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TRANSLATED FICTION
Leo Tak-hung Chan a
a
Lingnan University, Hong Kong
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66
TRANSLATED FICTION
Leo Tak-hung Chan, Lingnan University, Hong Kong
chanleo@ln.edu.hk
Abstract
This article discusses translated fiction in terms of ontology and epistemology. Translated nov-
els should be considered distinct from untranslated fiction, notably the original from which they
derived. They offer a distinctive alternative model of reality; after the brief moment of bifurcation
which occurs in the translation process, they exist in another languages, culture, and literary
system than the source text. There has been increasing recognition of the uniqueness of translated
fiction, but there has been little research on it. The author suggests that insights of translation
theorists, textual semioticians and literary scholars can unravel the nature of translated novels,
including their culturally hybrid elements, their reshaping of the narrative voice, their use of an
interlanguage, and so on.
Key words: Literary translation; translating fiction; different realities; markets and audi-
ences for literary translations.
Introductory comments
The textual characteristics of translated fiction, notably full-length novels,
have received little attention. There is little discussion of what it is (its ontology)
and what we know about it (its epistemology). Prose narratives usually differ
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from poetry in form, lay-out, length, sequencing, and the element of temporal-
ity; literary narratives, on the other hand, differ from non-literary ones (such as
newspaper reports) in that the narrator dictates the outcome. Translated fiction
is a special kind of literary prose narrative, which is often considered only as
a secondary, derivative version of a masterpiece. It should in fact be set apart
from native (untranslated) fiction. It should also be held as something distinct
from the version from which it derives. In the target language translated fiction
usually offers distinctive, foreign models of reality; as texts that are naively said
to be the ‘same’ in sources as disparate as common parlance, library catalogues,
and comparative literary studies, translated fiction is one of two texts that exist
independent of one another in two different cultures and accidentally co-exist
(as long as both have a readership in their respective languages), namely the
source and the target texts.
Translation Studies has recognised the uniqueness of the translated text, but
apart from many MA and PhD theses that deal with comparisons of source and
(sometimes many) target versions, there is little serious scholarship with regard
to translated fiction, the most translated literary genre worldwide. It is true that
literary translation accounts for less than 1% of all translations in the world,
but given the fact that much theoretical thinking in Translation Studies is still
largely inspired by literary translation, this disregard for translated fiction is
remarkable. The present article is meant as a first consideration of whether we
can make use of insights recently developed in textual studies, narratology, and
Translation Studies to unravel the nature of translated fiction, in particular to
understand how readers respond to it. Epithets popularly to describe postmod-
ern texts apply well to translated fiction; its unusual nature can be captured in
terms like “border-crossing,” “hybridity,” and “intertextuality.” Here, I would
like to propose that the nature of translated fiction can be understood from the
following perspectives:
In the translated text, there may, at the linguistic level, be
Provided the above is the case, readers of translated fiction cross borders and
move between known and unknown worlds.
The power of translated fiction cannot be denied. It facilitates cultural con-
tacts. New knowledge is produced through making sense of, as well as relating
to, translated fictional texts; and individuals, in some cases entire communities,
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Finally, translated narratives may play havoc with situationality, too. Un-
like readers of the original novel, those of a translated novel will be listening
to two voices simultaneously, namely those of the narrator and of the transla-
tor. The discussion between Theo Hermans (1996), Guiliana Schiavi (1996), and
Charlotte Bosseaux (2001) shows that there are two different perspectives on
this issue: one that the translator usurps the place of the narrator, who disap-
pears when the translator is “over-assertive”; the other is that, in a translation,
a new narrator emerges who is quite distinct from the narrator of the original.
Whichever view is adopted, it is clear that a translated narrative may be dou-
ble-voiced. If so, insightful readers notice that the narrative is reconfigured as
well as disfigured when it is translated, so that it relates in different ways to the
author, the narrator, the translator, and the reader.
In other words, a translated narrative constitutes a text that is unlike the orig-
inal. It could be characterized as a hybrid text, a discourse which was in one
brief moment bifurcated from the source text and subsequently became a text in
its own right situated in the target culture but with an undeniable relationship
to the text with which it co-existed in the moment of its creation but which now
has an independent and unaffected life in the source culture.
In some cases, namely when a translation calls attention to its nature as a
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presentation. Her Narratology and the Stylistics of Fiction (1998) is a broad study
of the interface between narratology and stylistics, with a glance at their appli-
cation to translations.
Six facets of translated fiction
In my view, the myth of a translation as a unitary, interpretable textual object
needs to be exploded, since translated fiction must be torn between cultures,
discourses, and languages. It will here suffice that I sketch elements that can
form the basis for studies of translated fiction.
My point of departure is that a translated piece of fiction can be character-
ized along three axes - the cultural, the literary-narratological, and the linguistic
ones. This yields six facets that can be further probed into from a Translation
Studies perspective.
syntax are an Other from the outside, superimposed upon the indigenous
Chinese tongue. To many, such hybridized Chinese was the language of
colonialism; for others, it is the language of postcoloniality. It calls for a
close examination of surface textures (as opposed to the structures) of
well-known translated novels.
Moving beyond the peculiarities of a text, one needs to consider the issue of
interpretation of translated fiction. According to Heidegger and Gadamer, the
hermeneutic circle has it that the object of knowledge is either a part or a whole,
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but that “knowledge of the part requires knowledge of the whole and knowl-
edge of the whole requires knowledge of the part.” It will be difficult to reach a
holistic interpretation of characters and situations in translations because most
translators are constrained by the source text at the micro-level of the sentence.
It seems that readers of translated fiction may sometimes fail to “get the whole
picture,” as the parts may conflict with the whole. In interpretations of trans-
lated fiction, critics must accept that attempts at construction of meaning may
fail. At best, interpretations of translated fictional texts can only be local, not
global: “translation undoes the tropes and rhetorical operations of the original,”
as pointed out by the deconstructionist Paul de Man (as quoted by McQuillan
2001: 63).
Conclusion
The possibilities for exploring the character of translated fiction are infinite,
and it is surprising that so little has been done so far. There is, in my view, no
doubt that it will be fruitful to conduct research into the impact of translations
on particular societies at specific points in time, investigating such fiction in
relation to the four areas of:
a) publishing (e.g. are the publishing houses local or national?);
b) education (e.g. does translated fiction occupy an institutional space in
academia?);
c) journals publishing translations (e. g. are these academic or popular?);
and
d) translation prizes and awards (e. g. what recognition is given to the works
in question?).
Following the models of literary fields and symbolic capital by Pierre
Bourdieu, or that of centres and peripheries by Immanuel Wallerstein, such re-
search can contribute to our understanding of translated fiction, or better still,
to our knowledge of the sociology of fiction in translation. But we should also
take care that individual readers who deserve as much attention as publish-
72 2006. Perspectives: Studies in Translatology. Volume 14: 1
ers, academics, and critics of translation, are not overlooked in the process. The
theories of reading, propounded by a generation of deconstructionists, have
made research into the reading of translated fiction more manageable. After
all, the in-depth study of individual readers’ response to translated fiction may
provide a chance for a fruitful dialogue between translation theorists, semioti-
cians, and literary scholars.
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