All posts by Heather

About Heather

Heather is the Librarian II, Literacy and Readers' Advisory, with the Vaughan Public Libraries. Her job is to connect leisure readers and aspiring writers in the endless space of imagination and creation through words in all forms.  |  Meet the team

Bookfest 2023: In Conversation with Vincent Lam

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Toronto-physician-Giller-Prize-winning-author-Vincent-Lam
Toronto physician and Giller Prize-winning author Vincent Lam, photo credit © Cynthia Summers

Toronto physician and Giller Prize-winning author Vincent Lam will be attending Vaughan Public Libraries‘ Bookfest on Saturday, October 14 at the Civic Center Resource Library. If you want to meet Vincent in person, come join us and enjoy an afternoon of fun – we have designed lots of activities for all ages! Of course, if you prefer a Zoom meeting, you can register on Eventbrite.

2006-Giller-prize-winning-title-Bloodletting-and-Miraculous-Cures

In one of his interviews, Vincent said that we human were obliged to live on the surface sometimes and writing allowed him to dive down into those currents deep below the surface. The depth and authenticity of his books is what grabs me. His 2006 debut Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures follows the lives of a group of medical students as they overcome each unique challenge from qualifying medical schools to practicing in emergency rooms. The Giller winner explores both common and extraordinary moral dilemmas and offers a shockingly realistic portrait of today’s medical profession. 17 years later, Vincent’s new book On the Ravine once again captivates me from the first page as Dr. Chen brings needles and other injection supplies to the “addicts” who camp out on the ravine in Toronto’s east end. According to Health Infobase, there was a total of 36,442 apparent opioid toxicity deaths between January 2016 and December 2022 in Canada. Vincent’s new book offers a timely, in-depth look at this national crisis with piercing honesty. It raises many tough questions about doctor-patient relationship and big pharma practices.

For such a grim topic, delightfully, Dr. Lam isn’t just equipped with medical knowledge, dry stats, and hard facts, but also with unparallel literary skills that allows him to successfully deliver a powerful but beautiful story with multiple layers, complex characters, and a compelling plot.

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Make Small but Impactful Changes

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Book Cover of Atomic Habits
Book Cover of Atomic Habits

Have you made any new year’s resolutions on January 1, promising yourself that you would turn in before midnight so you could get up earlier or you would eat healthier so you could have more energy, only to find yourself fall back to the old routines a few weeks later? Or, have you–just like the old me–already stopped making this kind of promises because you have given up the idea that we can change our habits?

Right, our old habits are very difficult to break, especially the bad ones! But only Ed Sheeran can make good use of his Bad Habits, and most of us don’t, lol. Over the past year, my view on habits has completely changed because my chronic pain condition had flared up uncontrollably and taken away my ability to work and live freely for an extended period of time. The western medicine and therapies that had helped before weren’t able to put my condition under control this time. I was desperate to find ways to cope. I began to look into things that I had been automatically doing for years and eventually realized some of them were so wrong – from the way I held my mouse and the way I breathed when I exercised to the food I ate and the medication I took … Had I not finally looked for changes, I would have still been stuck.

Because of this experience, I started reading about topics that I have been taking for granted, and one of them is the impact of tiny habits. For example, drinking coffee—do I really need the second cup after lunch? Does that contribute to my poor sleep quality? Perhaps you have heard of the bestselling title Atomic Habits? Its author James Clear states, “Your life today is essentially the sum of your habits … What you repeatedly do (i.e. what you spend time thinking about and doing each day) ultimately forms the person you are, the things you believe, and the personality that you portray.” This claim is not exaggerated at all. After my experience, I now realize good habits can help us with almost everything, from staying in shape to finding happiness.

But how? How can we recognize bad habits and break them? How do we cultivate good habits and make them stick?

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Nine Recent English Translations

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Translator Daisy Rockwell and Author Geetanjali Shree, winners of the 2022 International Booker Prize, photo credit © David Parry/PA

I always find literary translated works fascinating, not only because they offer us a spectacular window to look into different cultures around the globe and inspire us with fresh stories and insights crafted by the world’s literary masterminds, but also because the challenging translation process amazes me. It always appears impossible to me to translate novels and poetry. Not to mention the nuances of cultural differences and historical contexts that can add to the subtleties of meanings and complicate the translation, the text alone is tricky enough to tackle, since each language has its own system—different grammatical rules, various syntactic possibilities, unique sounds and rhythm … there are always untranslatable words that no exact English words to match the meaning with.

Given these challenges, most translators agree that direct translation may be impossible and the focus of translation should be on conveying the intention and meaning of the text. And make an effort to preserve (or recreate) the melody in the original work. As Frank Wynne, the award-winning literary translator and the chair of the 2022 International Booker Prize judging panel, put it, “… at a theoretical level, everything is impossible to translate, so it’s just a question of how to render the impossible … Meaning is crucial to all translations, but even the translation of very standard conversation involves rhythm and cadence …”

It is clear that the translator’s refined skill in both the original and target language is critical to the success of translation. While not always possible to capture everything in the author’s voice, style, and wordplay, seasoned translators aim to balance between staying faithful to the original work and creating something as unique and provoking as the original. Frank continued to explain, “There may be cultural references that are clear to the original reader but may not be clear to the target reader; you need to make a decision as to whether you need to gloss the reference, or simply leave it there and allow the reader to do the work, look it up, or whatever … If there is a hilariously funny passage in the original, it’s your job as a translator to make sure it’s hilariously funny in translation, and that will frequently mean changing every single word, because the chance that the same words will have the same effect in a different language is almost nil—even when they are related languages.”

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