Tâigael

In a remote Taiwanese temple, a goddess of saliva vanishes without a trace. One Hogmanay in Inverness, a family party is disrupted by an unexpected guest. On the streets of Taipei, an elderly prophet foretells an attack on the subway. On the way home from her day in court, a woman finds a sheep tangled in the roadside brambles.

Four writers, four stories and four languages. Tâigael is a first-of-its-kind collaborative writing and translation project, bringing together writers from Scotland and Taiwan, to explore language, translation and culture. These four stories by Elissa Hunter-Dorans (Scotland), Kiú-kiong 玖芎 (Taiwan), Lisa MacDonald (Scotland) and Naomi Sím (Taiwan) cross between languages and cultures to speak of things unspoken, and to find new and surprising connections.

Taiwanese (Tâi-gí) and Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig) are languages that have been historically marginalised and suppressed. Tâigael presents two newly commissioned short stories in Gaelic, and two in Taiwanese, or Tâi-gí. And then it translates these stories between the two languages, via Mandarin and English. Each story is published in all four languages, to allow the largest possible audience.