Abstract

This essay focuses on the spatiotemporal notion of liminality and the way it can be mapped onto translation processes and the role of the translator. The concept of liminality can be traced back to Arnold van Gennep’s (1960) rites of passage and their re-elaboration by Victor Turner (1967 and 1974). It has recently been theorized within the social sciences as a central concept that allows a redefinition of the relationship of structure and agency (Thomassen 2014; Szakolczai 2015). In postcolonial studies (Bhabha 2006) and translation studies, it has been frequently used as a synonym of the notions of in-betweenness and third space (Aammari 2017; Bery 2007; Inghilleri 2017; Johnston 2007). However, despite some common traits, liminality offers a more comprehensive and dynamic approach. The notion of liminality is, furthermore, connected to the spatial metaphors of the door (Simmel 1957), the threshold, the arcade (Benjamin 2002 and 2004) and the gate (Tawada 2003; Sakai 2011), which do not conceive of languages as isolated self-contained units but focus on a possible opening between systems whose character is otherwise left unspecified.

Abstract

This essay argues for the significance and centrality of translation in J. M. Coetzee’s early novel, Waiting for the Barbarians (1980), outlining Coetzee’s multilingual aesthetic and its ethical implications. In the novel, translation manifests in real and metaphorical spaces in three key respects. Firstly, the allegorical quality of the work, which both invites and resists interpretation (Derek Attridge 2006), denotes an indeterminate, unstable quality that is also characteristic of translation. Secondly, translation manifests stylistically in terms of the language of the novel and the manner in which Coetzee employs an already translated narrative to mark an effaced and absent (native) language. Lastly, translation functions thematically, governing the gendered colonial encounter and its economy of power. The thematic reading reflects the complicit (racist and sexist) position that translation occupies in the colonial endeavor. Translation is key in regulating and exerting power, and includes the view of the sexualized female body as a text to be deciphered. However, when the role of the translator changes hands this economy is upset, and also further problematized by notions of untranslatability, allowing room for resistance. The multifaceted engagement with translation in Waiting for the Barbarians thus creates a space that encompasses the novel’s complex ethical vision, prefiguring the investment in translation evident in Coetzee’s later works.

Abstract

The literary idea of “Shangri-la” has today been realized as a geographic space in the Tibetan borderlands of southwest China. The minority peoples who live within this zone that has seen a massive tourism boom are, in effect, now linguistic “prisoners of Shangri-la”: despite possessing their own minority languages, sociopolitical factors dictate that ethnic minority writers often have little choice but to write in Chinese. Nevertheless, there is a way for them to negotiate a way out of the prison-house of language: foreignizing “inner translations” that rewrite, and destabilize, the landscape itself. This paper asserts that translation is a defining characteristic of the re-negotiation of peripheral spaces within Chinese minority literature. This study focuses on the construction of minority hometown spaces, such as Shangri-la in Yunnan and the Baima areas of northern Sichuan: both these areas are technically Tibetan according to Chinese state classification, yet they possess unique ethnic identities that are constructed in Chinese literature via phonetic translations (often re-translations or re-transcriptions) from the minority language into Chinese. The literary re-translation of local toponyms serves to contest official, Sinicized naming practices, producing nativized place names that act as markers, signposts from which we can see how meanings and mappings of ethnicity, nature, and culture can be shaped and reshaped in translation.

Abstract

In this study, I apply the concept that “meaning is not located in a source culture or a target culture in a univocal signifying movement; rather, it is being created endlessly in a third cultural space of growing conflict and complexity” (Carbonell 1996, 90) to my investigation of Dutch sinologist Gustaaf Schlegel’s translation strategy. When compiling his Dutch-Chinese dictionary, Schlegel was not simply transferring directly from language A (Dutch) into language B (Chinese), but tapping various sources to find what he called “genuine equivalent.” Schlegel’s dictionary goes beyond his language and culture pair of Dutch and Chinese, citing German and French sources, referencing entries in a Japanese dictionary, and offering comparisons with English interpretations, to provide details that users can understand and associate with. This method helped to create meaning in the third cultural space. This paper analyzes the impact that Schlegel’s knowledge of a complex combination of languages and cultures had on the meaning that was being created in the third cultural space.

Abstract

Translators are increasingly seen as cultural mediators who negotiate various signals, contexts, and stances for the target readers (Katan 2009). Translators have an imagined or implied target for whom they are translating. As mediators between source and target text culture, translators may also have a role in an imagined community—they serve their roles as communicators between the imagined source and target communities, drawing upon their linguistic repertoires and background knowledge. The current study examines how multimodal aspects, such as spatial aspects for an online target reader, can enable ample scope for developing awareness of the target reader and target text output and mode for student translators. Findings from qualitative data indicate the usefulness of the translation brief and designating of an online target reader in the classroom to encourage students to take on roles as translators and mediators in the online space and take into consideration spatial aspects.