Mabel Lee is a translator of the works of Nobel Prize-winning author Gao Xingjian. She has taught Asian studies at the University of Sydney and is one of Australia's leading authorities on Chinese cultural affairs. Lee was a professor of South-East Asian Studies at Sydney University and had already begun translation of the poems of Chinese writer, Yang Lian when she met Gao Xingjian, in Paris in 1991. After that meeting, Lee offered to translate Soul Mountain, a project which took seven years, and an additional two to find a publisher for the book in Australia. Following publication, Gao Xingjian became the first Chinese to win a Nobel Prize in Literature.
Lee's translation won the 2001 NSW Premier's Translation Prize despite criticism about the book, and her translation's quality. After her retirement from teaching, she translated another of Gao's novels, One Man's Bible, as well as a short-story collection and a book of his essays.
In 2012 Lee's translation of Gao Xingjian: Aesthetics and Creation was published by Cambria Press. The book is part of the Cambria Sinophone World Series headed by Victor H. Mair.
MAYBE I'LL FLY
© 2005
Written by Halie Loren
Jammin' Salmon Music
I'm getting buried underneath a crumbling castle
While the pretty kingdom you built all falls down
Though once you treated me like royalty, it doesn't mean anything
Now that you've stripped away the crown…
Who was that little girl who gave in so quickly
To the notion that a prince would make her life sound
And as you ride away into the West my only regret is maybe
I should've built my own damn house…
With you at my side I covered my eyes
Letting you lead me through my life and now
That you let me fall—maybe I'll fly someday,
I'll learn to fly
Maybe I'll Fly
I never asked what fairytales would have to offer me
I guess only your love and my lost Identity
But She's coming up and when she finally blooms
Maybe She'll be somebody's more substantial fantasy…
With you at my side I covered my eyes
Letting you lead me through my life and now
That you let me fall—maybe I'll fly someday,
I'll learn to fly
Maybe I'll Fly
With you at my side I covered my eyes
Letting you lead me through my life and now
That you let me fall—maybe I'll fly
And I'm free enough to decide—enough to realize
I don't even like castles anyway, and now