appeared, some more than once, in our pages would be something like this: He (or she) is an academic. (With about half a dozen exceptions, all are associated with universities in a teaching or research capacity, or are postgraduate students.) It would be male (43) over female (13), with 3 cases of collaboration by a man-and-woman team. We have published 41 pieces by well-known scholars and/or translators (presumably older persons) and 25 by younger practitioners, some breaking into print for the first time. Another 6 items represent the joint efforts of both. The geographic distribution of their present domicile is as follows: United States 34 Hong Ko ng 18 United Kingdom 3 Australia/New Zealand 2 Taiwan 2 Japan 1 Singapore 1 We may assume from this that there are more Chinese-English literary translators at work today in U.S. colleges and universities than anywhere else in the world. Perhaps more meaningful, in terms of the linguistic facilities and techniques involved in translation, is a breakdown of our contributors by ethnic origin. To put it precisely, how many of them use Chinese as their first language and how many are native English-speakers ？ Chinese speakers 33 English speakers 20 Te am of Chinese/English speakers 4 Japanese-American (first language unknown) 1 From this narrow base, perhaps the only conclusions that could be safely drawn are that Renditions, in its third year of publication, is by way of becoming a regular outlet for Chinese- English translators wherever they are; that it has fulfilled its promise of extending the hospitality of its pages to younger talent and experienced hands alike; and that, as of now, bilingual Chinese scholars seem to enjoy a slight edge when it comes to rendering their mother tongue into publishable English. A Word About Readership A journal of specialized interest but general appeal. Renditions has yet to reach its potential readership. Published in cosmopolitan Hong Kong, 1 0