Perspectives on translation and world literature

ABSTRACT

This article presents an overview of world literature with regards to comparative and translation studies, notably through the publications of André Lefevere, Susan Bassnett and Edwin Gentzler, as an introduction to this thematic special issue, which showcases the variety of approaches and interests in literature by translation scholars. Although literary translation accounts for a small percentage of all the translation work carried out in the world, it continues to attract considerable attention on the part of academics and researchers. This interest is partly a result of the change of status of translated works since the mid-twentieth century, as translation research was gradually accepted as crucial by comparatists. The articles selected for this thematic issue, which look at literary translation in China, Latin America, Europe and India, analyze some important topics such as the role of translators as initiators of the translation process, the imprint they leave on the target texts and on the target cultures, the translation of gender and the significance of translation projects.

KEYWORDS:

• World literature
• comparative studies
• translation studies
• cultural studies

World literature and translation

In What is World Literature? David Damrosh posits that world literature is not a multiplicity of separate national traditions but ‘rather a mode of circulation and reading, a mode that is applicable to individual works as to bodies of material’ (2003, p. 5). Challenging existing Eurocentric views of literature in American academia, he discusses the complex web of literary relationships and influences that have characterized literary texts over the centuries. Although it has been argued that the first attempts at establishing the study of comparative literature as an academic field appeared in the nineteenth century, possibly as a result of the publication of translations of Chinese, Indian and Persian texts into English (Li, 2022, p. 218), Emily Apter (2006) has claimed that the emergence of the discipline, typically global in nature, can be traced back to the 1930s, when the writings of Erich Auerbach served to shape the discipline. Auerbach, a German critic and a comparatist who had to flee Nazi Germany, first to Istanbul and later to the United States, exerted a great influence on figures such as Edward Said (who translated Auerbach’s ‘Philology and Weltliteratur’) and American literary critic Fredric Jameson, whose work was very popular in China (see below).

To be sure, the relationship between translation and literature has been complex (Wang & Domínguez, 2016), and until at least the 1990s it had worked to the disadvantage of translation (Bassnett, 1998, p. viii). Li states that this relation has evolved from ‘neglect and antagonism to recognition and collaboration’ (2022, p. 217), while Wang & Domínguez stress that, without translation, comparatists cannot do their job regardless of the number of languages they know and their familiarity with different literatures. In fact, they argue that, as those doing research in comparative literature cannot escape translation, they can be considered a type of translators, at least in a metaphorical sense (2022, p. 301). This metaphorical view of the comparatist may be at the basis of what André Lefevere and Susan Bassnet, two comparatists as much as translation scholars, wrote: ‘We need to learn more about the acculturation process between cultures […] about the ways in which translation, together with criticism, anthologisation, historiography, and the production of reference works, constructs the image of writers and/or their works’ (1998, p. 10).

The evolution from considering translation a mere mediator to being crucial in debates on world literature is reflected in the fact that in the United States, where comparative literature has flourished over the past few decades, translation scholars are part of comparative literature departments and schools. This is illustrated, as Li posits (2022, p. 218), by the expansion of the American Comparative Literature Association (ACLA) to include literatures in languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Sanskrit and Arabic, which meant that comparatists had to rely on translation. ACLA conferences now include a number of panels on translation. For instance, the 2021 conference started with an event with two writers whose work included writing and translation, while the panelists discussed translation in several contexts, e.g., China, Muslim countries, the Soviet Union and so on. In addition, translation was not merely understood as the transfer of words, as shown by several papers that analyzed instances of intersemiotic translation. It also included panels specifically devoted to translational issues (e.g., ‘The end(s) of translation’ and ‘Translation, migration and human rights’) and panels that looked at specific literary traditions and their translation studies research (e.g., ‘Versions of Brazil’).

The symbiosis between comparatists and translation scholars is probably best exemplified by the work of scholars such as Susan Bassnett, André Lefevere and Edwin Gentzler, three authors whose work is inextricably linked. Bassnett and Lefevere were close collaborators until the untimely death of the latter. They produced two greatly influential books, Translation, History and Culture (1996) and Constructing Cultures: Essays on Literary Translation (1998) and were in charge of a Translation Studies books series from 1990. In Constructing Cultures, Bassnett and Lefevere proposed a so-called translation turn in cultural studies, a move that followed their own proposal of a cultural turn in translation studies earlier in the decade. In their view, a translation turn could offer insights into the reasons for the selection of texts for translation, the role of the translator and the position of the editor, the publisher and the patron. Bassnett later conceptualized this evolution as a journey involving literatures through various geographies (Bassnett, 2011). In addition, in his 1992 book Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame, Lefevere favored the term ‘rewriting’ to refer to the middlemen and women who do not write literature, but rather rewrite it and through this process they contribute to the ‘reception and survival of works of literature’ (1992/2017, p. 1), particularly among non-professional readers, who, Lefevere underlined, constitute the majority of readers. From this starting point, Lefevere moved on to examine other issues that academics have researched in different parts of the world since then, such as ideology and patronage, also discussed in Bassnett and Lefevere (1998).

In this issue, Lefevere’s notion of ‘rewriting’ serves Hanjin Yan to assess Zuoren Zhou’s approach to William Blake’s poems during China’s May Fourth New Culture Movement (1917–1923). Zuoren Zhou, a writer as well as a translator, defended a new approach to literature that meant the adoption of new humanitarian values and to some extent a rupture with the past as part of an attempt ‘to rethink the relations between individual and nation, nation and modernity’ (Daruvala, 2000, p. 11). As part of his approach, Zhou found inspiration in Western authors in his endeavor to produce a new type of literature. In his contribution to this issue, Hanjin Yan incorporates the concept of ‘imitation’ to refer to this ‘creative emulation’ of earlier literary models adapted to a new context and shows that Zhou was influenced both in thematic and stylistic terms by William Blake’s work, which allows Yan to underline the importance of ‘imitation’ in the expansion and emergence of literary models. In addition, the fact that Zhou was a writer, essayist and a translator is certainly of significance.

For his part, Edwin Gentzler is one of the leading figures in both comparative literature and translation studies. Based at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he directed the Center for Translation Studies for many years, Gentzler has cultivated an interest in world literatures, as reflected in books such as Translation and identity in the Americas and Translation and Re-writing in the Age of Post-translation Studies. In the former, Gentzler claimed that ‘translation and cultural studies scholars in the United States of America have much to learn from their Canadian, Latin American, Brazilian, and Caribbean colleagues’ (Gentzler, 2008, p. 6). The book gathered a number of international scholars at a conference organized by the University of Leuven in 2009. In this event, Gentzler discussed his work with Cecilia Alvstad, Dirk Delabastita, Kobus Marais, Roberto Valdeón and Luc van Doorslaer amongst others, and the debates were later published as a special issue of the American translation studies journal Translation and Interpreting Studies entitled ‘Eurocentrism in Translation Studies’. In his contribution to the issue, later published as a book, Gentzler (2011) highlighted the expansion of translation studies both outwardly and inwardly, as translation research expanded internationally but also looked into how translation was transforming smaller communities in Europe and North America.

In Translation and identity in the Americas, Gentzler explored how language and translation had come to shape the various identities of the Americas. However, he also claimed that, despite its significance, translation has not been the focus of academic debates and research as it happened in other parts of the world: ‘Translation has not become a subject for post-graduate research in Spanish-speaking universities in the Americas, nor there has been much conference activities’ (2008, p. 108). Gentzler also discussed the so-called anthropophagist or cannibalistic movement in Brazil, which attracted some attention in the late twentieth century, but which has gradually lost its momentum. The proposal, by Brazilian poet Harold de Campos, put emphasis on the metaphor of the cannibal that admires and devours the enemy and incorporates its energies into his body (Cisneros, 2012). This approach has subsequently been related to the debates in translation studies by authors such as Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere.

In Translation and Re-writing in the Age of Post-translation Studies, Gentzler (2017) continued to explore the significance of translation in international contexts, with an emphasis on Latin America and China. In this book, Gentzler engages in a multidisciplinary dialogue with authors such as Jacques Derrida, Gérard Genette and Laurence Raw to elaborate on the view of translation as rewriting. This rewriting process, which includes augmentation, abridgment, summary, commentary, continuation and intervention, occurs in all translations, but it is probably more likely and more needed between distant cultures and languages. This dialogue does not limit itself to well respected figures, as the book draws on exchanges with the various audiences that listened and provided feedback to Gentzler’s talks, including Chinese graduate students and scholars.

Chinese scholars have indeed become major players in translation studies, as the increasing numbers of articles from China and/or from Chinese academics in major international journals and book collections attest. These publications illustrate the wide range of topics explored and methodologies used in their work, which exemplify the interaction with the research carried out in other parts of the world. Well-established authors such as Xuanmin Luo, Ning Wang, Yifeng Sun, Leo Chan and Nam Fung Chang have contributed greatly to the expansion and consolidation of translation studies in the exploration of (comparative) literature and translation theories in China. In 2008, Ning Wang and Yifeng Sun edited the collection Translation, Globalisation and Localisation. A Chinese Perspective, published by Multilingual Matters, where they defended the role of translation in China’s globalizing cultural and political strategy. This collection illustrates the reciprocal nature of translation between China and the West, reflected in the way translation has served to import Western products but also to make Chinese literary works known internationally. It includes mainly Chinese contributors, but also Western ones such as Edwin Gentzler and Cay Dollerup, the founder of Perspectives, who wrote an article comparing Chinese and Danish translation practices.

In a similar vein, in 2009 Xuanmin Luo and Yuanjian He (2009) edited the collection Translating China, which includes chapters by Yifeng Sun and Martha P. Y. Cheung. The book looked at the historical development and practice of translation in China as religious and literary texts from the West were rendered into Chinese and Chinese texts were translated into Western languages. For instance, Sylvia Ieong (2009) examined Ezra Pound’s famous version of Cathay, a fine example of an author/translator that serves to exemplify the symbiosis of his different roles and the two cultures in his work. Ieoing managed to locate some of the original sources used for the translations and posits that the final product is a result of the intellectual synergies generated by the cooperative efforts that characterized this work. For her part, Martha Cheung (2009) explored the complexities of translation and translation terminologies in China, with reference to the production of anthologies of foreign literary texts.

As for Leo Chan and Nam Fung Chang, the former has explored phenomena such as rewriting, imitation, adaptation, and pastiche in a variety of contexts. Chan (2020) convincingly applies these concepts to East Asian texts and calls for a more holistic approach to the study of translation in non-Western concepts. For his part, Chang has argued that translation efforts can only be fruitful through the concept of empathy. In his view, heightening the cultural self-image is not necessarily the best way to disseminate the literature of a specific nation, as this may trigger resistance in other cultures (Chang, 2017). Chang (2011) has defended the value of Western theories of translation beyond their places of origin. For example, he has argued that polysystem theory and the expansion of some of its tenets by Gideon Toury can provide useful concepts in combination with the tenets of other cultural traditions, and, therefore, do not necessarily pose a threat to those traditions (Chang, 2015, 2018). Chang (2018) is also critical of theorists who disapprove of the role of Western theories in translation studies but are willing to be ‘colonized’ by other disciplines, thus expanding the comparatist agenda.

The relation between Western and non-Western theories can be felt in much of the work of Chinese scholars but also in the presence of Western theorists in China, including Edwin Gentzler, mentioned above, as well as Susan Bassnett and Eugene Nida before her. Less known is perhaps the case of Fredric Jameson, although he is a fine example of the interaction between Western traditions and Chinese scholarship. Jameson, who studied in Yale under the supervision of Erich Auerbach, has been a leading figure in post-modernism with a great impact in Chinese literary circles in the second half of the 1980s. He presented his work in China at the prestigious Peking University as well as the new Shenzhen University in 1985, and later published Postmodernism and Cultural Theories, which was translated into Chinese by Xiaobing Tang. In 1993, he lectured again on comparative literature at Shanghai and Beijing (Wang, 2001, p. 38). This was a time of intense intellectual exchange between China and the West, a period that showed a great interest in foreign literature and culture, and also aimed to disseminate Chinese cultural artifacts abroad. In fact, as the edited collection by Leo Chan (2003) shows, translation has been instrumental for the reception of Chinese works in the West.

In line with this, África Vidal has defended the view of translation as a journey. The use of this metaphor, she admits, is not new (2012, p. 50), but Vidal has been particularly attentive to the intricate connections between source and target texts, as many elements other than the verbal component play a crucial role. Vidal recalls that journeys, trips, voyages, and all types of movements of people require communication, which is not always easy (2012, p. 51). In order to exemplify this, Vidal mentions Jorge Luis Borges’s story ‘El informe de Brodie’, where language presents serious problems for communication. Of course, the story is fictional and highlights another relevant issue: literature does not occur in a vacuum. ‘El informe de Brodie’ draws inspiration from Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, but also from the first accounts of the conquest of the Americas (2012, p. 51). Thus, traveling humans and traveling languages were the basis of translation in the times of Jonathan Swift, of Jorge Luis Borges in the same way as they are now. And this feature of translations is of great value as the journey through other spaces via translation can have an impact on the identity of the reader (Vidal, 2012, p. 59). Likewise, the reader of this thematic issue will embark on a journey through languages, cultures and times as the contributors discuss or draw on many of the concepts discussed above.

Perspectives on translation and world literature

Translation in colonial settings

The concepts informing the study of translation and world literature include ideology and patronage, which are at the basis of the article ‘Translation as a modernizing agent: modern education and religious texts in colonial Manipur (1891–1947)’ in which Akoijam Malemnganbi examines the role of translation in the modernization of Manipur, a small state in India whose official and dominant language is Manipuri (or Meitei) and where a number of Sino-Tibetan languages are spoken. Malemnganbi discusses the complexities of a language and a culture within the framework of a colonized region, (indirectly) ruled by Britain between 1891 and 1947, and where the Meeteis (the major ethnic group) had to negotiate their status as Aryan Hindu. During this period, Malemnganbi claims, emerged modern Manipuri literature. Most of the translations of the time were from Sanskrit, Bengali, Hindi and English, and were carried out into Manipuri or Meeteilon, while very few were made from this language into the other four, leading to the appearance of colonial modernity. Malemnganbi, who examines two trajectories of translation projects that led to the present situation, posits that the seeds of modernity were planted during the reign of King Chandrakirti (1850–1886), the first Manipuri king to receive an English education. His fascination with the West led to the introduction of post-offices, hospitals and schools. Important changes followed during the first half of the twentieth century, when the two trajectories mentioned above took place, which led to the translation of Sanskrit religious texts and documents, some of which were used as textbooks, gradually leading to Indo-Aryan hegemony in Manipur. Translation, Malemnganbi posits, played a vital role in this.

In ‘USIS-funded literary translation in Hong Kong in the Cold War’, Bo Li also studies translation projects, but in a different colonial setting. Li has analyzed the literary translations published in World Today, a major periodical in the colony, during the period 1949–1952, when Hong Kong was still ruled by Britain. His work is part of the body of scholarly work that has studied the American Cold War policy and the role of its cultural exportations during the 1950s and 1960s, carried out by the US Information Service (or USIS), which was responsible for the production and distribution of anti-Communist propaganda. This service produced original materials and commissioned literary translations. Li’s research, at the crossroads of literary, periodical and translation studies, reveals that these translations defended an American way of life characterized by its inclusiveness and open-mindedness. Consequently, at least in the first years, most of the texts selected for translation were American, including writers who had successfully emigrated to the United States (e.g., William Saroyan and George Papashvily), thus creating a positive image of the country. An interesting feature of these translations is the omission of passages that may have been considered detrimental to the image of the United States that the USIS wanted to project, pointing to the influence of the forces of Cold War politics on the translation projects of the period, particularly in extremely sensitive areas such as Hong Kong.

Translation and cognitive experiences

In the Brazilian contribution to this issue, entitled ‘Intersemiotic translation as a cognitive artifact – from Webern’s serialism to concrete poetry’, João Queiroz and his colleagues explore the notion of intersemiotic translation with reference to the transformations from Webern musical serialism to Poetamenos by poet Augusto de Campos starting from the concept of ‘cognitive artifact’ applied to the arts, which implies that an artifact is not necessarily a physical object but rather an experience related to our minds. Drawing on Clark, they argue that cognitive artifacts are used by artists as well as audiences, whose creativity and interpretation depends on that experience. Among cognitive artifacts, intersemiotic translation, which is related to adaptation, stands out. For Queiroz and his colleagues, ‘one of the functions of IT explored by creative artists is to take advantage of the semiotic difference between source and target to generate competing and otherwise unprompted creative opportunities in the target system’. To illustrate this, they use Poetamenos, a precursor of the so-called concrete poetry written in the early part of the 1950s by Augusto de Campos, which translates musical procedures, especially melodies and rhythms into words, focusing on cohesion and conciseness as their main features, and on the techniques of retrograde and inversion. To have full access to the visual elements of the texts, readers will need to view the online version of the article, which provides not only the shapes and forms but also the wide range of colors used to produce the various effects intended by the author. As Queiroz and his colleagues conclude, these intersemiotic translations are ‘metasemiotic, generative and participatory artifacts’, accentuating the historical development of the genre towards what they term as poetry without verses that stems from the various forms of contemporary artistic representation.

Elena Dubenko and Iryna Golubovska also analyze the complexity of translating poetry in their article ‘Gestalt closure strategies for rendering personified images of Moon, Sun, Love, and Death in poetry translation into Ukrainian’. The text, of special significance given the time of publication, considers the cognitive elements that stem from the reading of poetry, and delves into the translation of imagery from the perspective of gestalt-oriented approaches. A gestalt-approach, Dubenko and Golubovska argue, may address the complexity between perceptual and conceptual elements, and deal with the generation of meaning as a result of the combination of the various elements of the metaphors present in poems. Gestalt theory, which originated in the field of psychology in the German-speaking area, proposed the study of psychological phenomena as whole rather than as parts of a whole. Koffka, one of its proponents, rejected materialism for using one part of a whole to make interpretations, and emphasized that to ‘be truly integrative, we must try to use all the contributions of every part for the building of our system’ (1935, p. 11). This cannot be done without a theory of language and its symbolic functions (Guberman, 2015, p. 27). Sharing a holistic approach to translation with Queiroz and his colleagues, Dubenko and Golubovska use the concept of prägnanz (a combination of ‘precision’ and ‘expressiveness’) to analyze the reproduction of images, some of which can be culture specific. Although images have been studied in recent years from the perspective of imagology (see, for example, the collection edited by van Doorslaer et al., 2015), Dubenko and Golubovska argue that their approach is more universalist and less nation-bound, although the features of images can be conceptualized very differently in the different languages and cultures. For their study, they used a total of 384 images from the works of Anglo-American (e.g., William Shakespeare and Emily Dickinson) and Ukrainian authors to which they applied what they term ‘translatological Gestalt analysis’. They found that even universal concepts such as moon, sun, love and death required some reframing to meet the expectations of the target readership. For example, Dubenko and Golubovska claim that while in the English tradition, the moon is presented with feminine attributes, in Ukrainian literature the moon is represented as more masculine.

Gender issues, translation and children’s literature

Yvonne Tsai, Rebecca Williams and Jun Tang explore gender issues in source texts and how these are rendered for target audiences. Both Tsai and Williams focus on children’s books whereas Tang delves into the perpetuation of sexism in literary translation. In ‘Translators’ manipulation of texts: the case of children’s books on gender equality’, Yvonne Tsai selected fifty-one picture books to analyze power manipulation drawing on Kaniklidou and House’s categories. Tsai stresses that the study is of relevance given the importance of translated children’s material in Taiwan, which has traditionally outnumbered the number of this type of books published in the original language, and the fact that Taiwan has promoted gender equality education, including the publication of a collection of books recommended for adults and children. For her study, Tsai selected picture books for primary young children and books that had been originally published in English, and features such as cultural filtering, explicitation and simplification. Her findings show that the translated versions strengthened gender stereotypes, which included the objectification of women, while downplaying gender equality.

In her contribution, Rebecca Williams turns to a different, yet related topic. The article, entitled ‘Reading gender in classics of children’s literature’, focuses on Le avventure di Pinocchio, the fantasy novel by Italian author Carlo Collodi, a favorite with children around the world that has been translated into 300 languages and adapted for the stage, television and the cinema, notably by Walt Disney, whose 1940 Pinocchio enjoys a classical status of its own. The latest film version, also produced by Walt Disney, has been released in 2022. For her study, Williams selected the first English translation by Mary Alice Murray as well as some of its re-editions and reprints, all of which were originally intended for young readers, as shown by the paratexts. As representations and conceptualizations of gender have evolved and changed over the centuries, Williams aimed to question how the transitions from past to present have been managed in translations published over a 119-year period spanning three centuries. Williams decided to focus on the representation of gender of two anthropomorphic characters, i.e., the cat and the fox, as the expression of gender for these characters may differ in English and Italian, and, therefore, its translation is likely to vary as well, affecting the ways in which socio-cultural gender is represented. Williams found that by assigning female gender to the cat and male gender to the fox, Murray rewrote the original text to provide a more traditional depiction of the dominant male and the subservient female, thus reinforcing the model of an androcentric society. In addition, subsequent reprints show that these roles have been maintained, in contrast to the changes present in other children’s books, such as texts by Roald Dahl and Enid Blyton (Baker, 2006, p. 115). Interestingly, however, the Spanish translations of the same books have remained closer to the original texts and to the first translations (Fernández López, 2000).

Finally, Jun Tang incorporates socio-psychological approaches to the study of sexism and gender stereotyping in translations. Drawing on Glick & Rudman’s definition of sexism (2010, p. 328) and its categorization by Mills (2008, p. 43), Tang uses Appraisal theory to study the translation of the English novel Lady Wu, which depicts Wu Zetian, a female ruler in China’s feudal society. The text illustrates the complex identity of Lin Yutang, a Chinese novelist and translator, who lived across languages, cultures and religions. He translated Chinese works into English, wrote texts in English and Chinese, and is credited with being the inventor of a typewriter considered a precursor of machine translation (Huang, 2022, p. 157). Tang posits that in the book Lin portrayed stereotypical features of gender, including both male and female characters, which might be punished for exhibiting some of those features. As regards the Chinese versions, Tang found that the intervention of the translators reinforced stereotyping by penalizing non-conformist and rewarding conformists. However, both versions, Tang argues, preserve the sexist attitudes present in the English novel, even though there were differences between the male and the female translators, namely, the male translator of Lady Wu was more inclined to perpetuate sexism in his version by rewarding conformists, while the female translator aligned herself with Lin Yutang by reproducing the source text more faithfully and, therefore, the stereotypes of the source text.

The role of translators and agents

Drawing on authors such as André Lefevere, translation scholars are now interested in the role played by the various individuals that may intervene in translations (the selection of texts, the production of translations, the dissemination of the target texts and so on) and the imprint they leave on the translations. Although all the contributors to this thematic issue look at the role these agents play to some extent or other, some focus specifically on them.

Two articles are of particular interest in this respect, as they analyze a well-known martial arts novel by Yong Jin. Lin Chen and Ruoyu Dai study the ‘Translator’s narrative intervention in the English translation of Yong Jing’s The Legend of Condor Heroes’ in order to assess the ways in which the narrative structure of the novel has been altered to meet the expectations of the target audiences, who are less familiar with its main topic. The book, part of a trilogy, was first published in Hong Kong in the 1950s and later revised in the 1970s and 2000s. Although it was assumed that the texts were untranslatable, the English versions popularized the trilogy in the West, partly because of the many changes. Chen and Dai find that one of the most salient features of the English version by Anna Holmwood is the number and types of omissions, which include historical references, descriptions of the main characters and, notably, information about the fights. In their view, these changes have an impact on the narrative of the novel, as Jin Yong is credited with maintaining the native literary tradition in contrast to authors who were Westernized after the May Fourth period. The narrative of the target text is more fast-paced, closer to the expectations of the readers but more distant from the literary traditions that the authors may have wanted to preserve.

To understand the range and significance of these changes, we can turn to ‘Translation and literary agenting: Anna Holmwood’s Legends of the Condor Heroes’, where Hong Diao delves into the role of the translator as the co-agent of the text. Diao uses extratextual material, such as email exchanges, transcriptions and agent reports, to examine the professional habitus of the translator as literary agent. A native of Sweden, Holmwood studied in the UK and China and became a literary agent, which enabled her to assess the kind of books that could sell in the West, particularly in an Anglophone context, and how to promote them. In the promotion of Yong Jin’s work, Holmwood had a dual role: as a specialist in Chinese, she was the translator of the books; as an agent she was involved in assessing the potential of Yong Jin’s texts. Diao posits that Holmwood’s decision to translate and publish the Condor series must have been a difficult one, since she was at an earlier stage of her career and, therefore, had the translations failed to pique the interest of Anglophone readers, she could have jeopardized her career. After all, and as mentioned by Chen and Dai, Jin Yong’s books have been considered untranslatable. Holmwood’s personal involvement in the negotiation is illustrated by the fact that she was selected as the translator as part of the deal, even though she would later need to collaborate with another translator. Finally, Dai also stresses that Holmwood also contributed to the promotion of the books, pointing to her multi-layer role as initiator, translator and promoter of the whole translation project.

The influence of the translator on the English version of the Chinese novel Luotuo Xiangzi by Lao She is the topic of the article by Minru Zhao and Dechao Li. The book, which portrays the predicaments of proletarian Xiangzi, a rickshaw puller, in his attempts to lead a successful life despite all the difficulties he encounters, has been translated several times into English: Evan King’s version is considered a poor rendition of the original (the changes include altering the ending) although it was popular because it was published as part of the Book-of-the-month series, while Jean M. James’s version has been described as meticulous and skillful (Wu, 2000, p. 235). Drawing on the Appraisal model, and a selection of narratological and stylistic concepts, Zhao & Li compare the English versions of the novel to explore the motivations behind the positioning of the narrator vis-à-vis the characterization of Xiangzi and the impact that this may have on the target readership. The results show that the changes of the first translation might have been motivated by the target culture, whereas the retranslations seem to take the source culture more seriously, thus corroborating previous work on retranslations. Consequently, they posit, the tendency in the retranslations by Jean James and Howard Goldblatt (whose academic career is indissolubly linked to the translation of Chinese literature, Huang, 2015, p. 44) is towards the foreignization of the target text, a move that Zhao & Li believe fosters a greater degree of sympathy on the part of the readers towards the problems faced by the protagonist.

Concluding remarks

The articles selected for this thematic issue show that, although literary translation represents a small percentage of the translations produced in the world, research into this genre continues to thrive. This is perhaps because, as Stanley Corngold, a professor of German, a comparatist and a translator of Franz Kafka, eloquently put it, ‘each translation has a way of producing its own theory of what it is about’ (2005, p. 139) because every act of translation is radically different and therefore unique. Translation is, thus, ‘an affair of the communication of subjectivities […] an affair not of relation of languages but of characters and voices’ (2005, p. 140). In the same vein, and even though we can barely claim that every article to this issue produces its own theory, the contributors offer unique, if not radically different, views on the role of translation in the dissemination of distant cultures. Their voices reflect the relation between literatures and cultures in different periods, and showcase the research carried out in the twenty-first century in a discipline that, in different forms and under different umbrellas, is now present in universities and colleges around the world.

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Qin Huang

Qin Huang is a professor of Translation and Interpreting Studies at Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST). Her major research interests lie in Translation Studies, discourse analysis etc. She has published extensively in the forms of books, book chapters and CSSCI journal articles such as Chinese Translator, Foreign Language Education, Foreign Languages and Their Teaching, and articles in SSCI and A&HCI journals such as Target, Babel, Perspectives, Australian Journal of Linguistics.

Roberto A. Valdeón

Roberto A. Valdeón is professor in translation and pragmatics at the University of Oviedo, guest professor at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, South China Business College and Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, all in China; he is also affiliated with the University of the Free State, South Africa. He is also a member of the Academy of Europe, general editor of Benjamins Translation Library and has recently edited a special issue of Journalism devoted to journalistic translation. He is currently editing a special issue of Journal of Pragmatics devoted to the translation of swearwords.