Pseudotranslation, intertextuality and metafictionality: three case studies of pseudotranslation from early twentieth-century China

ABSTRACT

The turn of the twentieth century saw a growing number of works of pseudotranslation in China. Pseudotranslation engages with authentic translation on three levels: textual, generic and discursive. It engages with authentic translations on the textual level because sometimes authors of pseudotranslation borrow various semantic units, such as words, phrases or passages, from authentic translations to construct their own disguised works. More importantly, pseudotranslation can be considered to be referring intertextually to the genre of translation, where genre is conceived as the specific norms and stylistic characteristics of literary translation. Pseudotranslation may also refer to specific discourses, that is, it makes use of certain discourses embodied in and represented by translations, as well as the source texts they represent. These three levels of intertextual engagement foreground the metafictional nature of pseudotranslation, that is, the way it reflects on and refracts authentic translations and domestic cultural and literary traditions. Three case studies of pseudotranslation in China at the beginning of the twentieth century are provided to illustrate and explore the three levels of intertextual engagement.

KEYWORDS:

• Pseudotranslation
• intertextuality
• metafictionality
• China
• twentieth century
• fiction

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Prof. Ronald Schleifer for reading and commenting on this paper over three years ago. I am grateful to Prof. Dirk Delabastita, Prof. Sandra Halverson, Dr. Tom Toremans, and Dr. Beatrijs Vanacker for their insightful feedback and suggestions. Many of their useful and detailed comments allowed me to revise this article carefully and gave it its current shape. I want to thank the anonymous reviewers of Perspectives for their insights and suggestions, and the interest they kindly take in the topic of pseudotranslation. Prof. Yan Zinan, Prof. Yang Lihui, and Prof. Wang Gaowu discussed this paper with me at an early stage of writing. I thank them for their comments and enthusiasm.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Jane Qian LIU (DPhil Oxford 2014) is assistant professor in comparative literature at Beijing Normal University. She has published in English and Chinese about various issues in translation studies and comparative literature, including Transcultural Lyricism: Translation, Intertextuality, and the Rise of Emotion in Modern Chinese Love Fiction, 1899–1925 (Brill, 2017), and ‘The Making of Transcultural Lyricism in Su Manshu's Fiction Writing’ (Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, 2016).

Notes

1. A large number of scholarly works discuss the modern transformation of Chinese literature. See, for instance, P. Chen (1988); Hsia (1961); Yang (2003).

2. According to Zheng (1983, p. 266), in the year 1905, 17 fictional works were published as books, in contrast to 59 translated ones. In 1907, 43 original Chinese novels were published, in contrast to 79 novels translated from various foreign languages. A number of popular magazines aimed at urban youth, housewives and city dwellers consisted largely of translated literature (A 2000, p. 185). Several popular magazines consisted almost exclusively of translated literature.

3. Although it may appear strange to some that translation could command a higher price than creation, as translation seems to be a less creative process, this was exactly the situation in the Chinese literary market at the beginning of the twentieth century. Having grown bored with conventional Chinese stories and driven by a growing curiosity about the West, with its advanced technology as well as its open, brave pursuit of love, Chinese readers often preferred translated stories to indigenous ones. As Xu Nianci (1874–1908) noted, there was a conspicuous discrepancy between the prices of translated stories and created stories, which doubtlessly precipitated the emergence of pseudotranslation. See Juewo (1908).

4. For a detailed introduction to translated literature from Japan, see Tarumoto (2005).

5. Lin Shu was probably the most important translator of Western fiction at the turn of the twentieth century. Many of his translations exerted significant influence on modern Chinese writers, translators and ordinary readers alike. For a detailed introduction to the translations of Lin Shu, see Han (2005).

6. For an examination of the influence of Lin Shu's translation of this novel, see Y. Chen (2015).

7. For an account of the translation of anarchist fiction and its introduction into China, see J. Chen (1996); Luo (2009).

8. This phenomenon brings us back to the earlier discussion of the derivative nature of ‘authentic translation’. In Chinese translations of foreign literary works at the turn of the twentieth century, such a phenomenon was prominent. Therefore one can argue that ultimately, there is no clear divide between authentic translation and pseudotranslation. For a detailed examination of the derivative nature of Chinese literary translation in the first two decades of the twentieth century, see Liu (2017).

9. For a detailed discussion of Ziyou jiehun, see Hill (2011).

 

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Science Foundation of Beijing Municipality [grant number 17WXC007].