Abstract
Translation conceived as rewriting empowers the translator of literary works with the authority to re-present the source text in a target language. When does the translator’s re-creation exceed the limits of “translation”? Jiří Levý’s discourse on literary translation provides useful guidelines for the evaluation of translated literature based on the target text’s capacity for re-concretization of the source text’s ideo-aesthetic reality in the mind of the reader. One of Levý’s stipulations is that the translator fully apprehends the source text so that extrinsic material conflicting with the ideo-aesthetic reality is not imported through (mis)interpretation, distorting the restyled literary work. The introduction of a new character identity by the re-writers (Goldblatt and Lin) of City of the Queen provides an opportunity to explore the limits of the translator’s re-creative freedom.
Notes
1. Its Chinese version is 《香港三部曲》.
2. Its Chinese version is 《她名叫蝴蝶》.
3. Translated by the present writer.