Tan’s Addition of Entertaining Information

All of the men had the two outer incisors of the upper jaw pulled out, leaving the two central ones standing alone like the teeth of a squirrel. (Steere, 1878; Li, Ed., 2002, p. 34) 上齒兩邊的犬齒在 8 至 10 歲童稚時已鑿掉，露出兩顆孤伶伶的門牙，像煞逗趣的松 鼠。(Tan, 2013, p. 27)

In October, 1873, Steere arrived at today’s Sun Moon Lake, which inhabited the Thao people to the east. Specifically called tsuiwhan (水番) [waterside or water savages], the Thaos had already given up their head-hunting proclivities and were seen timid as they knelt down in the path before Steere and his company.

The whole TL unit is a part of Tan’s narration extracted from a passage without self-translated quotations. Tan translates “alone” as “孤伶伶的” [lonely, or even unwanted (more negative than “alone”)] and “like the teeth of a squirrel” as “像煞逗趣的松鼠” [very much resembling (the incisor teeth of) a funny-looking squirrel]. On one hand, “孤伶伶的”

[lonely] personifies Steere’s description of the Thao men’s teeth; on the other, “逗趣的”

[funny-looking] creates an air of frivolousness.

The reader might be regaled with a playful reportage style like this. Yet it perhaps is an unwarranted addition for the following reasons.

The TL unit contains information important to, in particular, scholars of biological anthropology and cultural anthropology. One reason is that with the passage of time, the

performers of such a tribal practice may do away with it. As an example, before the Amis people

once lost the ceremonial custom of parunang [boat festival] that celebrates the hardships of their ancestors, Ushinosuke Mori (森丑之助) penned Taiwan’s first ethnography recording the practice (Mori, 1897; Young, Trans., 2002, p. 124). While biological anthropologists specialize in the biological changes or evolution of the human species, cultural anthropology is a subfield of anthropology concerned primarily with the shared and negotiated system of meaning informed by knowledge that people learn and put into practice (Lassiter, 2009, pp. 36-38).

Example Tan-09

We now paid off our Chinese coolies and sent them back after considerable difficulty in coming to an agreement in regard to their wages, they demanding as usual, about double ordinary rates. (Steere, 1878; Li, Ed., 2002, p. 32)

隨行的苦力覺得深入不毛之地、時刻有生命的危險，要求額外的「安全津貼」，工 資應提高成兩倍。勞資雙方經過激烈的討價還價，上演一齣「湖濱慘劇」，最後資 方壯士斷腕，付清工資、打發了事。(Tan, 2013, p. 26)

The locale is the same place depicted in Example Tan-08. The TL unit highlighted here is a whole piece of narration in the absence of a self-translated quotation.

Tan adds extra information such as “時刻有生命的危險” [always life-threatening], “，要 求額外的「安全津貼」” [demanding extra subsidy for the sake of personal safety], and an idiom

“不毛之地” [a place unable to produce plants]. This added information can be misleading, as the place was safe (and probably much safer) and far from being barren. Tan might have mistaken the meaning of the idiom and thought that it means “remote or secluded,” thereby using it in this

sense to create the tension between both parties in the story, in which Steere only wrote:

“demanding as usual, about double ordinary rates” without giving the reasons why the coolies did so. One of Tan’s intended purposes might have been to intensify the plot by describing their destination as a remote place inhabited by ruthless barbarians.

Also added are “湖濱慘劇” [the Lakeside Tragedy] and “壯士斷腕” [making an immediate decision in a dangerous situation (this cheng-yu in its historical sense is about a warrior cutting off his arm to survive a snake bite)]. The former, enclosed in quotation marks for specification, is pronounced hubin tsanjiu, which is very possibly a word play on the similar pronunciation of hubin sanji (湖濱散記), the book title of the Chinese translation of Walden Or, Life in the Woods. For the reader, these two additions would embolden Steere’s resolution and exaggerate his dissatisfaction with the Han coolies breaking the deal, when compared to its counterpart “we now paid off” and “after considerable difficulty” in the SL unit.

Example Tan-10

I told Onga that I had no medicine with me, but he reminded me that I had some

congh-ee. I took the hint and dosed out the coffee, advising them to make a hot infusion of it and put in plenty of sugar, and my treatment was quite successful, as long as the congh-ee lasted. (Steere, 1878; Li, Ed., 2002, p. 82)

「我要王嘉轉告實在毫無偏方，他慧黠地提醒『不是有 congh-ee 嗎？』我馬上會意，

開始配『藥』，叮嚀她們務必用開水沖泡、加入些許糖蜜效果倍增。據了解，還有 點瞎貓碰到死老鼠的味道，大家直誇我華陀再世！」(Tan, 2013, p. 94)

This passage deals with the Steere’s first arrival at the Pescadores (Penghu) in

mid-January 1874. There were some local old ladies suffering from a cough due to the humid and cold weather, thus asking the American naturalist for medications. The story depicts one of the Han Chinese people’s stereotyped impressions of the Westerners as a source of medical resources. This was very possibly because of the medical practices exercised by Western missionaries who had visited them.

The TL unit is a self-translated quotation. Tan describes Steere’s use of coffee with two idiomatic phrases: “瞎貓碰到死老鼠” [by dumb luck; literally “a blind cat lucky enough to come across a dead mouse”] and “華陀再世” [having outstanding medical skills; literally

“reincarnated from Chinese legendary physician Hua Tuo”]. Tan might have either simply misunderstood the ST (particularly “quite successful” and “as long as … lasted”), or

intentionally ‘inflated’ the meaning. Either way, it stands to reason that Tan’s purpose was to regale readers with a dramatic effect because he wanted them to have fun reading (Subsection 3.3.1).

In fact, the earliest use of coffee was for medical purposes (refreshing), as documented in 16th-century literature (Wang, 2019, pp. 157-158). Tan may not have known this fact, and aggressively retooled the structure of the SL unit. Also explicitated is “配『藥』,” obviously a wordplay on “配藥” [adjusting prescriptions], yet with the word “藥” [drug; medicine] enclosed in quotation marks. The TT equivalency is, however, constructed, as it echoes the phrasal verb

“dose out” in the SL unit. Pinker (2015) states that quotation marks can also be used to signal that the writer does not accept the meaning of a word (p. 43). Tan seems to be creating more of the wry humor seen in Steere’s situation.

From these three examples of addition, Tan has reworked the SL unit into a

reader-oriented context by inserting more entertaining wordplay. The ‘inflated’ TL units may thus undermine the anthropological precision. Tan has adopted an engaging reportage style that fulfills his agenda of regaling the reader and popularizing the historical texts.

Taken together, the two publications, as authorial translations, are creations, where Jackson Tan as a translator-reporter does not follow the strict sense of quotation marks. Instead, he takes advantage of punctuation and semantic explicitation for his own agenda. Narration has become a means of compensating for what may have been lost inside those pairs of quotation marks.

4.4 Young’s Specification of Specialized Knowledge: Mountaineering and Biological