An elderly prophet, and an attack on the Taipei subway. A sheep tangled up in brambles by the roadside. A goddess of saliva who disappears without a trace. A sinister figure stalks through the darkness of the night in heavy boots, while somewhere, a fiddle plays.…

Four writers, four stories, and four languages, bringing together the cultures of Scotland and Taiwan.

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.

Supported by a grant from the Scottish Government’s Scottish Connections Fund.