We are really excited to announce that we have received a grant from the Scottish Government’s Scottish Connections Fund for our new project, Mother Tongue Manifesto. We will be commissioning new works in both Gaelic and Tâi-gí (Taiwanese Hokkien), and translating works from Gaelic to Tâi-gí, and from Tâi-gí to Gaelic.
Currently, we are based between Scotland and Taiwan, and we have been struck by the parallels between the experiences of language suppression and revival in both countries. Both Gaelic and Tâi-gí (along with other languages such as Scots, Hakka, and indigenous Taiwanese languages) have been historically marginalised. With this project, we want to highlight the linguistic richness of both Scotland and Taiwan, working with writers in both countries to produce new works.
We’re particularly excited to be working to translate not just from but also into Tâi-gí and Gaelic. We are not sure — correct us if we are wrong! — but this may be the first-ever time in history that literary works have been translated between these two languages.
We have set up a project website at taigael.com, where you can meet our fabulous writers: in Taiwan, Naomi Sím and Kiú-kiong, and in Scotland, Lisa MacDonald and Elissa Hunter-Dorans.
We’re kicking off the project with a collaborative online workshop, where we will explore these parallel experiences. Then the writers will begin work on their new stories. After that, we will work together on collaborative translation. Here’s how it will work.
| Original story | Translation 1 | Translation 2 | Translation 3 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Naomi Sím | Kiú-kiong | Wind&Bones | Lisa MacDonald |
| Kiú-kiong | Naomi Sím | Wind&Bones | Elissa Hunter-Dorans |
| Lisa MacDonald | Elissa Hunter-Dorans | Wind&Bones | Kiú-kiong |
| Elissa Hunter-Dorans | Lisa MacDonald | Wind&Bones | Naomi Sím |
In this table, for Naomi and Kiú-kiong, the progression of languages will be:
Tâi-gí [Original] → Mandarin [Translation 1] → English [Translation 2] → Gaelic [Translation 3]
Meanwhile, for Lisa and Elissa, it will be the reverse:
Gaelic [Original] → English [Translation 1] → Mandarin [Translation 2] → Tâi-gí [Translation 3]
This means that all the writers on the project will be translated by, or will translate, all the other writers, leading to all kinds of interesting cross-currents!
By the end of the project, we will have four stories, by four writers and in four languages. We will be publishing the stories on taigael.com in early to mid-2025, and soon after, we will be publishing the entire collection as a handsome paperback!
