Click on the player below to listen to the podcast talk or read City Weekend's live blog reporting with Howard Goldblatt: "Book Launch: Wolf Totem".

Click here to save the mp3 to your computer. Audio courtesy of the Glamour Bar. Sound recording by Tom Lee Pettersen at Meta Music Media.

6:59 | Is it Cliche? The final question is posed by a man who seems to feel that the story was an extended cliche, exhibited by a Chinese man writing about life in Mongolia. The man likened this to Tom Cruise portraying a samurai and other theatrical crossovers. Goldblatt seemed highly irritated by this question, feeling that the man was being very defensive and that to call something cliche for presenting something different was extremely limiting. "I just flat out disagree with you," says Goldblatt who obviously feels that people should not be limited by their birth, age, gender, nationality or ethnicity in what they can and cannot write about. Hear, hear!

6:53 | Mars and Venus Is there a difference in translating literature by male and female authors? Is Goldblatt conscious of the concept of voice. "This concept of voice goes way beyond gender, it goes into all kinds of areas," says Goldblatt, pointing out the fact that he's a 60-year-old white American translating works by Chinese authors. There's a linguistic, age, and cultural divide as well, beyond the gender divide. "How narrow do we want to be?" he asks. He says that, having translated works by women in the past, he feels that there are enough cues in the text to follow the voice of the author, "I hope," he adds modestly. But, at the same time gender is not something that Goldblatt is not conscious of, it is something that he keeps in mind when translating.

6:48 | A Follow-Up Why are things in Chinese literature moving at such a glacial pace? Why is the movement still among the middle-aged authors, why are there no young Chinese authors entering the scene? Drawing a comparison to the fast-moving world of action movies, Goldblatt says, "As someone who deals with words, other than breaking ground with new content, I think the changes come more slowly because they don't have the tool box available to do something so moving and so striking that it draws people to it."

6:45 | The Curse of the Universal Language Goldblatt says that Americans and British are cursed by the fact that they speak English. "I bet everyone in this room speaks English and not all of you are Americans," he says. "Everyone speaks English. And people assume that if it's really good, it will be translated into English. So there's a tendency not to be terribly interested in foreign literature." Optimistically he feels that things are moving forward, slowly, but forward.

6:39 | The Right Reasons An audience member challenges him to explain his feeling that some people learn Chinese for the wrong reasons. What does he mean? What is the wrong reason? "Business, not literature," he says. People laugh. He says, "I know it's a bit narrow-minded," acknowledging that those who come here to do business do help to provide people, including himself, with great things. But, "If you ask me the only important thing is to read and to translate literature!" In a way, we think this is a great testament to Goldblatt's passion for Chinese literature and his belief that these authors are saying things that people all over the world should be able to read and absorb.

6:33 | More Translators For a long time, Goldblatt was one of the few people translating Chinese literature into English. He says that now there are many more people learning Chinese. "Sometimes for the wrong reasons," he says, "but that's the way it goes." As Chinese literature grows, so too does the recognition of it and the wealth of translators.

6:32 | Tangent We just have to say that we're actually surprised to see the number of people out to see a presentation by a translator. Perhaps it's simply the number of people in Shanghai who are engaged in this profession in some respect either translating from Chinese to English or Chinglish to English. Still, as one of the busier sessions at SILF, we're a bit surprised.

6:27 | Accuracy vs. Power Do you sacrifice accuracy for style if a diversion will mean making the text more powerful? "these tensions exist every step of the way," says Goldblatt. "Have I overtranslated it? Undertranslated it? Translated it well? There is a temptation to begin to think, 'hey, I write rather well, better than this guy,'" he says. But if you overtranslate it, then the text may not ring as true to the reader in the end.

6:24 | The Dividing Line Where does the writer end and the translator begin, an audience member asks. Whose style is the story written in? "It's all him, and yet it's all me. It's his imagery, his story, his structure, it's Jiang Rong--his name is on here bigger than mine--and yet the words are mine. And when I say the words are mine it's because most of the words do not equal, or are not commensurate with the Chinese ... it's a difficult question to answer. It's him and it's me."

6:22 | Bring on the Vino As Michelle runs to grab a microphone for the question period, Goldblatt jovially says, "Another glass of wine would be nice." One of the M staff hand the audience member the microphone and he quips, "Oh darn, I thought maybe it was going to be a glass of wine!" Michelle places another glass of red in front of Goldblatt and Lusby to fuel the discussion.

6:16 | On Being a Translator "I'm not a frustrated novelist," he says. The crowd, many of whom (like Kelley Price who's sitting next to us) are translators, laugh--they've probably been accused of the same thing. But Goldblatt seems to feel his role as a translator is unique in the realm of translators because translating between English and Chinese is different from translating between Spanish and English. Why? Because Chinese takes very long to learn and absorb, but it's not simply a matter of figuring out what the author is saying, but rather what the author means. Anyone who's ever tried to turn a press release translated into Chinglish into something that resembles a modicum of the way we'd say the same thing (usually in about a quarter of the words) can probably understand what Goldblatt means.

6:13 | Wolf in Sheepskin Goldblatt says that he thinks that the theme of the wolf is used to speak to the nature of the Han Chinese. He feels the author means to convey the notion that Han Chinese are often very sheepish and don't always exert the characteristics of the wolf, an allusion he makes in the novel several times. But, says Goldblatt, "this is a question that would be better answered by the author, so I'd rather leave him to discuss it with you ... which he never will," he laughs. We're not sure exactly why but we guess the author is a bit shy.

6:08 | Friends with Jiang Rong Goldblatt met Jiang Rong "before he was Jiang Rong" he says. Goldblatt had actually known Jiang's wife quite well (who is also a writer) and he says that when he first met Jiang briefly some time ago and they actually didn't get along very well initially. Later, when he was presented with the book, he realized that he actually knew who Jiang was. Goldblatt says that Jiang was very gracious during the translation, not getting aggravated as some authors do when Goldblatt asked cultural questions or for clarification on daily habits mentioned in the book and so on. He corresponded with Jiang's wife on the translation of the novel (because Jiang is not as computer literate) and only actually met Jiang Rong and conversed with him properly three days ago. Sounds like they got along much better this time.

6:02 | On the Translation "I didn't read the entire novel before I translated it," admits Goldblatt. He had begun to read it prior to agreeing to translate it, and when asked if he would, he decided that the book, after being only a third of the way through, had already gripped him as a reader. Goldblatt thought that translating it as he read it would enable him to capture that sense of amazement within the translation. "And I think it worked," he says. "That's the good news. The bad news is that the first translation was ragged and it took me a long time to go through and clean it up the second time."

6:00 | Paying Dues "It's an absolutely stunning piece of work by someone who is not traditionally a novelist. The author is foremost an academic," says Goldblatt, paying his dues to the author who he feels has truly captured a unique portrait of the nation and of people.

5:57 | Why China? As a young man, Goldblatt was to be sent to war, having been chosen in the draft, but instead of being sent to Vietnam he was sent to Taiwan. "To this day I don't know why," he says but, it was the beginning of a love affair that obviously has continued to inform his life and experiences.

5:54 | Cliffhanger Like a good storyteller, Goldblatt reads well, capturing the audiences' interest by reading about Chen's perilous first encounter with a pack of wolves, alone in the wilderness on horseback. Skilfully, he leaves the crowd hanging at the moment when Chen receives an epiphany that will enable him to evade certain death at the jagged teeth of the alpha male of the pack. Well done. We're intrigued.

5:47 | Wolves Are People Too The story tells of the first time the protagonist encounters wolves in the wild. "The story is about more than wolves, it's about people, about lives," says Goldblatt. He begins to read the opening pages when the main character, Chen, first encounters wolves on the desolate glacial grasslands of Mongolia.

5:44 | We've Got It Howard Goldblatt sits up on the stage with Jo Lusby, head of Penguin Books in China (and a former CW editor, oh the greatness), who is introducing Goldblatt as well as the laborious process Penguin undertook in pursuing the publication of Wolf Totem by Jiang Rong. She says that they (Penguin) were very excited about the book which has just been released in China (yesterday, actually).