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The creation of new academic knowledge spaces through the repatriated self-translation of foreign-language texts

The case of migrant historian Ray Huang

ORCID logo | University of Leeds
ORCID logo | University of Macau
This article examines the repatriated self-translation of a historical monograph, The Fifteenth Year of Wan-li, by the migrant Chinese-American historian Ray Huang from his English manuscript 1587, a Year of No Significance. Through an archival analysis of the process of self-translation and publication, it is shown that the monograph’s innovative content, style, and perspectives on history studies, as well as its re-contextualisation within the Chinese context and culture, contributed to the unprecedented popularity of the self-translated monograph in China. Through a comparative intertextual analysis of the English — Chinese parallel corpus of the monograph, we observe how the self-translator made a number of non-obligatory shifts and employed distinct strategies to return the monograph from the foreign-language text back to Chinese. This study provides evidence of the agency and latitude of academic self-translators in interpreting the original work and in adapting, revising, and rewriting the target text. It also reveals how migrant academics create new knowledge spaces through implicit translation in their foreign-language texts and (re)create new knowledge spaces through repatriated self-translation for their native academic community.
Keywords: migrant scholar, Ray Huang, historical monograph, foreign-language texts, repatriated self-translation
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Self-translation
    • 1.2(Self-)translation of foreign-language texts back into their original language and culture
    • 1.3Repatriation in cultural back translation and (self-)translation
    • 1.4The present study
  • 2.Data and methodology
  • 3.Analysis and findings
    • 3.1Archival analysis: The process of self-translating and publishing of 1587 in China at the early stage of reform and opening-up
    • 3.2Comparative inter-textual analysis: Restoration, supplementing, commenting, addition, and deletion by the self-translator
      • 3.2.1Type 1 shifts: Restoring elements of the original Chinese culture in the self-translation
      • 3.2.2Type 2 shifts: Supplementing more specific information or examples from the original cultural and historical contexts in the self-translation
      • 3.2.3Type 3 shifts: Inserting comments as a narrator or commentator by the self-translator
      • 3.2.4Type 4 shifts: Adding and adapting paratexts for the target readership in the self-translation
      • 3.2.5Type 5 shifts: Deleting paragraphs that might be deemed unsuitable for the target market
  • 4.Discussion
    • 4.1Revisiting the distinctiveness of self-translation and self-translators
    • 4.2Creation of new academic knowledge spaces through foreign-language works and self-translation
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • Author queries
  • References
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