Recently, the Chinese writer Xue Mo’s Nepalese epistles ” Love in Proximity ” was published in Kathmandu. The book was translated by Dr. Sarbottam Shrestha, a famous Sinologist and former chairman of the Nepal Arniko Society. This is the second work in Nepali published by Xuemo.
The original Chinese name of ” Love in Proximity”, was literally “see the letter as face — Sharwadi ‘s love letter”, and the English name was “love in proximity”. The Chinese version of “see the letter as face” was published by Encyclopedia of China Publishing House in August, 2017. Today, The book has been translated into English, French and Nepali till date.
” Love in Proximity”, Sharwadi ‘s thirty-six love letters are extracted from Xue Mo’s novel “The Holy Monk and the Spirit Woman”. “The Holy Monk and the Spirit Woman” mainly describes the journey of Khyungpo Naljor, a cultural master in human history, who went to India and Nepal to seek Dharma thousands of years ago. More than 200 years later than Xuanzang of the Tang Dynasty, he inherited the teachings of more than 150 masters. He is a master of many cultures and is called “Xuanzang of the Western region”.
During his pilgrimage to Nepal, he met the abdicated goddess Sharwadi. They had a true love, so they deduced a sad and beautiful love story in their love letters. In this era of lack of true love and belief, Sharwadi’s thirty-six love letters are romantic and poetic, which fit a lot of people’s pursuit of true love.
Seeing Sharwadi’s love letter, many people naturally think of the love poems of cangyang Gyatso in Tibet, China. So, Is Sharwadi writing a love letter? Xue Mo said, “No, it is not. Of course, it has the lingering love, love Acacia, love tenderness, and the external appearance of all love letters. But if we put aside all the external appearance, we can go deep into it and see another scenery. Sharwadi realized a sublimation of life in the form of writing love letters in her illness and lovesickness. She took everything as the experience of her soul and sublimated her little love into a belief. This is the true meaning of her love letter. “
As for the publication of this book in Nepal, the writer Xue Mo hopes that readers can see from this small book Sharwadi’s love letters and how Sharwadi achieved sublimation in the experience of love, so that we can understand love, understand love and learn love. In the determination of love, our lives will certainly glow with another glory and achieve another great transcendence.
In April 2019, Writer Xuemo was invited to visit Nepal. During this period, Xue Mo participated in a symposium sponsored by the Arniko Society for a speech. During the programme Writer Xuemo reached a cooperation intention with Dr. Sarbottam Shrestha for Nepali translation of “Love in Proximity”. After the translation, the works were successfully published lately now due to the impact of the COVID-19.
As a cultural researcher, Mr. Sarbottam is proficient in five languages: Nepali, Newari or Nepalbhasa, Hindi, Chinese and English. He has translated many works of Chinese writers, all of which have been published in Nepal. At the same time, he also translated many subtitles for the 86 year version of the Chinese TV series “Journey to the West”, “Legend of Bruce Lee“ and the movie”Xuan Zang”, which have also been broadcast on Nepalese television.
When talking about the experience of translating this book, Mr. Sarbottam said: “I think Mr. Xue Mo’s work will be relatively a new reading experience for contemporary Nepalese readers. Some parts of this novel are similar to poetry, but not poetry in the traditional sense. There are many allusions in this structure, and the expression is very vague. I have seen similar styles in Chinese classical Chinese literary works, but they are extremely rare in Nepalese literary works. The process of translating this style was quite difficult. After great efforts to translate it into Nepali, it will also give Nepalese readers some hazy feelings. I believe that there will not be much difference between the readers’ hazy feeling after reading the original text and the hazy feeling of the Nepalese translation. “
At present, Xuemo’s works have been translated or are being translated into more than 30 foreign languages such as English, German, French, Russian, Korean, Japanese, Nepali, Spanish and Arabic, and more than 40 versions of foreign language works have been published. Among them, “Selected Stories by Xuemo” has the most translated versions and has been translated into 16 languages. The “Selected Stories by Xuemo” in Nepali was translated by Mr. Malla K. Sundar, a famous writer. Kantipur daily and Himal Monthly Magazine, the mainstream media, had published special commentary articles on the book.
