由于作者白先勇的参与使传统的作者-译者关系复杂化，作者与译者的二元对立成为一种幻觉。第二，当我们深入研究翻译初稿，审视自译者及其合作伙伴提出的“关键点”时，我们可以发现，解释的技巧，改写和叙事重排是为了实现他们传递原文全部内容和精神的目的。此外，翻译手稿强调了编辑的参与，而这在翻译的最终产品中几乎是不明显的。手稿中未完成的文件使我们认识到高晓松作为仲裁员和监督员在修订过程中不可或缺的作用。最后，译文的出版将它带入第二人生，在语言、文化和美学上有着不同价值观和标准的读者将成为欣赏和批判翻译结果的评判者，从而为中国文学未来的翻译实践提供一些启示。
1.1 Previous Studies and Their Limitations
The English translation of Pai Hsien-yung’s Taipei People had not caught the eye of scholars in translation studies until 2001 when Xu Jun wrote a summary of the lecture Pai and George Kao gave on the translation and publication of the bilingual version of the work in Hong Kong. Since then, researchers have approached its translation from different angles which can be roughly encapsulated as the following.
To begin with, some researchers try to pinpoint the translation strategies with comparative analysis of the source and target texts. Zhang Qingfang (2019) argues that by employing the translation strategies of foreignization and domestication Pai Hsien-yung and Patia Yasin try their best to translate words with distinctive Chinese characteristics to help western readers to have a deeper and richer understanding about the Chinese culture. Wang (2015) studies how the translators effectively employ translation strategies to achieve pragmatic enrichment in conveying both language and cultural information embedded in Taipei People. Researchers Jiang (2016) and Shi (2016) choose to narrow down their scope of the study. Jiang explores the translation of twenty-one allusive names in the work and concludes that transliteration, paraphrase, and footnotes are three main translation methods, and Shi adopts both qualitative and quantitative methods to analyse the unusually abundant translation notes and concludes that they serve as a tool to express the translators’ determination to keep the cultural implication in the target language as much as possible.
.............................
1.2 Starting Point for Present Study
What has been mentioned above reveals a hidden but serious problem: the oversight of the first-hand materials generated in the actual translation process which are generally hard to get in the first place have invited arbitrary conclusions of the English translation of Taipei People. When working on the literature review of this paper, I have discovered that only one researcher referred to the primary translation materials of the work: Jiang (2016) provides pertinent letter correspondence among Pai Hsien-yung, Patia Yasin and George Kao in her thesis appendix B (pp. 56-61), though with the rendering of the allusive names in this anthology as her priority.
To address that problem, it is necessary to make it clear that the translation discussed in this paper cannot equal to the translation product alone. There has been an endless query about what exactly happened during the translation process from the beginning to the end. When mapping what branches translation studies should contain, Holmes holds that one of the main objectives is to describe the phenomena of translating, to be more specific, to describe the translation in the process (1972, p. 176).In a narrow sense, the translation process can be the very operation where the translators sit down and start to create a text by “rewriting” what has been already existed in another language. In this respect, the source text/ author and the target text/ translator are the main factors involved. While in a broader framework, it is necessary to add more seemingly peripheral factors such as publisher, editor, reader and many other socio-cultural elements that make their contributions to the final product as well.
.................................
Chapter Two Theoretical Framework
2.1 Actor-Network Theory
Actor-Network Theory (ANT) lies its foundation primarily on the work of sociologists Bruno Latour, Michel Callon, and John Law who want to find out how scientific knowledge and technologies come into being with empirical case studies. It views society “as the result (effect) of networks evolving from actor’s interactions” (Luo & Zheng, 2017, p. 255). The thinking behind the ANT is inclusive, dynamic, materialistic and relational. It assumes that “all entities achieve significance in relation to others” by way of examining the “science in the making” (Crawford, 2005, pp. 1-2). To put it in another way, the actor-network theory “describes the enactment of materially and discursively heterogeneous relations that produce and reshuffle all kinds of actors… it tells stories about ‘how’ relations assemble or don’t” (Law, 2009, p.141).
Within the actor-network theory, the key concept “actor-network”—with a hyphen between “actor” and “network” to express the proponents’ disapproval of the separation between agency and structure (Crawford, 2005, p1) –has two implications. First, it dissolves the binary opposition between subject and object because an actor is not necessarily a person, and it can be anything to induce an action either on purpose or not. Second, it should be construed in terms of interactions that are in a changeable rather than a stable condition (Buzelin, 2005, p. 197). In other words, for those who adopt this methodology, the goal is to observe the network in its dynamic production process as it shapes, constitutes, consolidates and transforms itself (p. 198). Because of these peculiarities of ANT, Buzelin (2005, 2007) believes that it can offer a rather satisfactory insight into the translation studies in both theoretical and practical sense. More specifically, in terms of theorization, compared with the well-accepted concept of “translation” in the sense of interlingual communication, the “translation” in ANT- defined as “both a practice (making equivalent) and an outcome (both realized effects and the displacement of alternative possibilities)” (Crawford, 2005, p. 2)- has a deeper and wider implication, echoing a more profound and richer core concept of current translation studies which is influenced by post-structuralism. While in terms of practice, the subject matter that ANT handles can remind researchers in this very field of noticing what happens during the translation production by indicating “a certain lack of empirical data on the actual genesis of products labeled as translations” (Buzelin, 2005, p. 202).
..............................
2.2 Actor-Network Theory in Translation Studies
2.2.1 ANTS: A Sociological Approach to Translation Studies
Actor-Network Theory has been applied in studies of many fields including business operation, finance and legislation beyond the scope of sociology (Buzelin, 2007, p. 136), but only very recently applied to translation studies. Hou and Luo (2017) highlight the methodological significance of the ANT by asserting that it can help scholars to deliberate material dimensions of translation “without disregarding the roles played by linguistic, human and sociocultural factors” (p. 87). Likewise, Luo Wenyan and Zheng Binghan (2017) advocate further more explorations and applications of the ANT in translation studies.
Inspired by the actor-network theory, American scholar Jonathan Stalling proposed “Actor-Network Translation Studies” (ANTS) in 2018 as a new research method in translation studies. He believes that scholars must conduct documentation studies to trace back the actual translation process and to discover historical evidence for constructing a translation network (as cited in Wang, 2019, p. 16). Wang further adds that the ANTS admits “the translation process is done in a network of various actors including humans and non-human ones who work together to negotiate, persuade and finish the translation task” (2019, p. 18).
...............................
Chapter Three Relations Between the Author and the Translator ................................ 16
3.1 Overview of the Author Pai Hsien-yung and His Taipei People ................... 16
3.1.1 Pai Hsien-yung .................................. 16
3.1.2 Literary Features of Taipei People ............................ 17
Chapter Four Relations Among Actors During the Production and Revision of Taipei People .................................... 26
4.1 During Production: Relations Between Other-translators and the Translation Pair.................................................27
4.1.1 Explicitation ........................................ 28
4.1.1.1 Translation of Names and Places ......................... 28
4.1.1.2 Translation of Allusions ............................. 30
Chapter Five Relations Between the Printed Book and Readers ................................. 47
5.1 Recognition of Taipei People’s Literary Achievement and its Overall Translation .................................... 47
5.2 Divergence on Translation of the Vernaculars ...................... 50
Chapter Five Relations Between the Printed Book and Readers
5.1 Recognition of Taipei People’s Literary Achievement and its Overall Translation
It is noticeable that the partial and full translation of Taipei People is published either by Renditions, an international journal to publish Chinese literature supported by the Research Centre for Translation of the Chinese University of Hong Kong, or by university presses (please refer to 3.2.1 & 3.2.2 in chapter 3 for further information). For one thing, the selection of Pai Hsien-yung’s short stories in literary anthologies largely demonstrates its literary canonicity. For another, we should also admit that his literary works or the Chinese literature in a large scale still occupy a peripheral position in the western world because those publishers are not so viable commercially but mainly for the convenience of academic research, and people who help push forward the publication of these Chinese works in foreign countries are primarily sinologists, professors in universities, and Chinese scholars overseas (He, 2014). For this reason, it is assumed that most people who read the English translation or bilingual edition of Taipei People are students and researchers in the field of literature or translation studies.
................................
Conclusion Research Findings and Limitations
The present study has the following major findings: first, as a case of collaborative self-translation, the translation of Taipei People makes the binary opposition between author and translator an illusion as the participation of the author Pai Hsien-yung complicates the conventional author-translator relations. Second, as we dive into the translation drafts and examine the “critical points” made by the self-translator and his partner it can be found that the techniques of expliciation, rewriting and narrative rearrangement are employed for the sake of fulfilling their intentions of transferring all the content and spirit of the original text. Also, the translation manuscripts highlight the editor’s involvement that is hardly noticeable in the final product of the translation. The unfinished documents the manuscripts present make us come to understand the indispensable role of George Kao as an arbitrator as well as a supervisor during the revision process. And finally, the publication of the translation usher it into a second life where the readers who have a different set of values and standards on language, culture, and esthetics will become the judge to appreciate and criticize the outcome, which consequently shed some light on future translation practices of Chinese literature.
When it comes to the major limitations, it must be mentioned that what has been discussed in previous chapters are merely relations of major actors in the translating and editing process of Taipei People since I believe that the ANT approach asks for a thorough and indifferent materialistic examination of the participants. In the Acknowledgments of Taipei People, we can find Pai Hsien-yung and Patia Yasin listed many contributors including Stephen Soong, Joseph S. M. Lau, and many other more (Pai, 2013, p. 34). However, due to the limited length of this thesis and inaccessibility of some relevant materials, some other actors and ties are not mentioned and thus worthy of further investigation.
reference(omitted)