The creation of new academic knowledge spaces through the repatriated self-translation of foreign-language texts: The case of migrant historian Ray Huang

Binhua Wang and Yifeng Sun
University of Leeds | University of Macau
Abstract

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:
Publication history

Date received: 30 September 2022

Date accepted: 11 December 2023

Published online: 4 February 2025

Table of contents

Self-translation refers to “either the process of translating one’s own texts into another language or the product of such an undertaking” (Grutman 2020, 514). As a unique type of translation produced by bilingual authors themselves, it has a special significance as a research object that calls for more attention in Translation Studies and beyond. Previous studies, such as Grutman’s (2020) comprehensive chapter on self-translation in the latest edition of the Routledge Encyclopaedia of Translation Studies, have suggested that self-translation deserves special attention because it is different from the usual form of translation, which is normally done by someone other than the author. Early studies of self-translation include Li’s (2006) case study of the self-translation by the renowned contemporary Chinese writer Eileen Chang of her own English short story “Stale Mates: A Short Story Set in the Time When Love Came to China,” translated as 五四遗事 Wusi Yishi ‘Tale of May 4th’, which finds that in the practice of self-translation, the author-translator demonstrates an aesthetic freedom in highlighting and interpreting the cultural perceptions of men and women. Ehrlich (2009) attempts to determine whether the self-translated text is another original rewritten in a new language medium, or a translation with typical translation features, by comparing parallel passages in the Afrikaans–English self-translation of South African author André Brink’s novel Kennis van die aand, translated as Looking on Darkness. Although she concludes that the self-translator, despite enjoying an authority and a freedom not normally accorded to translators, adhered to standard translation procedures, the comparative study reveals differences in several aspects between the source text (ST) and the target text (TT) of the self-translated book.

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