The idiolect that has been crafted by Antony Burgess in his writing – taking into account that such a language never existed is in fact both innovative and peculiar. The factual processes occurring in the language were not interesting to Burgess, as he did not have any intention of miming any slang or register. What actually happened was that English experienced a penetration that never before had it undergone. In his translation for TMA Spanish Translation , Feliciano Puerto relies on the principle that the dialect used by Burgess depends on the Americanized slang that is used by Spanish teenagers. If Burgess presumed that English would resemble other languages one day, the combination of English and other languages does not point to this fact. For the translator, Alex’s dialect is a prophecy that teleports the novel to our cultural environment, as he treats both the language and the plot of A Clockwork Orange (increasing crime wave and growing cruelty and audacity of youth hoodlums) as valid forecasts about what is to follow in our contemporary society.

Burgess turns out to present considerable difficulties to both his translators and readers primarily owing to his linguistic inventiveness, which explains why he is not so widely read. Luckily, Stanley Kubrick adapted his book A Clockwork Orange for the cinema made Anthony Burgess a cult writer. Moreover, this is supported by the fact that right at the start of his career as a writer in 1962, Burgess’s work was divided into periods. The division of the periods is as follows: the first period was named “the exotic period,” the second one was named “repatriate,” and the third – fantastic, which means A Clockwork Orange and The Wanting Seed belong to the third period. Throughout the world people are familiar in most cases with the “fantastic period” – the other two being less familiar. It is somewhat misleading to read about Burgess’s heritage as not many of his books are translated and published. One of the ways to be granted the right to translate his books was to use Certified New York Translator businesses, which most translators did. Thus they were forced to abandon the other novels and to center their efforts on only one novel – which they did. Antony Burgess is incorrectly referred to as the author of one book – A Clokwork Orange, mainly due to the fact that only a selection of his novels has been translated. Unfortunately, Burgess’s vast heritage is either neglected or translated badly; for example One Hand Clapping was ideologically manipulated, while A Clockwork Orange had to go through some arguably appropriate linguistic experiments.

As The Wanting Seed is difficult to find and its view of the future is rather controversial, while A Clockwork Orange tastes like a forbidden fruit as it was censored for the underground world of ultra-violence, it is worth taking into account the fact that Burgess is considered an alternative author. Masterfully rendered into French by the French Translation, One Hand Clapping is a novel that will present interest to those who want to learn about the manipulative machine that uses literature for propaganda. For all of these reasons we might assume that though Burgess’s work was outside the mainstream, he can be considered as an author of experimental fiction.

In 1956 the prestigious Bookworm Club in Los Angeles, which each the selects the book of the year, announced their decision to award it to Eden on Earth, written by American author of Vietnamese origin, Jenny Nguen. The decision came as a bit of a shock to Nguen and her reaction was to ask whether people who were not members of the club often received such awards. Nevertheless, some of the most elite clubs would very soon invite Nguen to join them. In 1957 Eden on Earth was awarded the Publishers’ Prize, and in 1960 Nguen received the Laurel Prize in Literature. A touching and heartbreaking tale of the lives of the poor, countryside Vietnamese fieldworkers, the novel was a best seller for several years. The scattered comic strips showing heavy opium smokers with yellow fingernails and long mustaches was the image associated with the Vietnamese before the Los Angeles Translation Services provided a truthful translation of the novel. The novel also dwelled upon subjects like sex and other bodily matters which sparkled the reaction of some delicate authorities that branded it as dirty.

Vietnamese literary circles never took to Eden on Earth, as they felt indignant perhaps that an American was dwelling upon aspects of Vietnamese life they had overlooked. Nguen was never fully accepted by the American literary circles who were openly indignant towards her. Anton Wolfowitz, a Chicago based critic, has published his book on the life of Nguen that is called Jenny Nguen’s Vietnam Years. In it he approaches the matter like a restorer ready to start the mountainous task of brining back to life a neglected sculpture. Aided by the Chicago Translation Services he clears away the dirt, fills in the most conspicuous dents and smooths out the surface. The resulting sculpture is a masterpiece whose complicated texture has captivating warmth. The content of the biography Mr. Wolfowitz has written reveals much more than mere facts. What it actually focuses on is the most fruitful period of Nguen’s life, when she formed as a woman and an artist. Born in Lynchburg, Virginia in 1923 to John Huong and Marry Preston, she had a difficult childhood. The Southern Baptist Convention sent her parents on a mission to Vietnam and she had to grow up as a missionary’s daughter. As she rarely saw her father who was totally devoted to his work, she became a fiery critic of the missionaries as she often witnessed exhibitions of racial superiority.

Nguen’s studies in an American college did not last long and she soon went back to Vietnam as she felt more at ease there as Vietnamese was her first language. Henry Nguen was a missionary who also did research on Vietnamese rural life and in 1948 he married Jennifer. The patriarchal society in Vietnam became the underlying theme in Nguen’s writing as she directed her sharp criticism against those who did not allowed women to speak unless they were spoken to by their husbands, and especially against those who dared to kill female babies at birth for being useless. This was all documented by the San Francisco Translator who helped Nguen a lot in popularizing her work. Nguen spoke for women’s rights as her campaign for social justice spread across America and Vietnam. She put pen to paper relying on her knowledge of Vietnamese fiction, but also because she felt her son’s being born with mental disabilities had resulted in the waste of the years between 20 and 40. She wrote Eden on Earth while thinking in Vietnamese, translating it as she switched into English.