Small Languages, Big Stories: Translating Literature Between Taiwanese and Gaelic
Many publishing projects seek to translate between minoritised languages and the larger languages that have supplanted them: for example, between Gaelic and English, or between Tâi-gí and Mandarin. But as writers and publishers living between Taiwan and Scotland, we wanted to ask: what if we could build solidarity between minoritised languages by translating from one to the other — allowing readers in Tâi-gí to read stories originally written in Gaelic, and vice versa?
What do such distant languages have in common?
Both Tâi-gí and Gaelic are languages that have been historically under threat. And both have demonstrated remarkable resilience in the face of these threats.
Taiwanese
Before large-scale settlement in Taiwan, the language landscape was almost entirely made up of a variety of indigenous Austronesian languages. But from the seventeenth century, Tâi-gí, which has its roots in the language brought by settlers from the southern Fujian coast, became increasingly widely established. By the end of the nineteenth century, it was the most widely spoken language on the island of Taiwan.
This only started to change in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when the Japanese colonial authorities sought increasingly to prioritise Japanese, and to suppress Tâi-gí. Then, in the years after the Second World War, the retreating Nationalist regime took control. The Nationalists declared martial law, and imposed Mandarin as the language of public life—a language that vanishingly few in Taiwan spoke. This double blow sent Tâi-gí into steep decline. But in the decades since Taiwan’s transition to democracy, Tâi-gí has undergone a cultural revival. And although still under threat, Tâi-gí has an increasingly high profile, and plays an increasingly central role in Taiwan’s emerging hybrid identity.
Gaelic
In Scotland, on the other hand, Gaelic was well-established by the eighth century. By the tenth century, it was the most widely spoken language in the northern and western parts of the country. Throughout the Middle Ages, Gaelic was a court language, a language of literature and high culture, spoken by communities across Scotland. But in the eighteenth century, when the 1707 Act of Union united the kingdoms of England and Scotland, the language went into decline. Gaelic’s fortunes were dealt a further blow in the nineteenth century, with the rise of English-language mass education.
As Dr Paul Meighan-Chiblow has argued, ‘languages do not just “die”. Rather, language speakers, cultures, and communities are deliberately persecuted, oppressed, and minoritised, either overtly or covertly.’ But as with Tâi-gí in Taiwan, thanks to the commitment of language activists, scholars, and communities of minoritised language speakers and learners, Gaelic in Scotland has seen a remarkable resilience, and is undergoing a continual process of revival.
Are there differences too?
These stories of language decline and revival in Taiwan and Scotland are alike in many respects. The decline in both languages has been the result of deliberate attempts at language suppression; and the movement to revive both languages is tied in with bigger questions of cultural identity, and a growing sense of what it means to be a multilingual nation.
Nevertheless, there are differences, too. Scottish Gaelic’s long tradition of written literature means that, in the imagination of Gaelic speakers, it is recognised as a language not just of the voice, but also of the page. This ongoing tradition of Gaelic literature has been one of the main ways in which Gaelic has been sustained and nourished. In Taiwan, on the other hand, despite the introduction of Romanisation systems for Taiwanese in the 19th century, and a growing contemporary literature written also in Hàn-jī（漢字）or Han characters, many present-day Taiwanese speakers neither read nor write the language, many even erroneously claiming that the language cannot be read or written at all.
Stories that echo each other
For our project we commissioned new, original fiction by contemporary writers, and then translated these stories between Gaelic and Taiwanese. We brought together four writers—Naomi Sím and Kiú-kiong in Taiwan, and Lisa MacDonald and Elissa Hunter-Dorans in Scotland—to create new works of fiction that engaged with the languages and cultures of Taiwan and Scotland.
- Naomi Sím’s story 翠蘭ê情批 (Emerald Orchid Mazu) tells the tale of a young writer who returns home to the village to spend time with her Taiwanese-speaking grandmother. From there, the story leads the reader into the thickets of Taiwanese legend, religion, language, ritual, and history.
- Elissa Hunter-Dorans’s story, A’ Chathair Fhalamh (The Empty Chair) takes place in Inverness, Scotland, at a Hogmanay party—Scotland’s traditional New Year’s Eve celebration. It is the final night of the 1970s, and the party is in full swing when a gatecrasher arrives, an unexpected interruption that leads to a kind of truce between Scotland’s past, present, and future.
- Kiú-kiong’s story, 4.44.44, begins with a prophetic dream, and ends with a terrible incident on the MRT in Taipei.
- In Lisa MacDonald’s story, Saorsa (Freedom), the narrator spots a sheep trapped in the brambles by the roadside. As she gets out of the car, carefully working to free the sheep, she feels as if she is also releasing something in herself, untangling herself from the past.
Apart from the striking imaginative breath of these stories, there were also unexpected resonances between the Scottish and Taiwanese worlds that they evoked. There were grandmothers everywhere (because who else do you learn your Gaelic or Tâi-gí from?). There were undercurrents of violence, as well as truces, moments of solidarity, and flashes of humour.
And there was a recurrent obsession with history, with the past, and how to draw together the broken threads of this history to weave together something new.
What’s challenging about translating between minority languages?
With the help of translator Shengchi Hsu, we collaboratively translated our tales between two minoritised languages via Mandarin and English.
One reason for this was that we wanted the stories to have a wide audience in Taiwan and Scotland, and so we decided to also publish translations in Mandarin and English. But another reason was about the practicalities of translation. Nobody on the project spoke both Gaelic and Taiwanese, but we had Mandarin and English as common working languages. So we translated directly where we could—for example, from Taiwanese directly to English—but where we couldn’t, we crossed back and forth via Mandarin and English until we were happy with the result.
The challenges of translating the stories were immense. These were stories immersed not just in the languages of Taiwan and Scotland, but also in their cultures. We realised that there is a certain flavour to storytelling in Taiwanese, or in Gaelic—one that is difficult to translate. We agonised over the political complexities of using majority languages—Mandarin and English—as conduits for translation of the languages they had historically supplanted. Emails flew back and forth, and we found ourselves tackling questions not just about language, but about politics, and culture, and what it means to translate.
Small languages are more than local
The book, Tâigael: Stories from Taiwanese & Gaelic, was published in June 2025. There is always a moment, after a book is published, when you hold your breath, waiting to see how readers respond. But as the feedback from our readers came in we realised it had all been worthwhile.
Gaelic-language readers in Scotland and beyond were curious about these Taiwanese tales of goddesses and urban prophets. Meanwhile, in Taiwan, readers relished seeing Scotland’s rainy, culturally rich landscapes rendered so beautifully in Taiwanese. Because there is something powerful about translating not from and into minoritised languages, but also between these languages. It is one of the things we love, incidentally, about Glossika: because where else can you learn Taiwanese directly through Gaelic, or vice versa?
And what, above all, this work of translation demonstrates is that smaller languages do not need to speak only to the local, to the contexts of their origins. Sometimes, there is assumption that Scottish Gaelic can only speak of Scotland, or that Tâi-gí can only speak of Taiwan.
But in the crossing back and forth between minoritised languages—with all the gains and losses that entails—there is a break with this assumption. There is a reminder that all languages can speak of all things, even if they do so in their own, unique way. And when we are reminded of this, this is the first step towards acknowledging that minoritised languages deserve to stand on an equal footing to the dominant languages that threaten to supplant them.