The two epigraphs above are respective responses from Indian American Jhumpa Lahiri (b. 1967)1 and Taiwanese writer Xiangyin Lai (b. 1969)2 to inquiries on their writing. The first quotation regards translation as a way to claim one's existence, and the second views life as an ongoing translation process. Both imply that translation in context is not only interlingual or intercultural decoding, but also a way of defining the self and life. Such translation is no longer perceived as a copy inferior to “the irretrievable origin,”3 or “a process of power” in “institutionalized practice given the wider relationship of unequal societies.”4 Nor is it only “a strategy of resistance” to “the problematic of the translation” inscribed with imperial or humanistic “civilizing” ideologies in colonial contexts.5 Instead, it is closer to what Tejaswini Niranjana states in Siting Translation: “for a richer complexity, a complication of our...
Cultural Translation of a Subject in Transit:A Transcultural Critique of Xiangyin Lai's “The Translator” and Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies Available to Purchase
tzuhsiu beryl chiu is an Associate Professor in Graduate Institute of Taiwan Literature at National Chung-cheng University since 2006. She used to teach Chinese at the University of Alberta, Canada with a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of Georgia. Her research interests include: transcultural critiques of comparative literature, post/modern theories of Chinese and English literature, culture, cinema, and drama, expanding from cultural translations of identity politics, eco-criticism to biopolitics. Her projects have been granted by National Science Council and Ministry of Education. She published Transcultural Imaginary Subjectivity: Taiwan Postcolonial/Feminist Studies (2012), Imaginary Subjectivities on the Island and Beyond: Transcultural Critiques of Contemporary Novels from Taiwan, Hong Kong, U.S., and Canada (2011), English translation of Gao Xingjian's Absolute Signal (2009), Voices from the Beautiful Island: Bilingual Taiwan Masterworks with a multimedia DVD (2009). Her academic articles in Chinese and English have also been published in domestic and international journals.
Tzuhsiu Beryl Chiu; Cultural Translation of a Subject in Transit:A Transcultural Critique of Xiangyin Lai's “The Translator” and Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies. Comparative Literature Studies 1 February 2015; 52 (1): 160–177. doi: https://doi.org/10.5325/complitstudies.52.1.0160
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