1st Edition

Readers, Reading and Reception of Translated Fiction in Chinese Novel Encounters

By Leo Tak-hung Chan Copyright 2010
    258 Pages
    by Routledge

    258 Pages
    by Routledge

    Translated fiction has largely been under-theorized, if not altogether ignored, in literary studies. Though widely consumed, translated novels are still considered secondary versions of foreign masterpieces. Readers, Reading and Reception of Translated Fiction in Chinese recognizes that translated novels are distinct from non-translated novels, just as they are distinct from the originals from which they are derived, but they are neither secondary nor inferior. They provide different models of reality; they are split apart by two languages, two cultures and two literary systems; and they are characterized by cultural hybridity, double voicing and multiple intertextualities.

    With the continued popularity of translated fiction, questions related to its reading and reception take on increasing significance. Chan draws on insights from textual and narratological studies to unravel the processes through which readers interact with translated fiction. Moving from individual readings to collective reception, he considers how lay Chinese readers, as a community, 'received' translated British fiction at specific historical moments during the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Case studies discussed include translations of stream-of-consciousness novels, fantasy fiction and postmodern works. In addition to lay readers, two further kinds of reader with bilingual facility are examined: the way critics and historians approach translated fiction is investigated from structuralist and poststrcuturalist perspectives. A range of novels by well-known British authors constitute the core of the study, including novels by Oscar Wilde, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, John Fowles, Helen Fielding and J.K. Rowling. 

    Introduction

    Textualist and Narratological Studies
    Response, Reception and Criticism
    Readers in Their Many Guises

     

    PART I:INTERACTNG WITH TEXTS: THE TARGET READER


    1. The Reading of Difference in Translated Fiction: Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse


    Difference: Self vs. Other
    Pleasurable Texts and Reading Pleasure
    Foreignness and Footnotes
    "Lily Briscoe's Chinese Eyes"
    Reading and Border-Crossing


    2. Textual Hybridity and Textural Cohesion: Reading D. H. Lawrence in Chinese, with Special Reference to The Rainbow


    Perspectives on Translational Hybridity
    Buddhist Terms and Lawrence in Chinese Translation
    Naturalization and Textual Impurity
    Problems of Textural Cohesion
    Issues of Acceptability
    Examples of Hybrid Non-translated Fiction

     

    3. Intertextuality and Interpretation or, How to Read Wang Dahong's Tradaptation of Dorian Gray


    Theorizing the Adaptive Mode
    Differences as Equivalences
    Reading Du Liankui Queerly
    Reading Intertextually
    Coherence in a Tradaptation

     

    PART II: HISTORIES OF RECEPTION: THE GENERAL READER

     

    4. The Elusiveness of the General Reader and a History of Mediated Reception


    Reception: Translator, Author, or Reader?
    Four British Novelists
    The "Galsworthy Model" and Official Ideology
    Popularity and the Publishers
    Academics and the Modernist Canon
    A History of General Reader Reception

     

    5. Reader Reception at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century: The "Popularity" of Youlixisi and the New Reader of the Harry Potter in Translation


    Reader Responses to Translated Fiction in the 1980s
    Ulysses: Untranslatability and the Commodification of a Classic
    Harry Potter and the Emergence of the Reader-Critic
    The Reader-Translator in the Internet Age
    Old and New Readers

     

    PART III: CRITICAL AND DESCRIPTIVIST READINGS: THE SPECIAL READER

     

    6. Source-Based Critique of Translated Fiction (I)


    The Narratological Approach
    The Narrator in Omniscient Reporting
    The Narrator in Free Indirect Discourse
    The Narrator in First-Person Storytelling
    The Reader and the Narrator

     

    7. Source-Based Critique of Translated Fiction (II)


    From Traditional to Post-Babelian Approaches
    The Linguistic Approach: Looking for Mistakes
    The Literary-Critical Approach: Reading Thematically
    The Poststructuralist Approach in the Chinese Context
    The Descriptive Approach and the Translation Critic

     

    8. The Historian-Describer and Comparative Reading in Practice and Theory


    Synchronic Readings: Regional Styles
    Diachronic Readings: Period Styles
    Retranslation Theory
    Polysystems Theory
    Translation Histories and Describers

     

    Biography

    Leo Tak-hung Chan is Professor and Head of the Department of Translation at Lingnan University, China.