Nicky Harman


Nicky Harman is a UK-based prize-winning literary translator, working from Chinese to English.

Life and career

Harman studied Chinese at the University of Leeds, and first went to China in 1974.
She taught on the MSc in Translation at Imperial College London until 2011, and has been a full-time literary translator since then. She focuses on fiction, poetry and occasionally literary non-fiction, by authors such as Chen Xiwo, Han Dong, Hong Ying, Jia Pingwa, Dorothy Tse, Xinran, Yan Geling and Zhang Ling. She has been a contributor to the literary magazines Chutzpah, and Words Without Borders, and also organizes translation-focused events, mentors new translators and was one of the judges for the Harvill Secker Young Translators Prize 2012, and for the Bai Meigui Translation Prize for Chinese-English Translation, 2015 and 2016. She is also a contributor to the website Paper Republic, and founded the China Fiction Book Club in 2010. She is currently Co-Chair of the Translators' Association of the Society of Authors. She is an active member of the not-for-profit website Paper Republic and contributes to the series of translated short stories and essays called READ PAPER REPUBLIC. She blogs regularly on Asian Books Blog and occasionally elsewhere.

Awards and honors

A list of her published translations can be found on her .