Angry Conversations In Chinese

I was pleasantly surprised a year ago when my agent told me a Chinese publisher wanted to buy the rights to my book in Mandarin. My story feels so American; I didn’t imagine how a Mandarin audience would track with it. But I smiled, said thank you and took the money.

I found out it was published a couple weeks ago, when I received an email from a reader in Taiwan. You’d think that someone living in a completely different culture might not relate. But she did on many levels. She too was an artist, held an MFA, worked a regular job. She desired to know God but was also frustrated over what godly behavior is supposed to look like. I was delighted to hear from her.

She sent me a link to the website where the book is sold. Google Chrome offered to translate it. I realize that if one goes from the English alphabet to Chinese characters and back to English, something is lost in translation. The “Celebrity Endorsements” made me smile.

Nancy Stafford became Southwest Stafford.
Doug LeBlanc: Douglas Lubu Lang.
Eric Metaxas: Eric Maitasesi.
Kristin Armstrong: Kelisiting Armstrong, author of “happy” and “the products”
Jim Gaffigan: Jim Garfield, root actor and comedian
Donald Miller: Tang Miller, New York Times bestseller “God’s Jazz.”

And this takes the cake: Tony Hale became Tony Haier. “Face it, the Church is good to try to live by a group composed of bad people.”

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