Western Theory in East Asian Contexts: Translation and Transtextual Rewriting

Description

Literatures, Cultures, Translation presents a new line of books that engage central issues in translation studies such as history, politics, and gender in and of literary translation. This is a culturally situated study of the interface between three forms of transtextual rewriting: translation, adaptation and imitation. Two questions are raised: first, how a broader rubric can be formulated for the inclusion of the latter two forms within Translation Studies research, and second, how this enlarged definition of translation enables us to understand the incompatibilities between contemporary Western theories of translation and East Asian realities, past and present. Recent decades have seen a surge of scholarly interest in adaptations and imitations, due to the flourishing of cinema and fandom studies, and to the impact of a poststructuralist turn that sheds new light on derivative literature. Against this backdrop, a plethora of examples from the East Asian cultural sphere are analyzed to show how rewriters have freely appropriated, transcreated and recontextualized their source texts. In particular, Sino-Japanese case studies are contrasted with Sino-English ones, with both groups read against evolving traditions of thinking about free forms of translation, East and West.

Leo Tak-hung Chan is Junwu Distinguished Professor at Guangxi University, China. His other scholarly books include Readers, Reading and Reception of Translated Fiction in Chinese (2010), Twentieth-Century Chinese Translation Theory: Modes, Issues and Debates (2004), and One into Many: Translation and the Dissemination of Classical Chinese Literature (2003).

Leo Tak-hung Chan's latest book sets bold new parameters for translation studies by showing how this discipline needs to embed practices of adaptation and imitation at the core of its analysis. Taking this expanded field of translation studies as his point of departure, Chan presents richly intriguing case studies from East Asian writing - from free translations of Aesop's fables to adaptations of contemporary manga to imitations of James Joyce - to show how cultural producers in the Sinosphere have creatively remade their source texts in ways that challenge ascendant theories of translation from the global North. This study will be mandatory reading for scholars and students of translation studies everywhere. * Margaret Hillenbrand, Associate Professor of Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, University of Oxford, UK * With a breathtakingly erudite range of examples drawn from trans-textual rewritings in East Asia of the past several centuries, Leo Chan's Western Theory in East Asian Contexts offers a very welcome non-European perspective on longstanding debates over the nature and boundaries of translation. Particularly valuable is its nuanced application to East Asian literatures of current theoretical work covering the spectrum of translation, adaptation, and imitation, inter alia. From contemporary Japanese anime and Taiwanese television dramas to literary classics like Ulysses, Aesop's Fables, and Water Margin, Chan repeatedly demonstrates how a holistic approach to the migration of texts across languages and national or cultural boundaries can yield insights that both corroborate and enrich recent theoretical advances in the field of translation studies. * Stephen Roddy, Professor of Modern and Classical Languages, University of San Francisco, USA *