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1[,'1+oZ Translationof/in 'A ThousandMoons on a ThousandRivers'as Consecrationand Resistancein Post-colonial Taiwan
"Translation," so claims Casanova,"can be describedas one of the specific forms that the relationshipof dominationassumesin the internationalliterary fiel{r" (2010: 288)lThis supposition can explain why govemmentsof many countries are endeavoringby *ukip
use of translation to
promoteor export domesticculture to enhancethe visibility of its-titeraryvoice in other culrure.By providing subvention,the govemments,together with the cooperationof some foundations encouragethe translation of domestic literature into other languages.This is being done in many countries,for example, Korea Literature Translation Institute, JapanFoundation and.suntory Foundation in Japan,Australia-JapanFoundation Publication Award in Australia, CanadaCouncil for the Arts, Centre National du Livre in French, Litrix-German Literature Online in G1aany,, Hungarian Book Foundation,Finnish Literature Information Centre ... etc. (Lai 2006) .
In Taiwan/Council for culturalbffairs(Iâ&#x201A;Źg6igtE{tlg{f
ffiti-#'U h['r:frFSt [Council
for cultural affairs' Grants for translating Modern TaiwaneseLiterature]) is responsiblefor supporting financially the promotion of domestic literature. It cooperateswith Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange(CCKF) which sponsorsthe publication of a series called 'Modern Chineseliteraturefrom Taiwan'by Columbia University Press.Sincethe first publishedbook in 1998,this serieshas so far accumulated17 publishedtranslationsof Thiwanese literature. This mechanismcan be seenas expertswhose task is to selecttexts and thus determinethe boundary between alspecial L literafure and non-literature,betweenwhat is 'a must for translation'and what is not, betweenthe international and the national, the universal and the particular, modernity and archaism,e1q.'f(Casanova2010) The aim of this essayis to examine one of the books in this seriesthat they (the translator and mediators)gpnl9d a value t-o;Li-Hung Hsiao's "A ThousandMoons on a Thousandrivers,''which is translatedinto English in 2000. The novel was written and published on the United Daily News (Lienhe bao) in episodes throughout 1978and l979t,,itthen won the United Literary Award, an o'annualfiction contests
l sponsored[by the United Daily News] be,twlenthe mid-1970'sand the mid-1980'sr'1Chang 1999) , and was publishedas a book in 1981,rv!!gb.immediatelybecamea best-seller.'decehtand
magnanimous'(houdao) was the praisegiven by one of thejudges, ZhongYuan Se Ma. The novel
{n-ti-/l
/ ,
praisedas well as criticizedneel$6ely by writers suchas Ying-tai Long (F8ffi6) and Bi-Yong
.is Wu (F*â&#x201A;Ź),
who disagreestrongly with the blindly idealizationof the Chinesetraditional
hierarchical system,in which the elderly and male are higher in statusthan their counterparts. Besidesthat, Zhong Yuan Se Ma also commentedthat the author usestoo much local dialect in the textl(Tsai2005) 'Holo' is what the judge meansby the phrase,'local dialect,' which is a language,together with Hakka, Japanese,and all the indigenous languages,that had gradually becomeillegitimate since 1945,when KMT (Kuomintang, literally, Nationalist party), who "hoped to exploit the island's wealth and industrial basefor [China's] postwar reconstructionand2ruggle againstthe Communist+","established an administrativesystem"in Taiwan.(Phillips /gqg),Tn" sanctionwas imposed when KMT found that "linguistic differences" had become"a point of ionflict betweenthe Taiwaneseand the new administration." (Phillips 1999) For example, "in the Provincial ConsultativeAssembly(T'ai-wan-shengts'an-i-hui) meetingsof 1946,translationwas requiredas so few representativescould speak"standard Mandarin" (piao-chun kuo-yu)" (Phillips 199$. In response,KMT "struggled to spreadthe use of Mandarin Chinese(kuo-yu), literally "national language" (Phillips 1999) by 'KMT's political party equalsto national government educationalsystem'(my translation,sourceterm: E.RH,H,@W.IL:-#ffiAfril,
making the
.!
"Taiwanese... upset when the ability to communicatein Mandarin becamea symbol of political and i educationaldevelopmentrequired for the implementation of self-governmenf' (Phillins 1999)After the attempt to overthrow the KMT administration failed, cultural reintegration was enhancedby KMT and "a variety of measuresto consolidateits control and make clear the limits of acceptable political discourse[was] carried outi' (Phillips 1999) entitled 'Opposingthe Governmentand Commentingon Politics'defined the ,,1'Aneditorial scopeof tolerabledebate.'Opposing'threatenedthe existenceof the nation'speople (as defined by the government)and was equatedwith support for the Communists or that which benefited them. 'Commenting'pointed out errors of the governmentand was done in the interestof the people.(Ch'uan-minjih-pao, 1948)The police and military determinedthe difference between"commentingand opposing." (Phillips I 999) Hence the domination ofpational literary field during the 1950's by the Chinesewriters who followed and settledwith KMT in Taiwan. It was not until the 1970's has the young generationof Taiwanesebeganto re-emergeinto the literary field. This neJVgroup of writers, having been influenced by 'KMT's political party equalsto national goverrlmgnteducationalsystem:, are imprinted with tfu*"rnoti;";;-_-'
identification of China, and took it as their original cultural matrix, which led to their belief that the so-called,theRepublic of China'(Taiwan) and'People's Republic of China'are merely terms or two narrativesthat are usedto depict, interpret, or explain 'China.'But at the sametime, the two narrativesare also competing for the right of representingthis cultural matrix. However, the loss of the ROC's seatin the United Nations in 197| disappointedthesewriters so much, that they were motivated to the searchof a new identity to replacethe narrative of the ROC/ (Yang 2005, my translation) "The 'return to the native' (hui-kui hsiang-t'u) trend", in which "progressive intellectuals criticized the blind admiration and slavish imitation of Westerncultural models and exhorted their compatriotsto show more respectfor their indigenouscultural heritage, as well as greaterconcern for domestic social issues" (Chang 1999) in result appeared. To 'return to the native,'Holo, followed by other repressedlanguages,was usedin literary texts by transcription, as seenin the novel in question.Transcription, as allowed by the definition of Casanovacan be consideredas a kind of translation. ..If translation can be describedas an operationthrough which a text from a deprived literary area succeedsin imposing itself as literary with regard to the legitimate authorities,then the whole seriesof strategieswhich aim to facilitate traversing the literary border can be includedin th39llegory of 'translation"'(casanova2010).
l''
'a And as texts that ur"'itt"f t anslation startedto struggle for legitimacy, this literary field became site of resistance,'where"the translator is an agent of linguistic and cultural alienation" (Venuti
i
1995).Seenfrom this context,the Chineseversionofla ThousandMoons on a ThousandRivers" is a translation in which a languageis imported into another,"a compromise adoptedby numerous authors who produce ... texts [that] are written both in the dominated language and-lhedominating language,in the mother tongue and the languageof colonizationfi (Casanova2010)r'Byso doing' the writer, Hsiao, who "is dominated politically and a product of the processof decolonization," is able to..maintain a relationship with the dominating languagewhich is inseparablypolitical and IiteraryT(Casanova 2010) $er abundantreferenceto the classical Chineseversesand the use of lyrical Modern Chinesewhen narrating (Holo is only used in dialogues)are one of the reasonsof the consecrationof this novel by the authority. According to Casanova,the successof this novel in the sourceliterary field should be able to extend to the target literary field, when translatedinto another dominating language,for "the significance of translation does not dependonly on the position of the sourceand target languages, but it also dependson the position of the translatedauthors,both in their national field and according to the place that his field occupiesin the world freldi" (2010: 296) Contrary to being 3
popllar, and unlike someother translatedbooks in this series,suchas Ch'ing-wenCheng's(4|3iFX) Horse (=fil,E), 'aThree-Legged
which was awardedby Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize,the
novel in question did not receive much attention in the target literary field, the United States. In a researchdone by Mei-tzu Tsai, five female Americans who all have at least a bachelor degreeand speakEnglish as their native tongue were selectedto particinut" ir@9;tudy.
Each of
to read three chaptersthat are distinct from each other and after writing down three ther'n,i3,asked pagesof commentary is interviewed more than once.Among all their responses,it is notable that "four of them could not tell that it is a Taiwanesenovel. ... Only one of them figured out that the setting in this novel is basedin Taiwan by her experienceof travdling in Japanand the mentioning of Taipei in the teKt.i'(Tsai ,my translation)One of them says:"I am not able to detecta ]005 difference betweenthe representationof Taiwaneseculture here and Chineseculture, since I don't know enoughabouttheir cultural differencesyeti'(Tsai 2005) Indeed,the readerscannotbe blamed for the lack of knowledge regarding-fth{cr;ltural
differencesbetweenTaiwan and China, for, as
explicated above, although the author choosesa nativists narrative approach,the object of the depictionis still the cultural matrix, 'China.'The only discerniblefeatureof the text as one I
I t:!
produced by a different culture from People's-R.:gblj:..9frchina is the interlaced usageof Mandarin jr
t: t.
Chineseand Holo. Either this feature is intranslatableor the translator has consciously chosento r[!
ignore it, {Jhen deprived of this feature, the text losesthe narrative and the English translation is then transformed into a text left only with the cultural matrix, "China." Or, in this caseit will be more adequateto apply Narrative Theory, a sociological theory which is first applied on translationsstudiesby Mona Baker, to illuminate the importance of this translational choice. Narratives, as explicated by Baker, o'arestoriesthat we come to subscribeto - 4 believe in or at least contemplateas potentially valid - and that shapeour behavior towards other people and the eventsin which we are embedde$""(Baker 2007)And the four featuresof narrative, temporality, relationality, selective appropriation, and causalemplotment (Somers 1992,1994, 1997;Somersand Gibson lgg4), can "become operative" when "a considerableamount of
|'
,, '
' ,, .', . i I ' :I
discursive work" is "undertaken by those doing the narratiorrl'guk", further points out that to
outline "some of the ways in which this discursive work is carried out," the notion of frame, which means"deliberate, discursive moves designedto anticipate and guide others'-interpretationof and t
'
/tc
11<t,(':
L(tr,c t
attitudestowardsa setof events,"will "be_pj99gtiyg,_J2007:155-156) 4"-1,c.(ttJ . Examinedwithin the frameworkof this theory the 'C-hina'thatthe two 'narratives'compete to representwill be, using terms of Narrative Theory, the objectiv-e'world'that is shapeddifferently by the two competing 'narratives.'The original narrative of t/ris novel is framed by the using of
I l)
I t u t ' 1 VL h ' < . '
(t' !!' t^-y ,
.J
Holo amongclassicaland standardMandarin Chineseand the narrativeframedis a'China'that identifiesthe geographical'Taiwan'as motherland,and the imaginedcultural 'China'as fatherland. (Tsai 2005)-Fatherlandand motherland are both important in the patriarchal ideology of traditional Chineseculture, which includes Confucius and Buddhism, but in different ways. This notion is clearly reflected throughout the whole novel, but two extractsof the Grandfather's 'wise'words would suffice for demonstratinghow the value of male and female is perceived differently. "Listen to me: you can't expect the sameof daughtersand sons.Girls are not cut out for studying as hard as boys. Any learnedperson knows that girls are the future mothers of the world; it's good that they learn to read and write, and to know right from wrong.The way that I seeit, however,thosewho excel in schoolare too often ignorantof virtues.It would be a big mistake to push Zhenguanto pursuegood gradesat the expenseof her womanly morality!" (Hsiao 2000)
"If a son is bad, only one person,one family, is affected.But a daughteris bestowedwith the solemn responsibility of raising the next generation.A daughter's virtue, therefore,bearsa direct impact on the humanroot, the human seed...." (Hsiao 2000)
ItisthesameinsceneSthM"H;;ffi#ancestop,*n","lhaleisresponsiblefor (1.)-
-
)
preparing everything while male, who wait until everything is done, becomesthe one who leadsthe prayer. In other words, under this hierarchical system,women may have more power, but only on conditionsof losing their subjectivity. Projectedinto a largercontext,where 'China,'the fatherland,representsmale, 'Taiwan,'the motherland then, representsfemale, the one who "is bestowedwith the solemn responsibility of
i t
,L ,. '
raising the next generation," the one who is important solely becauseof her "direct impact on the :
humanroot," thus the one who doesnot needsovereignty.And this is the role that 'Holo'plays in framing the narrative. Nonetheless,it is not translatedor representedin any *uy in the English version, in which 'standardEnglish' is used throughout. This fact is neither mentioned in the
,' , ,'
foreword, nor in the translator's notes.The author of the foreword acknowledgesthe difficulW of translating certain features,but not how it is being rendered. "The English translation of this book must have been a long and difficult process,as the text is strewnwith puns,folk songs,local dialects,classicalpoetry,Buddhist maxims, and local sentiments,all of which defr Westernlogic. The translator,Michelle Min-chia Wu, has successfullyovercomethesemany obstaclesand produced a translation that will be sureto move English readersas much as the original has countlessChinesereaders."(Hsiao 2000)
,,(
The narrative is altered as a result in the English translation due to the disappearanceof the native tongue, which servesthe framing function, and is transformed into a narrative in which male, the
/
Chineseculture, dOginlles, wiile the 'bearer of the root'remains invisible, unable to be perceived. It causesconfusion for the readersof the target language.One writes: "It seemsthat the book explains itself a lot-any cultural details that I am not familiar with are explained in enough detail for me to understandtheir significance (which is interesting since I assumethis was written for a Chinese-speakingaudience)."Another writes: "For me, I found theseexplanationshelpful, but for
someonefrom the culture,if they arein the original,I would think that theVmieht@le initated by it." and another writes: "I don't have a good senseof whether or not this reading describesa "true" Taiwan or not. It seemsvery picturesque,qualAt, and neat in the way that it describesthis family." Moreover,someare even annoyed.Her responseis: "the tradition becomes'exoticized'in my mind. Tradition is not only a way of living, but it appearsto be the law of the universe. I find this quite distancing as a readerbecauseI felt like I was being forced to agreewith the traditional way. I honestly felt uncomfortable with this." (Tsai 2005) Obviously, the English translation and the selectionof this translation has reframed the narrative into one that is entirely 'Chinese,'One would wonder if this is the Taiwan that the governmentand the foundation genuinely want to portray. The answer,as commented,fie of the V readers,"I don't think there is such a thing as a true Taiwan or a true USA. There are many different subculturesin each country" ffsai 2005), would be negative if the other books in this seriesare put into consideration.Except for the 'Chinese-ness'this novel represents,there is also a book that representsthe indigenous,"Indigenous Writers of Taiwan: AnAnthology of Stories,Essays,and Poems,"and even "City of the Queen:ANovel of Colonial Hong Kong Shih Shu-Ching"is includedin this series.It seemsthat what this seriesis endeavoringis to legitimize 'Taiwan's' position internationally by forging an image of hybridity. Viewing from "a 'contact'perspective,"(Pratt 1992)Taiwan can be seenas a'contact zone,' "in which peoplesgeographically and historically separatedcome into contact with each other and establishongoing relations, usually involving conditions of coercion,radical inequality, and intractable conflict" (Pratt 1992).Hence the Taiwanesesociety can be seenas post-colonial according to the definition of Childs and Williams who claim that "post-colonial cultures are charactenzedby a decentringmovement, a subversionof universals and unities, and a diversity and hybridity that permeatetheir past and conditiontheir presentf' (1997:218) The multiple narratives that co-exist in it createsthe perplexed self-identification of people who are born and permanent residentsin Taiwan: somethink that they are Chinese,some Taiwanese,some both Chineseand
Taiwanese,and some neither Chinesenor Taiwanese,for the term 'Taiwanese'tends to refer to Holo speakersonly. Some, such as the author of the novel's foreword, pang-yuanchi, frustrated by being misunderstoodas Thai after saying that she is from Taiwan, said "I am from free China" instead. (my translation, China Times (Chung-kuo shih-pao) 2009) Further researchegmay be done to explore the multi-narratives through translation activities in Taiwan.
References Baker, Mona (200712010)'Reframing Conflict in Translation',Social Semiotics17(1): 151-169; reprinted in Mona Baker (ed.) Critical Readings in Tianslation Studies,London & New York: Routledge,ll3-I29. Balcom, John and Yingtsih Balcom (eds) (2005) Indigenous Writers of Thiwan: an anthologt of stories, essays,and poems, trans. by John Balcom, New York; Columbia University Press. Casanova,Pascale(2010) 'ConsecrationandAccumulationof Literary Capital:Translationas Unequal Exchange', trans. by Siobhan Brownlie, in Mona Baker (ed.) Critical Readingsin Translqtion Studies,London & New York: Routledge,285-303. Ch'uan-minjih-pao (i94S 5 August) tryf&Ftfii+th;+&if;
[Opposingthe governmentand
commentingon politicsl. Chang,Sung-shengYvonne(1999) 'Literature in Post-l949 Taiwan, 1950-1980',in MurrayA. Rubinstein(eds) Taiwan:a new history,New York: M. E. Sharpe,pp.26l-274. Childs, Peter and R.J. Patrick Williams (1997) An Introduction to Post-Colonial Theorv,London : PrenticeHall. Columbia University Presswebsite http:llcup.columbia.edu/flast access17 January2010] Hsiao, Li-Hung (2000) A ThousandMoons on q ThousandRivers, trans. Michelle Wu. New York: Columbia University Press.
Lai,Tzu-yun(ed.)(2006)ei+tWg'ffq#lFffiU:-#ffifrilzhfrn [Research of Establishing TranslationMechanismfor DomesticScholarlyPublications]http://www.nict.gov.twltcl index.php?option:com_content&task:view&id:161&Itemid:68 flastaccess17 Jarnary 20101 Philips,Steven(1999)'Between AssimilationandIndependence: Taiwanese PoliticalAspirations UnderNationalistChineseRule, 1945-1948', in MurrayA. Rubinstein(eds)Thiwan:a new history,New York:M. E. Sharpe,pp.275-319. Pratt,Mary Louise(1992)ImperialEyes:Travelwriting and transculturation,London:Routledge.
Shih, Shu-Ching (2005) City of the Queen:A Novel of Colonial Hong Kong, trans. by Howard Goldblatt and Sylvia Li-chun Lin, New York; Columbia University Press. Somers,M. (1992)'Narrativity, narrative identity, and social action: Rethinking English working-class formati on' Social Science History ft@): 59 1-630. (1994)'The narrative construction of identity: A relational and network approach' Theory and Society23(5): 605-49. (1997)'Deconstructing and reconstructingclass formation theory: Narrativity, relational analysis,and socialtheoV'fn John R. Hall (eds)Reworkingclass,Ithaca,N.Y. and London: CornellUniversityPress,pp. 73-105. Somers,M. R., and Gibson,G. D. (1994)'Reclaiming the epistemological"Other": Narrative and the social constitutionof identity'In Craig Calhoun(eds) Social theory and thepolitics of identity,Oxford, UK & Cambridge,Mass.:Blackwell, pp.37-99. St. Pierre,Paul (1997) 'Multiple Meaningsand Contexts:The Diversity of the Post-Colonial', TTR i
l 0( 1 ) :9-17.
the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchangewebsite:l'rttp.,ll www.cckf.org.tw/flast access17 January2010]
rsai,Mei-tzu2a}5 il'f h+EH!#,/# : tXffiH*I (f iIâ&#x201A;Ź'zJt+iIE ) H!trU#{W+HFU [Cultural Migration of ChineseTranslation/Transliteration:a Case Study of Li-Hung Hsiao's A ThousandMoons on a ThousandRivers], the fifth annual conferenceof the cultural Chinese,Cultural Migrations,http:ll studiesAssociation(Taiwan):Translational hermes.hrc.ntu.edu.tdOcsa/CSA_2$I\lpagelagenda_list.html fiast access17 January2010]
l',
Unanimous(200912July)ti-$HAigtâ&#x201A;Ź
r # r ,KHft+Efih Literature, [Salesof Taiwanese
com.tw/even tllc} 5| I Translationfi rstl, China Times (+ E ffi +F),http://www.bookzone. page06_6.asp fiastaccess17January2010] Invisibility,London&NewYork:Routledge. Venuti,Lawrence(1995)TheTTanslatorb
Yang, rsui(2005) X'fh+tr ' 1&IE6lg-ffiH?ltr-Jt totr{trj.ifiFffi,FF+.-#ffi fCultural China, geographicTaiwan-"Folk
context" of Hsiao Li-Hung's works in the 1970s],
Bulletin of Thiwaneseliterature 7: I-42.
word count:2920