Tâigael: The Story of One Publisher's Mission to Revive Tâi-gí and Gaelic
Taiwanese Tâi-gí and Gaelic are languages separated by thousands of kilometers — but both have a shared history of once being repressed. A new book, Tâigael, is an ode to both languages and celebrates authors reviving their mother tongues. The book itself is the brainchild of Hannah Stevens and Will Buckingham from Wind&Bones Books. As scholars of literature and language, they have chosen to work with 'quieter' languages and bring authors together who celebrate reviving marginalized languages. In this episode of Zoom In Zoom Out, Hannah and Will discuss the creation of Tâigael and the process of translating across Mandarin, English, Tâi-gí and Gaelic.
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In a groundbreaking literary collaboration, writers from Taiwan and Scotland have come together to celebrate and preserve two of their respective heritage languages, Taiwanese or Tâi-gí and Scottish Gaelic, through a new multilingual book titled “Tâigael: Stories from Taiwanese and Gaelic.”
Published by independent press Wind&Bones, “Tâigael” is the first collection to feature original short stories written in both Taiwanese and Gaelic, with each story translated into four languages: Gaelic, English, Mandarin and Taiwanese. The book is the result of a yearlong collaboration between four authors supported by a grant from the Scottish government.
“We're not just commissioning new stories in those languages, but we're also translating between them,” said co-editor Will Buckingham. “Each story by all four writers will be in four different languages.”
The project is led by British writers and educators Will Buckingham and Hannah Stevens, who are currently based in the southern Taiwanese city of Tainan. The idea for the book was born at a conference on national languages at National Taiwan Normal University, where the couple were struck by the parallels between language suppression and revival efforts in both Taiwan and the U.K.
“It started to become clear the kind of similarities in terms of the language oppression and then the language revival work that's actually going on in both places,” Stevens said. “It was sort of a bit of a lightbulb moment.”
Bringing together authors from different continents and linguistic traditions proved both challenging and rewarding. “It's been fun and it's been interesting,” said Stevens. “We had a writer's circle, which was online. Writers could get to know each other, could start to share ideas, talk about their respective countries.”
Themes of generational memory, especially in relation to grandparents, emerged across stories in both languages, a discovery that came through the translation process. Cultural context also posed a challenge. One story featured a banyan tree outside a temple, a detail obvious to Taiwanese readers but easily misinterpreted in English. “If it’s an oak tree, that doesn’t work,” Buckingham explained. “We’ve added in context to sort of carry over something of the cultural flavor.”
Both Stevens and Buckingham view “Tâigael” as more than a book. “Literature is a tool for democracy, and positive social change,” said Stevens. “We really love working with voices that might be quieter.”
As for what comes next, the duo hopes to expand the project to include other marginalized languages. “We’re already thinking about other projects,” said Buckingham. “Scotland has other languages. Taiwan has many other languages.”
