Book translation and travel are two activities that seem unrelated, even opposite in nature. However, from the perspective of translator Tong Lien Anh, they are journeys of mutual nurturing, through which people continuously explore knowledge, live a life rich in experience and rich in spirit.
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| Tong Lien Anh on a trip to experience and explore the northernmost part of the United States. (Photo: NVCC) |
Book Translation - Silent Journey
What brought you to translating books and what do you find most challenging and interesting about translating books?
I was born and raised in a mountainous district. My giant study was the sky, the earth, the starry summer nights; my giant book was the poems and stories told in my father's memories. When I started reading, I was fascinated by everything with words around me.
For me, translating books is a form of reading very deeply to get to the bottom of a work, the only difference is that reading now is not for myself but also for thousands, tens of thousands of readers.
That forced me from a “reward” reader to a more responsible, committed and persistent reader with the work. It is also an emotional adventure in the world of words, but translating books is a quiet adventure that you often have to go alone and accept facing loneliness.
Mark Twain has a great saying about language: “The difference between the right word and the almost right word is really a big thing, it is the difference between the lightning and the firefly.”
Translation is a challenging job because it requires not only language proficiency, but also a deep knowledge of the work, sensitivity and connection to the work. The refining process is often the most time-consuming and “painful”. Sometimes, I spend weeks struggling to translate a word or a term and still am not satisfied. There are passages that I continue to retranslate when the book is reprinted for the first time, the second time… but am still not satisfied.
The most recent book I translated was on a business trip across the Northwest, Central Highlands, and Central Vietnam. Every day, I set my alarm to wake up at 4am so I could have two hours to translate before traveling hundreds of kilometers to the villages.
This experience helped me hone my perseverance, patience and nurture my motivation to continuously learn to overcome my own limits.
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| Explore the world to find yourself |
Teleportation - A Vibrant Journey
As you shared, book translation requires silence, high concentration and is relatively lonely. However, you are a person who travels a lot and you have just told about your most recent journey of “traveling and translating”. What makes you love traveling and how does it relate to reading and translating books?
I see myself as a river whose life is nurtured in the heart and all the richness that grows on both banks is achieved by unblocking the flow. For me, moving is not just about going far, changing location on the geographical map, but also a way to immerse myself and interact in the most vivid and direct way with knowledge as well as the beauty of nature, culture, society, people...
I am grateful for my job, which gives me the opportunity to “flow” out to sea. To date, I have traveled to nearly 30 countries and territories around the world. 2023 was a very special year, I had unforgettable experiences when I set foot on four continents and traveled across the country twice. These were trips that broke all the physical limits, narrow frames of perception and beliefs that I had set for myself.
| The book “Lifelong Learning” by Peter Hollins, translated by Tong Lien Anh and Le Anh Thu, was reprinted twice after one month of its official release. The book was nominated by VTV readers as one of the top 10 books not to be missed. |
Through my travels, I can touch, feel, smell, hold, grasp, see, understand and test… the things in the books. I believe that a person who has read or translated books about Israel, when touching the Wailing Wall in the Holy Land, will certainly have a strong feeling that is completely different from a traveler who just visits this land. Likewise, a person who is passionate about Jack London’s works will be overwhelmed with emotion when living in the middle of a wild moonlit night in the far North of America, seeing that pristine light shining on the frozen rivers and lakes surrounded by silent white snow forests.
Sometimes, the most beautiful moments in life are the moments when we see what we read and imagined during our childhood appear right before our eyes, or when the wildest dreams of our youth suddenly become so close that we can touch and grasp them. That is the incomparable happiness of a person who reads, translates books, experiences, and dives deep into this life.
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| Tong Lien Anh during a visit to a literacy class in Phong village, Nghe An province. (Photo: NVCC) |
Adventure and the dream life
In your opinion, what is the significance of reading, translating and traveling to each individual's learning journey, helping them "find themselves" and live the life they desire?
In Peter Hollins' book Lifelong Learning, there is a sentence that I really like: “The vast unexplored area of human experience, which exists outside the narrow confines of formal schools, is the most important area of education.”
Reading is the foundation of self-study, the first step of a lifelong learning journey. Translating books, one step further, is a way of reading and “reporting”, sharing what you read with many people. But stopping there is not enough. Constantly experiencing and immersing yourself deeply in those experiences is the way to connect the enormous knowledge from reading and translating with real life.
Therefore, for me, reading, translating and traveling are continuous journeys, intertwined, enriched and nurtured together. On that journey, each of us will discover the world outside and inside ourselves in the most profound, complete and perfect way.
Ms. Tong Lien Anh is an expert in the field of adult education and lifelong learning. She graduated with honors from the Master of Education Program at Monash University on a full scholarship from the Australian Government and was twice honored to receive the UNESCO Lifelong Learning Scholarship. She is an expert/consultant for organizations such as UNESCO, DVV International, SEAMEO CELLL... During her 10 years working at the Ministry of Education and Training, she was in charge of projects and programs to promote lifelong learning and build a learning society in Vietnam. Tong Lien Anh is the author and speaker of hundreds of articles, TV shows, and talk shows promoting reading and learning in Vietnam. She is the translator of several best-selling books such as: Profit Zone (2009), Mergers and Acquisitions (2010), Online Marketing in the Digital Age (2011), Where to Poop (2020) and Lifelong Learning (2023). |
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