Jimmy O Yang has said he hopes to translate his book into Chinese.
Silicon Valley star Jimmy O Yang has discussed his new book ‘How to American: An Immigrant’s Guide to Disappointing Your Parents’, saying he would like to translate it into Chinese.
In an interview with UPROXX, Yang was asked if his upbringing sparked his idea to write the book. In response, Yang said he wanted to tell his stories in a different format to his usual stand-up routine.
“I have all these great stories from when I first came to this country, like my first time going to El Pollo Loco and learning English and pop culture from BET,” he explained. “I don’t want to put things like that in a laugh-every-five-seconds format. I thought I would do something more emotionally honest, something that people could really relate to and grasp.”
Yang added that he wanted his book to resonate with immigrants who shared his experience. “I definitely wanted to write something for the immigrants out there, especially Chinese immigrants like me, but also anyone who grew up up in Chinese families. Even just people who felt out of place, because I wanted to help them feel more normal.”
Yang, who is will star in Crazy Rich Asians, went on to say that he would like to see his book translated into Chinese. “It would be great to translate [the book] into Mandarin, Cantonese, and a ton of other languages,” he said. “I would like to even oversee the process of translating it into Mandarin, or Chinese in general.”
However, he acknowledged that it may be difficult to translate the humour into different languages. There is a lot of cultural humor and verbiage that gets lost in a process like that, because the book is very much in my voice,” he said. “I can’t control the French or Italian versions, if those versions ever come about, because I don’t know how to speak those languages.”
“But I would definitely like to give it a little more thought for the Chinese version. I could maybe even do a Chinese audiobook version. We’ll see.”
Click here to buy How to American: An Immigrant’s Guide to Disappointing Your Parents.
