Translation Studies Commons^™

Translating Migrant Worker Poetry : Whose Voices Get Heard And How?, Eleanor Goodman

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

Translation involves the art of knowing when to get out of the way—and of knowing when to get in the way. Chinese migrant worker poetry brings this issue to the fore with unusual urgency, as its language often breaks the rules for being “poetic” or “elegant.” But what is being conveyed by the language these poets employ, and what is lost if the translator yields to the temptation to smooth out the rough edges? And how does the act of translating and anthologizing these poets affect the ways in which they are read?

Dog Barking At The Moon : Transcreation Of A Meme In Art And Poetry, Cosima Bruno

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

This essay explores the dynamics of transcreation in art and poetry, focusing on the image of a dog barking at the moon in four Taiwanese poems. By putting them in connection with each other and with other texts from different times and artistic traditions, I wish to contribute to a dismantling of the “influence paradigm,” move beyond contestations over the comparative approach, and demonstrate a critical method that recognizes the enduring fascination for the meme but equally appreciates change, approximation and adaptation, rather than closed-off conversion from a source text to a target text.

Mapping Hong Kong’S Atlas, Christopher Mattison

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

Rooted in the broader project of representing Hong Kong through the visual and literary arts, the Hong Kong Atlas book series seeks to build a set of heritage-based networks through a literary series consisting primarily of paperback and digital editions, including bilingual poetry collections. The individual voices of the authors and translators combine to reorient the complexities of memory in relation to Hong Kong’s constantly shifting pasts.

The Cultural Translation Of Battlers Poetry (Dagong Shige), Maghiel Van Crevel

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

Contemporary mainland-Chinese poetry displays a great deal of diversity and dynamism. Battlers poetry (dagong shige)—writing by members of the underclass of domestic migrant workers—is a relatively recent arrival. This essay delves into the discourse surrounding battlers poetry and its interactions with other poetry “departments,” particularly that of avant-garde poetry. It does so from the perspective of cultural translation. I argue that this is especially helpful for understanding the dynamics of battlers poetry, and of “poetry” at large as a discursive space in China today. The essay offers a discussion of translated people, texts in transit, commentary as conflict …

Forms Of World Literature And The Taipei Poetry Festival, Nick Admussen

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

In poetry anthologies and works of literary criticism, the authority to select which literature can become “world” literature often lies with a single editor or theorist. This essay contrasts those centralizations of authority with the more egalitarian structure of international poetry festivals. Using the 2016 Taipei Poetry Festival as an example, the essay reads the impact of the form of the festival on its audience’s experience of translation, the local in the transnational, and intercultural solidarity. The essay then argues that boredom is a formal flaw in contemporary festivals, and advocates that translations be performed in local vernaculars.

The Transculturation Of American Poetry In China, 1917-1937, Chris Song

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

This paper offers a critical overview of the reception of American poetry in China from 1917 to 1937. Drawing on Maria Tymoczko’s theory of transculturation, it shows how in order to meet local poetic and ideological demands, America’s New Poetry Movement, Left poetry, and Black poetry were “performed” in (relay) translations by Chinese authors. Understudied to date, these texts reveal a fascinating literary and political process in which American poetry and Chinese poetry were mutually shaped through translation.

Where You End And I Begin : Notes On Subjectivity And Ethics In The Translation Of Poetry, Andrea Lingenfelter

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

What can translation teach us about poetry and poetics? To what extent is a lyric constellation portable, and to what extent is it embedded in a particular culture or language? How much of a foreign syntax can be replicated before things break down? What is the role of sound in a translation? By discussing poems by three poets whose work I have translated—the Taiwanese poet Yang Mu and the mainland-Chinese poets Zhai Yongming and Wang Yin—this paper explores issues such as the above. It connects these issues with the question of “where you end and I begin” and vice versa, …

Half-Heard Voices Of The Primal Zone; Sleep And Waking In A Poem By Cao Shuying, George O’Connell, Diana Shi

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

Initially touching artifacts and sculpture from ancient Greece, and the risk of misreading thought or emotion cross-culturally, this essay draws briefly on Wordsworth’s testimony that poetic process arises first in a primally sensual and pre-verbal zone. The essay then proposes that similar practice, carried by craft and poetic experience in the target language, may be equally advantageous in poetry translation, while helping bridge individual and cross-cultural differences. In light of this, the essay’s second half addresses translational details in rendering Cao Shuying’s poem “I Often Read, Early Mornings.”

Can We Say An Ear Of Cabbage : On Translating Wordplay In Xi Xi’S Poetry, Jennifer Feeley

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

This article reflects on the translation of wordplay in the poetry of Hong Kong author Xi Xi. Xi Xi is a highly imaginative poet: much of her poetry hinges upon specificities of the Chinese language, and one might well ask if this makes her work “untranslatable.” This article identifies various techniques for translating Xi Xi’s wordplay, detailing how I mine the potential of English for ways to recreate Xi Xi’s puns, puzzles, and playful subversion of language in a new linguistic and cultural environment. It encourages readers and translators to become unshackled from rules, assumptions, and conventions as they reflect …

Contributors

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

No abstract provided.

Chinese Poetry And Translation : Moving The Goalposts, Maghiel Van Crevel

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

Poetry + translation will trigger claims the size of office blocks, all the way from Robert Frost (censored here) to Eliot Weinberger (Poetry is that which is worth translating). Add Chinese to the mix, and things get even better.

The translation of poetry is fun to bounce around in conversation, but winds up frequently in dead-end discourse full of zombie notions of equivalence, faithfulness, servitude, and so on— not to mention the specter of the genre’s “inherent untranslatability.” In June 2017, a dozen scholars and translators held a workshop at Lingnan University, assuming primariness and agency for translation instead. Most …

Strong And Weak Interpretations In Translating Chinese Poetry, Lucas Klein

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

Are classical Chinese and modern Chinese one language, or two? Is translating classical Chinese poetry the same as or different from translating modern Chinese poetry? I have earlier argued that modern Chinese poetry is in some ways a translation of premodern Chinese poetics through the filter of international poetics—but if this is the case, then should translation of classical and modern poetry into English be more similar than they are? Looking at Lydia Liu’s notion of the “supersign” alongside my experiences translating contemporary poets Ouyang Jianghe and Xi Chuan as well as Tang dynasty poet Li Shangyin, I discuss what …

世界主義的沉思 : 論歐洲戰後保爾．穆杭小說及其中文翻譯的生成與傳播 = Rediscovering Cosmopolitanism : Paul Morand's Novellas After The Great War, Their Chinese Translation And Transmission, Ho Yee, Connie Kwong

Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese 現代中文文學學報

No abstract provided.