It seems very strange that famous U.S. writer of Vietnamese origin Jenny Nguen is not included in literary critic Michael Rowling’s essay on U.S. expatriates who have returned from abroad entitled “Tales of Expatriates.” There are two reasons why Nguen should have made the list. The first one is that in that same year she had returned to the United States having spent some years in Vietnam. The second one is that her bestselling novel Eden on Earth has been perceived as one of the most important works of our time by many critics. Three years later, in 1960, Jenny Nguen won the Laure Prize in Literature, which is a serious achievement. In the American anthology of the major writers of the 20th century Nguen was not treated as a significant author, and neither has she been a major author in American literary circles for quite some time, so Rowling’s main goal was to save her from oblivion through his gripping biography. It is worth noting that once Jenny Nguen was accepted without any reservations by our society, but when she vanished so suddenly and unexpectedly we have come to think of our culture in a different way, writes Rowling in his essay that was written in Miami and popularized by the Miami Translation Services agencies. Reading Rowling’s essay we cannot but get the impression that he never touched upon the question that she deserved considerable rehabilitation. Nevertheless, in tracing her life he certainly comes across a strong and moving experience, he proves that she was a leading artist of her time.

If we want to say that in his influential work Jenny Nguen’s Vietnam Years Mr. Wolfowitz criticized enough Nguen, we will be totally mistaken. For example, he points out that Eden on Earth was praised by Henry Wheeler in the literary column of the Houston Chronicle on May 17, 1943, which is misleading because Wheeler only reviewed the book and this did not happen in 1943, but in a later issue in the winter of 1944. This resulted in the novel’s consideration to be translated by the Houston Translator corporation at the beginning of 1945 – an assignment that was carried out in the spring of the same year. According to Mr. Wolfowitz, the traits that plummeted Jenny Nguen to worldwide fame were her innate, inexhaustible, psychologically sophisticated ability to look into the lives of the ordinary people, and they are all described in his book. Nguen’s talent did not help her private and public life which worsened and gradually led to her twilight, which was an unbearable sight. She eventually returned to the U.S. in 1955 after divorcing her first husband John Nguen and marrying his closest friend Ron Zemeski. She did not have any more success in life as her children abandoned her, she became unable to have more children and her friends deserted her too.

The last years of her life brought even more unhappiness as the death of her second husband was followed by her beginning a cooperation with Todd Hopman. Hopman did not bring any good to Nguen as he misappropriated charity funds transferring a lot of money to his private bank account and he also had sexual relationships with underage Asian girls. As a result, the couple eloped to Italy, where Nguen sold the rights for translating her novels to the New York Translation company. In 1960 they moved to Vietnam where Nguen spent the remainder of her life. She had been long forgotten by 1968 when she died from brain tumor. The impression that we are left with after reading Jenny Nguen’s Vietnam Years is that is she had had more luck she would achieved much more.

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.

The Wanting Seed was conceived in 1961 and was first published in 1962 by Antony Burgess, who at the time had become interested in developing a vision of the possible effects of a demographic disaster after spending several years in the East. In 1988, on an assignment by the German Translator organizations, the novel was translated to German by Steffen Bretzel. Burgess was not particularly optimistic and was well aware that his novel had little or no chance at all of becoming a bestseller. The critics accused the novel of being half-baked and he agreed with them pointing out that the novel required a longer thinking, but reworking it would do no good, though it could be expanded to a length that would fit the subject. ENSPUN is one of the three superpowers the world is divided into according to the plot of the novel. The other two are CHINSPUN and RUSPUN and the demographic control they all exercise is through various methods. The protagonist, Tristram Foxe, who is a history teacher, teaches his students that there are three phases that comprise an eternal historical cycle: Gusphase, Pelphase and Interphase. The world is strictly material, priests perform their duties underground, homosexual relationships are encouraged, conceiving a child is disgraceful, and the problem of overpopulation can only be solved through cannibalism.

Far from being a plausible representation of the future the French Translation version can rather be termed as fantasy. Burgess was a prophet according to Daphnie Alesi, the person who did the French translation. Her desire to represent Burgess as a futuristic author shaped up her choice to translate The Wanting Seed. The Wanting Seed has over the years acquired a cult status and because of the fact that it has not been republished either in the U.K. or in the U.S. it is difficult to get a copy of the original in any bookstore. Being an alternative to the existing pulp fiction literature, the novel definitely points out to the underground nature of Burgess as a writer. He is also an author, who can only be discovered by the ardent reader belonging to the exclusive club of Burgess disciples.

The Arabic Translator workers did another translation of Burgess’ work through Mohammad Karim, who was also inclined to depict the author as “fantastic.” Not accidentally, the cover of The Wanting Seed shows the same face as the cover of A Clockwork Orange, which is quite astonishing. The only person that this can be is Alex, whose mouth is screaming, his mouth is wide open and he has got a cap on his head. A mouth distorted by a grotesque smile and a pair of eyes full of horror is what remains after the “helmet” is removed. Therefore, there is a strong bond that connects the two novels. The subconscious level is not the only level the two novels are connected on, the other level on which the two novels are connected is between the translator and author. The elaborate message that is conveyed is that the world in The Wanting Seed and A Clockwork Orange is equally fascinating to the readership. It is yet to be proved whether the two novels complement each other and represent the same ideas or not – what is the main implication.

A Clockwork Orange is Antony Burgess’s best known and most popular work. But there are several other novels which have earned him acclaim among readership throughout the world. One of them is One Hand Clapping which can be interpreted in tune with the Soviet ideology of the time so the Japanese Translation Services translator has emphasized the fitting passages in the novel and eliminated the unnecessary ones. Hours of strenuous and laborious work had to be spent by the translator, Kenji Ozaki, in order for Burgess’s ideologically correct work to be corrected.

Written in 1961 in less than a month, One Hand Clapping was published under the pseudonym of Joseph Kell, and immediately Europe recognized it as a masterpiece. In the novel he accounts his observations on the turbulent changes in the British society after his return from Brunei and Malaya. Youth culture was concerned with a new and alien world of television – this is what he discovered back in Britain. His major source of inspiration were the TV programs his first wife Lynne liked watching, which found expression in the plot he was composing. The novel is narrated by Janet Shirley, a French Translation Services worker and a material girl whose pleasure lies mainly in making long lists of objects that she and her husband either possess or lack. Living a life of luxury and being affluent is her one and only mission in life. One day, her husband, Howard, wins one thousand pounds in a TV Quiz Show after which he doubles the prize on gambling. Insanity, laziness, unfaithfulness, thoughts of suicide and finally a murder are some of the things their new lifestyle brings them, contrary to the happiness they have thought money would bring them.

The novel can be interpreted as expressing contemptuous attitude to the materialistic lifestyle and the accumulation of goods. Music, theatre, painting or literature – these are only some of the spheres in life that the novel appeals to their lowest tastes. Thus, when Howard talks to a worker, the words fascist and communist which appear in the last clause are cut out in the translated version. Howard, however, is presented as the wiser one in the Portuguese Translation Services version, as he considers democracy leading the world to degradation and does not accept it.

A champion of free will, Burgess makes this appear quite obvious in A Clockwork Orange, as the borderline between good and evil is not quite tangible. The reader is never asked to meditate if the communist methods of imposing opinions are appropriate, which implies that In One Hand Clapping democracy is purposefully perverted by Burgess. The decay and rottenness of contemporary England is the subject of the article that has to be written by Redvers Glass, a German Translation Services poet who is hired by Howard at a certain point in the novel to show the negative influence of the USA. As the U.S. is the target of criticism in the novel it is natural to make such conclusions.

Having become very successful throughout Eastern Europe, it was wrong to think that the book was bound to failure in any Communist country. Being regarded as renouncing money-making, the whole capitalist Western life and its desecrated culture, it is explicable why the novel appeared much later in the Middle East. The Arabic Translation Services were instrumental in the book’s gaining popularity in the United Arab Emirates. First it was turned into a musical in Abu Dhabi and then it was adapted for television in Dubai.