CONCLUDING REMARKS

Translating Chi Ta-wei’s works has been an inspiring and exhilarating journey, both a great challenge and a great pleasure. It has been filled with frustrating moments in which I grappled with the text only to find myself defeated again and again until I found a solution I was comfortable with; and it has also been punctuated by happy moments in which I hit upon solutions to the problems of translation which taxed my ingenuity without unduly taxing my patience. It has been a painful journey in which I experienced the joys and sorrows laid out for me by the author; but it has also been a wonderful journey of self-discovery and growth as I learned about myself both as a human being and as a translator.

In making this journey, I can confidently say that while I have not broken any new ground, I have trodden new ground and beaten new paths for the reader interested in learning more about Chi Ta-wei’s works to follow. I have tried to serve as a guide, illuminating both the smooth and rough portions of the work just enough to enable the reader to navigate them for herself if she chooses. I have tried to hold up a light to my author and faithfully describe what I have seen; but I have also tried, insofar as this was possible, to meddle as little with the text as I was able, to let the reader bring her own feelings and ideas to the text and to present the text as clearly to the reader as I myself saw it.

In so doing, I will undoubtedly be criticized for sticking too close to the original text, even at the risk of sounding foreign or unusual, and so disappointing the English-speaking audiences that Lawrence Venuti has criticized as “aggressively monolingual, unreceptive to the foreign, accustomed to fluent translations that

invisibly inscribe foreign texts with English-language values and provide readers with the narcissistic experience of recognizing their own culture in a cultural other.”³⁰ I will also certainly be roundly criticized by those in the translation community who believe, with Howard Goldblatt, that “the thing that’s really killing translation in our field is literalism….You need to overcome your fear of the text, put some distance between you and it.”³¹ In my view considerations of an audience such as Venuti describes and

30 Venuti, p. 12.

31 Cited in Lingenfelter 2007.

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of literalism such as Goldblatt advocates are dangerous conceits for any translator to hold. The translator’s loyalty must always be to the text, which is necessarily a

protean thing in her hands. As with the mythological Proteus, the translator must get as close to the text as possible when translating it in order to capture all of the subtle shifts in shape that the text presents to her if she is to have any hope of finally

grappling with and pinning down with her vision the heaving, ever-restive mass before her. The reader may be uncomfortable following such an unfamiliar and foreign display; but it would be worse for the author and the reader if the translator were to produce a Proteus in the image of Pallas Athena, fully formed from her own head, in the sole interest of relieving her own and the reader’s headaches. The reader

deserves every chance to grapple with the original text that the translator can give her, and the best translations inspire in their readers the desire to read the original for themselves. To do otherwise is to be utterly unfaithful to the author, the text, and, ultimately, the reader. To translate too freely with extratextual considerations such as the desires of the audience or the market for publication seems to me to be a case of 沐猴而冠 mu hou er guan, “dressing a macaque (to fool people into thinking it is a person)”; no matter how much the translator’s audience may be partial to a certain kind of person, it is her responsibility to make sure that if macaques or any other unusual or unexpected beings appear in her text, they are recognizable as such, and no considerations of audience or freedom in translation should sway her from that responsibility.

I have tried to faithfully capture as much of the spirit, vigor, and idiosyncrasies of Chi’s text as I have been able. In holding up a mirror to the author as closely as I have, I hope that I have at least provided readers and future scholars with a framework for approaching the works that I have translated here, and that I have laid the

groundwork from which even more profitable translations of and research into the colorful and wonderful worlds of Chi Ta-wei’s fiction may be done.

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References

Western-Language References

Chi Ta-wei. “A Stranger’s ID.” Angelwings: Contemporary Queer Fiction From Taiwan.

Ed. and trans. Fran Martin. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2003. Pages

213-220.

---. “I’m not Stupid.” Trans. Fran Martin. AntiTHESIS: A Transdiciplinary Postgraduate

Journal. Special Issue: Everyday Evasions: Cultural Practices and Politics

(Volume 9) 1998. Department of English with Cultural Studies, the University of

Melbourne. Pages 141-144.

---. “The Scent of HIV.” Trans. Fran Martin. AntiTHESIS (Volume 9) 1998. Pages

145-151.

---. “Tänder.” Trans. Anna Gustafsson Chen. ORD & BILD 1-2 (2003). Göteborg,

Sweden. Pages 93-114.

---. “Umbilicus.” Trans. Susan Wilf. Renditions: A Chinese-English Translation

Magazine No. 63 (Spring 2005). Chinese University of Hong Kong. Pages 47-61.

Krishna Vaipayana Swami attrib. The Mahabharata. Trans. Kisari Mohan Ganguli.

Sacred-texts.com. Web 7 Jan. 2013.

<http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/maha/index.htm>

80 --- Translator’s Preface Web 7 Jan. 2013.

<http://www.sacred-texts.com/hin/m01/m01001.htm>

Lingenfelter, Andrea. “Howard Goldblatt on How the Navy Saved His Life and Why Literary Translation Matters.” Full Tilt: A Journal of East-Asian Poetry, Translation,

and the Arts (2) 2007.

Martin, Fran. “Introduction: Taiwan’s Literature of Transgressive Sexuality.”

Angelwings. Pages 1-28.

---. “Desire and the Commonplace: Reading Ta-Wei Chi’s Fetish: Stories.” Mo

(Membranes). Taipei: Lianjing Publishing Company, Ltd., 2011. Print. Pages i-vi.

Venuti, Lawrence. The Translator’s Invisibility. Routledge: London, 1995.

81 Asian-Language References

Chi Ta-Wei 紀大偉。《膜》。聯經出版事業有限公司：台北，2011 年。

---。 ---。 華藝出版社：北京，2003 年。

---。 ---。人民教育出版社與重慶出版社：北京，2012 年。

---編輯。《酷兒狂歡節》。元尊文化企業股份有限公司：台北，2008 年。

---。黃英哲與垂水千惠編輯，白水紀子譯。《台湾セクシュアル．マイノリティ文学 2:

中．短篇集紀大偉作品集膜》。作品出版社：東京，2008 年。

---。〈新版序〉。集於《膜》。本文英譯為“Preface to the New Edition”並引用為 Prefatory Material，頁 5-7。

---。〈自序：書寫的 HIGH 處〉。集於《膜》。本文英譯為 “Preface: A HIGH Place for Writing”

並引用為 Prefatory Material，頁 1-4。

---。〈得獎感言：繼續 HIGH 下去〉。集於《膜》。本文英譯為 “Award Acceptance Speech:

Keep Up The HIGH”並引用為 Prefatory Material，頁 8。

---。《正面與背景：台灣同志文學簡史》。國立台灣文學館：台南，2012 年。

Li Ru’en 李如恩。〈台灣九○年代酷兒科幻小說中的後人類政治：以洪凌和紀大偉作品

為例〉。中興大學台灣文學與跨國文化研究所碩士論文，2010 年。

82

Lin Jianguang 林建光。〈主導文化與洪凌、紀大偉的科幻小說〉。〈中外文學：35:3 2006 年〉。頁 79-108。

Lin Yuhan 林育涵。〈情慾文本化與酷兒操演：紀大偉的書寫與實踐 (1995-2000)〉。靜

宜大學中國文學研究所。2004 年。

Zhang Zhiwei 張志維。〈從假聲借題到假身借體：紀大偉的酷兒科幻故事〉。〈中外文學

32:3，2003 年〉。頁 106-124。

Wu Nianzhen 吳念真。〈審評意見：被作者狼狽刺了一刀〉。集於《膜》。本文英譯為

“Judges’ Comments: Cruelly Stabbed in The Heart by The Author”並引用為

Prefatory Material，頁 9。

Zha Yuqi 查昱琪。〈九○年代以降台灣科幻小說中的空間感－以洪凌、紀大偉作品為例〉。

靜宜大學台灣文學系年碩士論文。2011 年。

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