Translation and Fantasy Literature in Taiwan: Translators as Cultural Brokers and Social Networkers

178 Pages·2013·1.539 MB·English

by  Yu-Ling Chung (auth.)

Translation and Fantasy Literature in Taiwan
Translation and Fantasy
Literature in Taiwan
Translators as Cultural Brokers
and Social Networkers
Yu-Ling Chung
National Taiwan University of Science and Technology
© Yu-Ling Chung 2013
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2013 978-1-137-33277-6
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Contents
Acknowledgements vi
Introduction 1
1 The Sociological Turn of Translation Studies 15
2 The Evolution of Fantasy Literature in Taiwan 42
3 A Translation Field in the Taiwanese Book Market 73
4 Fantasy Translators as Social Agents in Taiwan 107
5 More Than a Case Study 139
Notes 146
References 155
Index 169
v
Acknowledgements
This book has been extensively reworked and revised during the course
of the past five years. My deepest gratitude is to all the interviewees in
this book for their kind help, to all the anonymous reviewers of this
book for their valuable comments, and to the production staff for this
book for their great patience. Most important of all, I am indebted to my
beloved family for their unconditional support through all the years.
vi
Introduction
Observing the monographs and journal articles published since the
late 1990s, there has been a boom in research about the role of the
translator. There are numerous articles entitled ‘translators as …’. This
phenomenon, on one hand, reflects the multiple roles which transla-
tors have played; on the other hand, it reveals the fact of the transla-
tors’ ‘fluid’ and ‘transient’ identity. Translation is not recognized as a
career in many places and cultures, in the past or present. Translators
usually have other jobs to make a living; most of them freelance and
work in this occupation only sporadically. The translation field in the
Taiwanese book market is neither instituted nor well functioning,
assessed by Pierre Bourdieu’s two indices of discerning the constitution
of a field: the appearance of a corps of conservators of lives and the trace
of the history of the field in the individual work (Bourdieu 1995a: 74).
So far, in Taiwan, few scholars are involved in these two activities. There
are few conservators of translation practice in Taiwan, considering the
lack of translation association, the poor pay translators receive in con-
trast to local writers, and so on. In addition, there is no established
translation history in Taiwan, except as parasitic on Taiwanese literary
history, which itself is not yet fully established or legitimized due to the
ideology and power struggle over the issue of the unification or inde-
pendence of Taiwan.
Some scholars doubt the existence of a translation field, questioning
its very existence. Wolf argues that ‘The translation field only exists
temporarily, mainly because it lacks institutionalization’ (Wolf 2006:
135). Gouanvic argues that translation does not always constitute a field
(Gouanvic 2007: 91). It seems that the existence of a translation field is
questionable. Neveu argues that Bourdieu’s field approach is not very use-
ful when exploring ‘… very small social worlds, or those with very low
1
2 Translation and Fantasy Literature in Taiwan
levels of institutionalization, or weak concentrations of resources or pow-
ers’ (Neveu 2007: 338). In the case of Taiwan, translation can be viewed as
a field not because it is highly institutionalized or strongly structured, but
because it is a space full of resources, more undeveloped social capital (net-
working) and symbolic capital (fame) than cultural and economic capital,
which hence becomes an arena of struggle for power and resources.
Bourdieu reasons that a field defines itself by ‘defining specific stakes
and interests, which are irreducible to the stakes and interests specific
to other fields’ (Bourdieu 1995a: 72). So, if the assumption exists that
there is a translation field in the Taiwanese book market, what are the
‘stakes and interests’ specific to this field? What are the resources which
agents compete for in this field? Wolf illustrates Bourdieu’s forms of
capital in a translation field as economic capital (material possessions),
social capital (networks of family relationships, friends, colleagues,
etc.), cultural capital (education, knowledge, titles, etc.), and sym-
bolic capital (prestige or social honour) (Wolf 2006: 135). In the case
of Taiwan, a ‘visible’ or ‘recognized’ translator can be defined by the
stakes and interests she possesses, namely the capital she has. Capital
has different forms; if applied to a translation field, veteran and typi-
cally isolated translators tend to hold more cultural capital and sym-
bolic capital, with limited economic capital and social capital; novice
and populist translators such as the fantasy translators discussed in this
book, hold more economic capital and social capital but less cultural
capital and symbolic capital. The distribution of capital forms between
the two types of translators is opposed. The emergence of novice and
populist translators is unusual in the history of Chinese culture. They
become more ‘visible’ than average translators because of their popu-
list and marketing strategies. This situation, to some degree, reflects
the transformation and the fierce competition in the current transla-
tion business: translators should know how to market themselves and
their translations, to cater to their readers and potential clients, so as to
become visible and successful. The contrast between the conventional
elite translators and the current populist translators is worth exploring.
In the history of Chinese culture, the typical definition of visible trans-
lators is that they translated foreign sutra or classics such as Xuan Zang
(玄奘), they translated volumes of books such as Lin, Shu (林紓), or they
were involved in national affairs such as Yen, Fu (嚴復).
As for the power relations among languages, English occupies the
most central position and half the books translated worldwide are trans-
lations from English (Heilbron and Sapiro 2007: 95–6). Translations of
English works thus possess more symbolic capital than works written in
Introduction 3
other languages. The fantasy translators discussed in this book mainly
translated fantasy works from English-speaking countries, which reflect
images and cultures of English-speaking countries and thus possess
more symbolic capital. This also reflects in Taiwanese culture and soci-
ety via translations, as Bradbury asserts, ‘Writers in powerful countries
often win far more attention than they deserve’ (Gouanvic 2007: 90).
The symbolic capital a work possesses gains capital not only for the
writers but also for its translators. Therefore, these fantasy translators
also benefit from translating fantasy works from English-speaking
countries, because translation is the foremost example of a particular
type of consecration in the literary world (Casanova 2004: 133; 2010).
According to one local popular writer (Hou, W.-Y. 2011), fantasy has
become the mainstream genre in the current Taiwanese book market.
This is a huge change if compared to the genre of fantasy first introduced
to Taiwan via translations in 1998. After an evolution of more than a
decade, fantasy still occupied a niche in the Taiwanese book market. The
three fantasy translators profiled in this book have since gained greater
prominence in their careers: Zhu, Xue-Heng has become a spokesman
of the net generation in Taiwan and a regular on political talk shows.
He is involved in social movements and asserts that older people should
stand back for young people so as to avoid revolutions. Tan, Guang-Lei
has become a professional literary agent and owns a literary agency. He
is active in the international book market, dealing with copyright trad-
ing, and he also promotes Chinese literature abroad. Hsu, Ching-Wen
operates in the publishing business and continues to publish foreign
and local fantasy works. Over the past years all three have gained much
more economic and symbolic capital and higher social positions com-
pared to being merely voluntary translators in online gaming communi-
ties. However, ‘visible’ translators like them are rare. It is said that the
worst aspects of being a translator are poor pay and lack of recognition
(Cronin 2003: 124). Simeoni echoes Venuti in describing translators as
‘invisible’ and with habitus as submissive and subservient, based on his
empirical survey (Simeoni 1998: 12). ‘Visible’ translators go against the
popular image of translators in the history of Western culture of hav-
ing a subservient disposition and working in a secondary profession.
This book is an empirical examination of contemporary translators in
the ‘exotic’ cultural space of Taiwan; it offers some examples of visible
translators and attempts to explain the rise of translation as a cultural
phenomenon in Taiwan since 1998.
This book explores the following questions: (1) What are the dynam-
ics behind the upsurge of fantasy translations in Taiwan from 1998 on?
4 Translation and Fantasy Literature in Taiwan
(2) Why and how have these fantasy translators become recognized and
visible? To answer these questions, this book is developed on the basis
of the following hypotheses: (1) translators used to be invisible in the
history of Chinese culture; (2) there was a lack of local fantasy writers
and fantasy works; (3) the idiosyncratic nature of the game industry in
Taiwan offered opportunities for fantasy as a genre to be introduced to
Taiwan via translations and for fantasy translators to be recognized and
distinctive.
It will be useful to examine these assumptions more closely.
Considering the first hypothesis, we have to take a quick look at the
history of Chinese culture, in which translators were ‘invisible’ unless
they had a connection with the official or religious institutions or,
in contemporary Chinese communities, the educational institutions,
which funded or deployed them to carry out certain translation tasks,
on their own or as part of a team. This assertion can be examined
by exploring recognizable translation movements in Chinese history
(Kong, H.-Y. 2002).1 Translators as freelancers from a given social group
(apart from intellectual circles, like computer game players and online
communities) who successfully introduced a new genre to society were
rare. Translators in the history of Chinese culture, in most cases, won
visibility when they were involved in large-scale translation movements
which were usually initiated by official, religious or educational institu-
tions. As members of translation teams, individual translators in the
history of Chinese culture seldom had the opportunity to demonstrate
their individuality so as to earn visibility and recognition in society
for themselves. Only the representative translators involved in transla-
tion movements attracted any fame. Even if the focus is put on Taiwan,
the visibility and influence that fantasy translators have acquired are
rare. For instance, translators during the Japanese colonial period were
primarily from official institutions; a few of them were publishers
and teachers, according to a ‘who’s who’ database Tales of Taiwanese
Characters which collected biographies about Taiwanese people from
1895 to 1945.2 This discovery justifies the claim that visible translators
in Taiwan were also generally from official and educational institutes.
Without support or commissions from official, religious or educa-
tional institutions, translators in the history of Chinese culture seldom
gained visibility in society. Their recognition was often limited to spe-
cific circles. This means that the fantasy translators examined in this
book, as freelancers independent of intellectual circles or the dominant
class, are special cases in terms of the mass popularity of their transla-
tions in Taiwan. They have achieved the rare success of winning the