SINGAPORE – F. Scott Fitzgerald, author of The Great Gatsby, did not have to translate what a sandwich is to his readers. In the same way, a Vietnamese-American writer should not have to explain what pho is.
Pulitzer Prize-winning author Viet Thanh Nguyen on Nov 18 said that the people he is writing for – himself and Vietnamese people – do not expect the translation, and that others can expend the effort to “crawl inside the voices” of non-white writers, just as non-native English speakers do when they read Fitzgerald and Jane Austen.
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