EATS5 Conference Program

All times are given in AEST (Australian Eastern Standard Time)Day 1: Wednesday 26 June
9:15–9.30

Opening (Room 14-212)

9.30–10:30

Keynote: Prof Min-hua LIU
Is there an aptitude for interpreting beyond bilingualism? (Room 14-212)

10:30–11

Morning Tea (Level 2 Foyer)

11–11:30

11:30–12:00

12–12:30

11–11:30
11:30–12:00
12–12:30

11–11:30

11:30–12:00

12–12:30

11–11:30

11:30–12:00

Multilingual Literature & Arts (Room 14-115)
Szu-Wen KUNG (online)
Examining the translation of multilingual writing through a translanguaging lens:A case study of the Taiwanese novel Tanch'e shihch'ieh chi and its English
translation The Stolen Bicycle
Tin Kei WONG (online)
Translating Chinese literature:
Issues brought by the diversity in Chinese languages
Bei HUAn alien among aliens in East Asia:
Multilingual identities in Singapore’s contemporary theatre
Translation & Adaptation (Room 14-116)
Nana SATO-ROSSBERG
Is novelization translation?
Liehui WANG
Chinese translations of Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman
Mengyuan ZHOU
Three faces of heroism: An empirical study of indirect literary translation between
Chinese-English-Portuguese of Wuxia fiction
Game Localisation (Room 14-132)
Hao HSU
Globalization and internationalization as a form of censorship in gamelocalization: A case of Taiwanese game developers
Luis Damián MORENO GARCIA (online)
A corpus-based analysis of semantic shifts in the localization of English video
game titles into Chinese
Peishu WANG (online)
Exploring the efficacy of ChatGPT in game localization:
An empirical study from player preferences
Influential Literary Translators in Context (Room 14-216)
Jiaxing HU (online)
Motivations and strategies for S. I. Hsiung’s
self-translation of The Bridge of Heaven
Xingzhi WAN
What brought about the critique shift on Lin Shu's translation:
A reflection on evolving societal expectations of translation1

11–11:30

11:30–12:00

12–12:30

12:30–13.30
13:30–14:00

14:00–14:30
14:30–15:00

13:30–14:00

14:00–14:30
14:30–15:00

13:30–14:00
14:00–14:30

13:30–14:00
14:00–14:30

14:30–15:00

Simultaneous Interpreting (Room 14-217)
Zheng HAN
The assessment of professional interpreters’ accuracy and strategies in English-toChinese on-site simultaneous interpretation
Wenjian LI
Chunking as language processing in interpreting:A corpus-based investigation of chunking patterns
Han XU
Syntactic simplification in interpreted English:
Dependency distance and direction measures
Lunch (Level 6 Terrace Room)Multilingualism in Pachinko & beyond (14-115)
Gritiya RATTANAKANTADILOK (online)
Em-on POLSIRI (online)
Translating Pachinko into Thai:
Representations of cultures and the translator's agency
Eun-Kyoung CHOI
Actor-network in the retranslation process of Pachinko in Korea
Ji-Hae KANG
Translating multilingualism in the streaming era
Translation: History, Mode (14-116)
Judy WAKABAYASHI
A border studies perspective on interpreting/translation zones
in early modern Japan
Irina ĆOŠKOVIĆ (online)
The nexus between translation conventions and Japanese writing styles
Hiroko COCKERILL
Revisiting Futabatei’s literary translations from Russian:His treatment of third-person pronouns
Fansubs: Changing Roles (14-132)
Daniel E. JOSEPHY-HERNÁNDEZ (online)
A brief historical and geographical overview of fansubbing
Zhourong SHEN (online)
The public perception of Chinese fansubbers
in an English as a Lingua Franca world
War & Ideology (14-216)
Martin WARD
‘Rebuilding the truth’ and the translation of the Kempeitai documents
Yifei LIU
Translation as a vehicle of imaging China:
Eileen Chang’s self-translation 'Stale Mates' as a case in point
Minqiu LU (online)'Hard Translation' and the imagination of proletarian literature:
A study of Lu Xun’s translation of Coke, People, Refractory Bricks2

13:30–14:00

14:00–14:30

14:30–15:00

Publishing (14-217)
Liping BAI
The translator’s collaboration with the writer and the publisher:
A case study on Nicky Harman’s translation of Jia Pingwa’s novel Happy Dreams
Long LI
A multimodal social-semiotic approach to the study of translated book covers:
A case study of highly successful English works by Chinese émigré writers
Asli Idil KAYNAR
Selecting Japanese women authors for translation:
Challenges and insights in the Turkish publishing landscape

15:00–15:30

Afternoon Tea (Level 2 Foyer)

15:30–16:30

Keynote: Prof Clint BRACKNELL
Bruce Lee, Shakespeare, and an endangered Aboriginal language (Room 14-212)

16:30–17:00

17:00–17:30

16:30–17:00
17:00–17:30

16:30–17:00

17:00–17:30

16:30–17:00

17:00–17:30

Narrating China: Museum & Theatre Translation (14-115)
Paolo MAGAGNIN (online)
Seeing with your eyes… and ears:
Museum audio description for the Chinese cultural heritage
Yidan HU (online)
A cultural broker in a postcolonial context:
On S. I. Hsiung’s cross-cultural theatrical narratives in Lady Precious Stream'Senility' & 'Untranslatability' (14-116)
Tomoko AOYAMA
Old age and translation in Tsurumi Shunsuke’s ‘senility’ books
Laura MARSHALL‘It seems to me’:The untranslatable softening of opinion in Kōda Aya’s Hina (1955)
Fansubs & Netflix Subtitles (14-132)
Yun-Fang LO (online)
Multimedia localization:
The Taiwanese production Wave Makers makes waves in global markets
Ying ZHANG (online)
Boundary dis/continuity in fansubbing and professional subtitling of Chinese TV
costume dramas (CTCD): Viki vs. Netflix
Medicine & Food (14-216)
Yuehui HOU
Pruning translation of logical and accidental polysemy in Chinese medicine
terminology
Jia ZHANG & Eve Jingwen CHEN
Australian English speakers’ reception on food translation in a Chinese culinary
documentary3

Korean War (14-217)
17:00–17:30

Suseong PARK (online)
Rewriting the ‘dirty times’ in the Korean peninsula: Cultural negotiation intranslating division fiction in Korea

Day 2: Thursday 27 June
9.30–10:00

10:00–10:30

10:30–11:00

9.30–10:00

10:00–10:30

10:30–11:00

9.30–10:00

10:00–10:30
10:30–11:00

9.30–10:00

10:00–10:30

Influential Cultural Texts (14-115)
Chiyuan ZHUANG
A dialogue between Sino-Western legal traditions: A case study of Yan Fu’s
translation of “Natural Law” in Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Laws
Yuhan QI
The concept of heaven in Yan Fu's translation of Thomas Huxley's
Evolution and Ethics
Feng CUI
Politics and translation norms in China: The selection criteria of Shijie Wenxue(World Literature) from the Late Cultural Revolution to the Early 1980s
Children's Literature & Fairy Tales (14-116)
Sharon LAI
Common childhoods:
Children's magazines in 1950s Taiwan and their Japanese sources
Irina HOLCA (online)
Ideology for children:
Translating Japanese and Chinese fairy tales in Communist Romania
Lucy FRASER
A hood is not a hat: Translating fairy tale retellings
Untranslated, Untranslatable (14-132)
Tao HUANG
Untranslated, unpublished, and unsolicited:
The (trans)national production fields of contemporary Chinese science fiction
Hanbin LI
Subtitling dialect humour from Chinese to English: A reception study
Tsui-Ling HUANG
Lost in translation: Balancing authenticity and accessibility in Potehi
Cold War Ideology & Commercial Translation (14-216)
Miseon YOON (online)
Selective translation and ideological tensions:
Kim Suyŏng's adaptation of The Anthill by Suzanne Lavin
Daniel GALLEGO-HERNÁNDEZ
Mapping Chinese commercial translation research: A bibliometric analysis

11– 11.30

Morning Tea (Level 2 Foyer)

11:30–12:30

Keynote: Dr Meredith McKINNEY
The changing role of literary translation: Some perspectives (Room 14-212)4

12:30–13:30
13:30–14:00

14:00–14:30

13:30–14:00

14:00–14:30
14:30–15:00

13:30–14:00
14:00–14:30

14:30–15:00

13:30–14:00
14:00–14:30

14:30–15:00

13:30–14:00

14:00–14:30

15:00–15:30

Lunch (Level 6 Terrace Room)Children's & Genre Literature (14-115)
Xuemei CHEN
The role of spatial changes to paratext in literary translation reception:
Eleven Chinese editions of Charlotte’s Web
Xuejiao HU (online)
Translating adventure: Adventure fiction in Late Qing China
Poetry (14-116)
Hanjin YAN
Translated modernity of romanticism:
Guo Moruo, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and May Fourth Chinese New Poetry
Barbara HARTLEY
Translation and the memories of the war refugee child
Rina KIKUCHI
How poetry ‘evolves’ through translations:
Sagawa Chika (1911-1936) and the art of poetry translation
AI (14-132)
Ying-Ting CHUANG (online)
Multimodal translation in the age of artificial intelligence
Wayne Wen-chun LIANG (online)
Action research in a hybrid translation classroom:
Integrating human trainee translators and ChatGPT
Heather GLASSRevision - the ‘truly invisible’ step in the translation process
News (14-216)
Binyu YANG
Investigating interpreter ideology through explicitation
Kevin HENRY
China across borders:
How Chinese online news is negotiated in French through translation
Rui WANG (online)
How a Chinese social media platform recontextualises Russian strategic
narratives: A case study in news translation
Training (14-217)
Chuan YU & Eugene Alexander BIRMAN
Developing a community of practice through collaborative translation:
Minority languages in translation technology teaching in Hong Kong
Chia-chien CHANG & Michelle WU
Exploring the impact of interpreting education on soft skills:
A case study of a Chinese/English T&I program in Taiwan
Afternoon Tea (Level 2 Foyer)

515:30–16:00

16:00–16:30

15:30–16:00

16:00–16:30

15:30–16:00

16:00–16:30

15:30–16:00
16:00–16:30

15:30–16:00

16:00–16:30

Translating Emotion, Rewriting Translation (14-115)
Patrick Chenglong ZHOU
Post-translation effects of Disney's Mulan (1998) on queer viewers:
A qualitative approach
Martina CODELUPPI (online)
Translated emotions:
Covid-19, affect, and narratology in Chen Qiufan’s Contactless Love
Japanese & Australian Literature (14-116)
Sonia BROAD
Scholar translators: Cultural advocacy and side of desk work in the translation ofAustralian literature in Japan
Akiko UCHIYAMA
Writing as translation: Exploring translational space in Sayonara, orenji
Fan Translation in China (14-132)
Qi WANG (online)
BL webtoons in China:
Translational fandoms, Chinese nationalism, and the Korean Wave
Jun YANG (online)
Charting the evolving landscape of fan translation in China
Diplomacy (14-216)
Jiaqi LI
Rewriting for reform: Zhang Deyi’s pseudo-translation in His Diplomatic Journal
Mikako NAGANUMA
Two interpreters in nineteenth-century Japan:
What can TIS find out about what historiography has been overlooking?
Translation Strategies & Training (14-217)
Liyuan LIU (online)
Explorations of translation strategies for textless back translation:
A case study of two Chinese versions of Spring Moon
Martin AZCARATE-MUEZ (online)
Understanding ‘Yasashii Nihongo’ through the intralingual translation of
traditional Japanese literary forms: Overview and insights into translator training

18:00-21:00

Conference Dinner

Day 3: Friday 28 June
9.30–10:00

10:00–10:30

Taiwanese Aboriginal Literature (14-115)
Shuhwa Shirley WUTranslating Taiwanese literature and Taiwanese Aboriginal literature:
Reflections on my translation projects
Richard Rong-bin CHEN (online)
Retranslating "Puppet Savages": Kalee, Kale and Karei

610:30–11:00

9.30–10:00

10:00–10:30
10:30–11:00

9.30–10:00
10:00–10:30

10:30–11:00

9.30–10:00

10:00–10:30

10:30–11:00

C J. ANDERSON-WU
On translating Bunun writer Salizan Takisvilainan's poetry:
Strategies and challenges
Authors, Playwrights & Translators: Contexts & Effects (14-116)
Yunrou LIU
Adapting Chinese knowledge into the Japanese context:
Satō Haruo’s compilation and translation of Chinese short stories
Matteo FABBRETTI (online)
Japanese visual narrative in translation
Yifei KONG
From the sea to the battlefield:
Performing Eugene O’Neill in China’s wartime capital
Fansubs & Subtitlers: Practices & Perceptions (14-132)
Tom KABARA
The tradition of film subtitler prestige in Japan in the age of streaming
Yi ZHU
Translation as an attempt to fill the "knowledge gap" within fan community:
Fan translation in Danmei fandom
Chester CHENG“I don’t understand these two sentences… Please forgive me.”– Amateur translators’ notes in audiovisual translation
Community T&I (14-217)
Maho FUKUNO
Human bonds and trust in community translators:
Case studies of English–Japanese translation
Bei HU & Xiaofang YAOInvestigating trust in video remote interpreting within the Australian healthcare
context
Mehwish NISAR
Exploring Barriers and Facilitators for Translators and Interpreters in Audiology
Clinics: A Mixed-Method Investigation

11– 11.30

Morning Tea (Level 2 Foyer)

11:30–12:30

Keynote: Dr Adolfo GENTILE
Human rights and interpreting: Intersections (Room 14-212)

12:30–13:30

Lunch (Level 6 Terrace Room)

13:30–14:00

14:00–14:30

Sinology (14-115)
Lingjie JI (online)
The Chinese novel or/as a source of knowledge:“Scraps from Chinese Mythology” in The China Review (1872–1901)
Chufeng WANG (online)
Redefining margins in Sinology:
The underacknowledged contributions of Peter Perring Thoms

7

14:30–15:00

13:30–14:00

14:00–14:30

14:30–15:00

13:30–14:00

14:00–14:30
14:30–15:00

13:30–14:00

14:00–14:30

14:30–15:00

Hongying LI (online)
Divergence and conflict:
Interpreting the I Ching in Spain through the paratexts in translation
Murakami Haruki (14-116)
Keisuke HAYASHI
Murakami Haruki's rewriting for the untranslatable "I":On Machi to sono futashinaka kabe (The City and Its Uncertain Walls)
Miki SATO
Translation, adaptation and ‘reimported’ texts:
BDs and illustrated books of Haruki Murakami’s works
Hiroko YAMAKIDO
A case study in translating the untranslatable:
Japanese writing systems in Chinese and Korean translation
Technology & Traditional Arts (14-132)
Manon HAYETTEWhen AI and CAT tools become negotiators:
How can Chinese Chengyu be translated into French?
Kelly CHAN
Possibility of ChatGPT in Cantonese opera translation: Translator training
Ke HU
The machine-translated poeticness:
How do readers receive poems translated with and without machine translation?
Race, Ethnicity, Identity (14-216)
Caiping YAN (online)
Negotiating the biological borders:
Pan Guangdan’s translation of Huntington’s The Character of Race (1928)
Daphne CHANG
Translating modernity: The influence of Chinese immigrant translators
on Taiwan’s literary scene post-1945
Raj Lakhi SEN
Who is translating whom?
On omissions of the race narratives from Japanese texts into English

15:00–15:30

Afternoon Tea (Level 2 Foyer)

15:30–16:30

Panel Discussion
Negotiating the Borders, Challenges and Opportunities of Translation in East Asia
(Room 14-212)
Prof Nana Sato-Rossberg, Dr Gloria Lee, Prof Ji-Hae Kang and Dr Seryun Lee

16:30–16:45

Conclusion (Room 14-212)8

Panel Presentation: Taiwanese Aboriginal Literature
On translating Bunun writer Salizan Takisvilainan's poetry: Strategies and challenges
C J. ANDERSON-WU
Taiwan Indigenous PEN
Bunun writer Salizan Takisvilainan has published two collections of poetry and is currently
working on a third. Unlike most of the poets who focus on one theme at a time, Salizan isable to integrate several themes in one poem: personal history, family, knowledge of themountains within traditional Bunun territory, the loss tribal languages, ecological crisis
caused by irresponsible backpackers, colonialist history, forced evacuation, and ongoing
injustices to indigenous peoples that have never be rectiﬁed. The richness and complexity incultural connotation in Salizan's poetry present an extremely challenging task for translators,
given that target audiences, including editors and readers, usually lack knowledge of
Taiwan's indigenous cultures. This translator has experimented with several strategies, not
all of which are acceptable to editors or readers. This presentation will share some of mytranslations of Salizan's poems, including: ‘Psychological Warfare,’ ‘A Wind Walker,’ ‘A Walk in
the Clouds,’ ‘Backpacking with Indigenous Guides,’ ‘In a Patakan of a Mountain Porter,’‘Bashful Tahun Mountain,’ ‘Angel's Tear,’ and ‘Twin Peaks.’
Bio
C J. Anderson-Wu (吳介禎) is a Taiwanese writer and translator. She has published twocollections about Taiwan's military dictatorship: Impossible to Swallow and The Surveillance.
Currently she is working on her third book Endangered Youth—to Hong Kong. Her shortstories have been shortlisted for a number of international literary awards, including the Art
of Unity Creative Award by the International Human Rights Art Festival. She also won the
Strands Literature International Flash Fiction Competition, and the Invisible City Blurred
Genre Literature Competition.

9

Old age and translation in Tsurumi Shunsuke’s ‘senility’ books
Tomoko AOYAMA
University of Queensland
In February 1992, Tsurumi Shunsuke (1922–2015) started to keep a commonplace book (abook into which notable extracts from other works are copied for personal use – Oxford
Dictionary), with the intention of assessing the degree of what he called, with a certain
touch of humour and pathos, mōroku (senility). By 2010, he had compiled twelve of thesehand-written books, the first of which was published as Mōrokuchō (literally, Senility
Notebook, 2010). Tsurumi also included the term mōroku in the title of his poetry collection,
Mōroku no haru (The Senile Spring, 2003). This presentation focuses on the significance oftranslation in these two published books. Many of the entries are translated texts, ranging
from a Persian proverb, an Omaha ritual verse and the Old Testament to the poems ofWilliam Wordsworth, Wilfred Owen, Robert Graves, Ezra Pound, Robinson Jeffers and E.E.
Cummings. The prominence of World War I poets may be related to Tsurumi’s own
experience of WWII, his pacifist conviction and his works of intellectual history. Translation
plays a role in remembering what should never be forgotten. While the declared purpose of
keeping the Notebook was to observe the writer’s own ageing process, as these private
notes are published they also function as communication to the reader, the editor and the
publisher. Some of the translations in the Notebook were added by Tsurumi at the requestof the editor in order to assist the reader. The quotations and translations provide muchwider and deeper assistance than simple linguistic aids: they help our understanding of
Tsurumi’s thoughts on ageing, memory, death and war—at personal, socio-historical,
philosophical and artistic levels. In a sense, translations in these books give insights into
Tsurumi’s ‘Late Style’ as well as providing hints for us to develop our own ‘translation
therapy’.
BioTomoko Aoyama taught Japanese language and literature at the University of Queensland
until her retirement in 2020. She is currently an Honorary Associate Professor at the same
university. Her research focuses on representations of food, cooking and eating inmodern/contemporary Japanese literature and manga; parody and intertexutality; gender,
humour and ageing. She is the author of Reading Food in Modern Japanese Literature(University of Hawaii Press, 2008) and a number of journal articles and book chapters. She
has edited two books: Girl Reading Girl in Japan (with Barbara Hartley, Routledge, 2010) andConﬁgurations of Family in Contemporary Japan (with Laura Dales and Romit Dasgupta,
Routledge,2015) and several journal special issues, most recently, on ‘Youth and Democracy
in Post-war Japanese Culture’, Japanese Studies, 42(3), 2022. She has also published threebook-length translations: Tsurumi Shunsuke’s Ame no Uzume den, co-translated with Penny
Bailey as The Stripper Goddess of Japan: The Life and Afterlives of Ame no Uzume (Trans
Paciﬁc Press, 2023) and two novels by Kanai Mieko: Indian Summer (with Barbara Hartley,
Cornell East Asia Series, 2012) and Oh, Tama!: A Mejiro Novel (with Paul McCarthy,
Kurodahan Press, 2014, rev. Stone Bridge Press, 2019).

10

Understanding ‘Yasashii Nihongo’ through the intralingual translation of traditional Japanese
literary forms: Overview and insights into translator training
Martin AZCARATE-MUEZ
University of Salamanca (Spain)
Translations into modern Japanese of traditional Japanese literary forms such as‘monogatari’ prose narrative or ‘zuihitsu’ essays are called ‘gendaigoyaku’ (‘modernlanguage translation’.) Following Jakobson, these can be considered intralingual translations,because their main goal is to make accessible to an already-native readership by means ofother more up-to-date signs of the same language a text written in an older variety ofJapanese In a similar fashion, in the last decades many authors (Iori, Iwata, Noda, etc.) haveworked on ‘yasashii nihongo’ as a variety of modern Japanese intentionally modiﬁed for anarray of purposes: for example, to suit foreigner Japanese-proﬁciency levels, to foster
multiculturality by enabling local communication with immigrants and their descendants or
to make Japanese-language acquisition easier for hard-of-hearing or deaf children. These
into-modern-Japanese rewritings of the language can also be deemed instances of
intralingual translation (Jakobson) on the grounds that they restructure linguistic material
within the unchanged framework of Japanese morphosyntax and vocabulary. Therefore,
pinpointing common traits and dissimilar strategies between ‘gendaigoyaku’ and ‘yasashii
nihongo’ rewritings can result in new, promising research avenues. In this study, an overview
of the subject matter is presented, while valuable insights into Japanese translator training
are provided. Finally, following Baker, an analysis of the narratives motivating ‘gendaigoyaku’and ‘yasashii nihongo’ rewritings is carried out, revealing a hidden binary between so-called
Japanese natives and ‘others,’ even within the attempt of some authors (Iori) to deconstructwhat is considered a ‘normal’ native speaker.
Bio
Martin Azcarate-Muez (he/him) is a ﬁnal-year student majoring in Japanese and English
Translation Studies at the University of Salamanca, Spain. He also received training inJapanese Linguistics and Japanese Culture at the University of Tsukuba, Japan, where he wasa member of the Rakugo Research Society. He is currently researching Japanese Translation
Studies with a particular focus on ‘yasashii nihongo,’ or easy Japanese, as a form of
intralingual translation. His interests range from Japanese-Spanish contrastive grammar tolexicography and philosophy, particularly deconstruction and metamodern studies.

11

The translator’s collaboration with the writer and the publisher:
A case study on Nicky Harman’s translation of Jia Pingwa’s novel, Happy Dreams
Liping BAI
Lingnan University, Hong Kong
This paper examines the translator’s collaboration with the writer and the publisher througha case-study of the translation of Jia Pingwa’s 賈平凹 novel Happy Dreams (高興) by Nicky
Harman, a renowned British translator of contemporary Chinese literature. Jia Pingwa is oneof the most prominent contemporary Chinese writers whose novel, Happy Dreams, depicts
the lives of migrant workers in Xi’an with the use of many expressions in Shaanxi dialect.
These expressions pose a great challenge for translation, as they are often obscure or
unfamiliar even to some native Chinese speakers. This paper explores how Nicky Harman
collaborated with Jia Pingwa during the translation process and how she resolved the
linguistic and cultural diﬃculties presented by the dialect. The paper also investigates the
choice of using American English in the translation, despite Nicky Harman being a Britishtranslator. This decision was inﬂuenced by the American publisher, AmazonCrossing, which
aimed to reach a wide global audience. With detailed analysis of ﬁrst-hand researchmaterials, such as interviews and correspondences, the paper provides insights into thephenomenon of collaborative translation, a topic which has gained increasing attention fromscholars in the ﬁeld of translation studies.
Bio
Bai Liping is an Associate Professor at the Department of Translation at Lingnan University.
He is the author of the book entitled Mapping the Translator: A Study of Liang Shiqiu(Routledge, 2022). His academic articles appear in international journals including AcrossLanguages and Cultures, Archiv Orientalni, Babel, Neohelicon, Perspectives, Humanitas, Tsing
Hua Journal of Chinese Studies, The Translator, and Translation Quarterly. He is alsointerested in practical translation and has published several translations between Chineseand English.

12

Scholar translators: Cultural advocacy and side-of-desk work in the translation of Australian
literature in Japan
Sonia BROAD
University of Queensland
Since the early 1940s, more than 1,300 works of Australian literature have been translated
into Japanese. While the majority are purely commercial publications, a small number fromthe 1980s onwards have been initiated through cultural diplomacy projects supported by theAustralia-Japan Foundation (AJF). Central to these AJF projects is the work of Australian
literary scholars in Japan who have actively participated in the selection, translation andpromotion of award winning Australian literary ﬁction for Japanese readers. In this context, I
argue that scholar translators have taken on roles as cultural advocates while navigating
side-of-desk work as tenured academics. This paper aims to shine a light on the work ofthese scholar translators of Australian literature in Japan by exploring the narrative behind
their translations through their own voices. The paper’s focus is a case study of the
Masterpieces of Australian Contemporary Literature Series (オーストラリア現代文学傑作選), published with AJF funding by Gendaikikakushitsu Publishers between 2012 and 2023.
Seven of the eight English to Japanese translators involved in the Masterpieces Series were
academics working in Australian literary studies in Japan who networked through theAustralia and New Zealand Literary Society of Japan. Using a mixed methods approach
incorporating interview data and paratextual materials from the Masterpieces Series, I
investigate the motivations and socio-cultural inﬂuences that aﬀected the work of thesescholar translators. In turn, I question the role of cultural advocacy in the translation ofAustralian literature in the Japanese publishing space.
Bio
Sonia Broad is a PhD candidate and casual academic in the School of Languages and Culturesat the University of Queensland. Her research explores the dynamics of contemporary
Australian literature in Japan from the perspective of translation studies and Australianstudies. She is a member of the Australian Studies Research Node and a graduate of the
Master of Arts in Japanese Interpreting and Translation program at the University of
Queensland. Her research interests cover Australian literature, ﬁlm and media in Japanesetranslation and cultural and functional theories in translation studies.

13

Possibility of ChatGPT in Cantonese opera translation: Translator training
Kelly CHAN
Hong Kong Metropolitan University
In recent years, ChatGPT has been a hot topic that has trained thoroughly on a diverse rangeof data, even on literary texts. The idea that machines could only translate generic texts has
transcended the reality. Given that Cantonese opera scripts usually indicate delicate
expressions, poetic aura and cultural allusions related to traditional Chinese history and folk
ethos, it will be inspiring to investigate the possibility for ChatGPT to translate Cantonese
opera scripts into English. Attention will be paid especially to challenges on the linguistic
level and cultural context, bilingual proficiency, bicultural familiarity and the sensitivity thatshould normally be required when cultural nuances are to be transferred successfully totarget receptors. Another challenge lies in the software’s ability to differentiate the recreation strategy against that of a literal translation. The former strategy must take into
account elements such as rhetoric, rhyme, metre and poetic structures. In this case, toaddress how human translators of Cantonese opera scripts should be trained when facing
the ChatGPT contest is a major issue. Through trial and error, human translators ofCantonese opera scripts need to grasp the idea of embracing the assistance provided bytranslation software while also learning how to refrain from being affected by any ways inwhich ChatGPT prevailingly dominates the transferred target text. From the outset, there
could actually be a virtual collaboration between ChatGPT and human translators when athird entity of performance experts should also be involved. This collaboration could
capture artistic integrity, professional knowledge, and cultural nuances. Through thistraining process a more refined interpretation and cohesive experience of transferring the
texts will arguably result, and ‘post-translation’ tasks (appreciation of cultural allusions andsubtexts after translation) could also be created for target receptors.
Bio
Dr Kelly Kar Yue CHAN completed her undergraduate degree and her master’s degree in thedisciplines of both Translation and Interpretation at the City University of Hong Kong. She
then ﬁnished her PhD in Classical Chinese Literature at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland,
UK. She is currently an Associate Professor in language and translation at Hong Kong
Metropolitan University, teaching undergraduate and postgraduate courses on culture andtranslation, and literary translation. She also supervises translation and research projects forundergraduate and postgraduate (Master of Arts and PhD) students. Her research interests
include literary translation, translation of women’s poetry from pre-modern China, and thetranslation of Cantonese opera.

14

Exploring the impact of interpreting education on soft skills:
A case study of a Chinese/English T&I program in Taiwan
Chia-chien CHANG
Michelle WU
National Taiwan University
The incorporation of translation and interpreting education into language programs has
gained significant traction in East Asia. In addition to traditional graduate andundergraduate programs designed for students aspiring to pursue careers in translation andinterpretating, one innovative program extends translation and interpreting education to
students from diverse academic backgrounds. This distinct approach not only widens thehorizons of interpreting education but also appeals to students with a curiosity abouttranslation and interpretation, regardless of their intentions to pursue professionaltranslation or interpretation careers. This study examines a well-established Chinese/English
translation and interpreting program in Taiwan, operational for over a decade, which offers
courses to students from various academic disciplines as an adjunct to their primary majors.
The focus of this study is to explore the effects of an interpreting course on students.
Through interviews with program graduates, encompassing those who have pursued careers
in professional translation and interpretating as well as those who have chosen different
professional paths, the research uncovers a wide range of benefits stemming frominterpreting training. These advantages encompass enhancements in interculturalcommunication, public speaking skills, heightened capacity for empathy toward speakers
with differing viewpoints, improved text comprehension abilities, increased receptiveness to
new knowledge, and the ability to rapidly grasp new concepts. These findings are analysedusing mediation scales developed in the CEFR companion volume, published in 2020, which
also highlights the distinctions between a conventional language class and an interpretingclass in terms of language proficiency enhancement.
Bios
Chia-chien Chang is a Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures at
National Taiwan University. She received her MA in Chinese/English Translation andInterpretation from the Monterey Institute of International Studies and her PhD in Foreign
Language Education from the University of Texas at Austin. Her major research interests
include theoretical and pedagogical aspects of interpreting and translation, second language
acquisition, and teaching English as a foreign language.
Michelle Min-chia Wu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Foreign Languages andLiteratures at National Taiwan University. She received her MA in Translation andInterpretation Studies from Fu Jen Catholic University in 1992 and has been teachingconference interpreting and working as a freelance interpreter ever since. Her major
research interests include the pedagogical aspects of conference interpreting and literarytranslation. She is also a member of AIIC.

15

Translating modernity:
The inﬂuence of Chinese immigrant translators on Taiwan’s literary scene post-1945
Daphne CHANG
Soochow University
In the study of Taiwan's literary transformation post-World War II, signiﬁcant emphasis has
been placed on the inﬂux of modernist literature. However, the integral role of translators inthis cultural exchange still needs to be explored. Bridging this research gap, this paper
examines how the 170 translation articles published in 25 prominent Taiwanese magazines
between 1948 and 1959 facilitated the reception of modernist literature. The researchquestion probes the strategies adopted by these translators and how their personal
narratives and socio-political contexts inﬂuenced their translation choices and techniques.
Translators like Xia Yao, He Xin, Zhang Xin-yi, Yu Guang-zhong, and Zhang Yihuai became
conduits for Western modernist literature, using their backgrounds of displacement frommainland China to navigate the complex linguistic, cultural, and political landscapes of
Taiwan. They introduced seminal works through a blend of innovative strategies that
included Xia Yao's synthesis approach, He Xin's reverse and augmentative approaches, Zhang
Xin-yi's domestication, Yu Guang-zhong's faithful eloquence and Zhang Yihuai's nuanced
cultural interpretation. The study underlines the translators' strategic role within the larger
framework of Taiwan's literary reception and identity formation. These practitioners did not
merely transfer text but served as cultural intermediaries, enhancing the Taiwanesereadership's engagement with global literary movements. Their collective eﬀorts, reﬂectedin the publication of 170 translations in 25 magazines, underscore the dynamic interplay oftranslation, soft power, and literature's role in Taiwan's evolving cultural narrative. The
investigation foregrounds the translators as crucial agents in the localization of modernism
and the formation of a modern Taiwanese literary identity.
Bio
Dr. Daphne Qi-rong Chang is a distinguished scholar and practitioner in the ﬁeld oftranslation, with an emphasis on the historical journey of translation, the Chinese renditionof Anglo-American literature, translator studies, and educational practices in translation. An
accomplished translator, Dr. Chang has brought 27 books to Chinese audiences, notably
Poems of Mourning, acclaimed by the Ministry of Culture and lauded in 2019 by the Taipei
Public Library as an essential read. In recent years, her expertise has been sought by theTang Prize Foundation, the National Palace Museum, and other prestigious organizations.
With translations across a spectrum encompassing law, politics, science and the arts, Dr.
Chang's academic contributions include 13 conference papers and 4 journal articles, with anotable publication in Translation History of Taiwan: Colonization, Nation, and Identity.
Holding a Ph.D. in Translation Studies from National Taiwan Normal University and a BA
in Foreign Languages and Literatures from National Taiwan University, Dr. Chang continues tobe an inﬂuential voice in translation studies, marrying theory with practice to advance theunderstanding and appreciation of translation's role in global discourse.

16Panel Presentation: Taiwanese Aboriginal Literature
Retranslating ‘Puppet Savages’: Kalee, Kale and Karei
Richard Rong-bin CHEN
National Taiwan University
This paper aims at revisiting how the name of an Indigenous population in Southern
Formosa was translated and retranslated by a series of Anglo-American and Japaneseobservers. In the 1860s and 70s, the group was recorded by Robert Swinhoe and Chrles Le
Gendre as ‘Kalees’ and ‘Kalis’ respectively, although, later on, as reported by William
Pickering and Joseph Beal Steere, the names were ‘Ka-le-hoan’ and ‘Kale-whan.’ Thesevarious names actually refer to the Indigenous peoples known as Kueilei fan 傀儡番 in
Mandarin Chinese, which means ‘Puppet Savages.’ I will explore the written accounts about‘Puppet Savages’ by the four authors mentioned above and the ways in which these writers
represented ‘Puppet Savages.’ Japanese anthropologist Inō Kanori’s detailed accounts of‘Puppet Savages’ will also be taken into consideration. ‘Puppet Savages’ were recorded by
Inō as ‘Karei,’ but the oﬃcial name he used to refer to this Indigenous population was
Tsarisien, a term with possible meanings diﬀerent from ‘Puppet Savages.’ As a study oftranslation history, this paper will also focus on how these terms were translated from the
1960s to the 2020s. The case of Kueilei hua 傀儡花 (2016) and Puppet Flower (2023), thenovel written by Chen Yao-chang and its English translation, will be included in mydiscussion.
Bio
Richard Rong-bin Chen is an associate professor of the Graduate Program in Translation andInterpretation, National Taiwan University. Chen received a PhD in Comparative Literaturefrom Fu Jen Catholic University. His research interests include the literary translation of both
Anglo-American and Sinophone Literatures, translation history, ethics of translation andworld literature. His academic works have been published in journals such as Chung-Wai
Literary Quarterly, The Wenshan Review of Literature and Culture and Kritika Kultura. He also
has a chapter on Taiwanese Indigenous literature from the perspective of world literatureand translation studies in The Routledge Handbook of East Asian Translation (forthcoming).
Funded by a two-year research project titled ‘On the (Un) Translatability of TaiwaneseAboriginal Literature: Translation History, Translation Ethics, and World Literature,’ Chen has
published several articles about Taiwan’s Indigenous writers, such as Walis Nokan andSyaman Rapongan.

17

The role of spatial changes to paratext in literary translation reception:
Eleven Chinese editions of Charlotte’s Web
Xuemei CHEN
Beijing Normal University-Hong Kong Baptist University United International College
While paratext is designed to mediate between texts and readers, few studies have analysed
the paratextual evolution of the same translation and its function in relation to a work’s
reception. This article examines how spatial changes to paratexts in eleven editions ofRongrong Ren’s Chinese version of Charlotte’s Web have a bearing on the translation’s
reception. A qualitative analysis of reader comments on social media shows that: (1) an
allographic preface adapted from a book review arouses some readers’ interest but acts as aspoiler for others; and (2) changing the translator’s preface to a postscript reduces the risk ofgiving the plot away in advance. In addition to demonstrating the role of paratexts in relation
to translation reception, the article argues that, on a methodological level, researchers
should note the paratextual diﬀerences between editions when conducting reception
studies.
Bio
Xuemei Chen is an Assistant Professor in the Programme of Applied Translation Studies at
Beijing Normal University-Hong Kong Baptist University United International College. She
obtained her doctoral degree from Lingnan University, Hong Kong. Her main researchinterests include translation in the digital age, translation of children’s literature, genderstudies, and reception studies. Her articles have appeared in several SSCI/A&HCI-indexed
journals such as Target, Translation Studies, Perspectives, Babel, and Children's Literature in
Education.

18

‘I don’t understand these two sentences… Please forgive me.’– Amateur translators’ notes in audiovisual translation
Chester CHENG
The Chinese University of Hong Kong
This abstract delves into the intriguing topic of translators’ notes in the ﬁeld of audiovisualtranslation (AVT), with a particular emphasis on the practices of amateur translators within
Chinese fansub groups. These notes, often overlooked, serve as an intriguing reﬂection of
the translators’ decision-making process, professional growth, and their dialogue with theaudience. At times, translators may encounter phrases, cultural references, or speciﬁc
idioms that pose signiﬁcant challenges to the translation process. In these instances, thetranslators’ notes serve as a confession of the diﬃculties faced and a request for assistanceor understanding from the audience. They highlight the complexity of translation and theoccasional impossibility of ﬁnding a perfect match in the target language. Moreover,translators’ notes oﬀer a platform for translators to explain their choices, providing insights
into their methodologies and rationales. These notes can shed light on the intricate balancetranslators must strike between translation methods, clarifying how they navigate thenuanced landscapes of language, culture, and context. Finally, translators’ notes allow
amateur translators to establish a connection with their audience. They oﬀer a space fortranslators to share their thoughts and ideas, fostering a sense of community and mutual
understanding within the fansubbing sphere. These notes can also serve as an informal
teaching tool, educating the audience about linguistic and cultural diﬀerences. Overall, this
discussion underscores the multifaceted role of translators’ notes in the temporal- andspatial-restricted AVT environment, revealing how they can act as a vehicle for problemsolving, reﬂection, explanation and communication. Through this lens, we can better
appreciate the complexities and challenges of translation, as well as the uniquecontributions of amateur translators in the fansub community.
Bio
Dr. Chester Cheng is a lecturer at the Department of Translation, The Chinese University ofHong Kong (CUHK). With Master’s degrees in Translation and Interpreting (UQ, Australia)
and Information Technology (QUT, Australia), Dr. Cheng brings a unique blend of technicalacumen and linguistic expertise to his work. His research interests span a range of topics
within the intersection of language, technology, and management, including audiovisualtranslation, IT translation, professional development, translation workﬂow andstandardization. He is also the translator of several books on popular science, psychology,
and information technology.

19

Actor-network in the retranslation process of Pachinko in Korea
Eun-Kyoung CHOI
Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
This research aims to describe actor-networks in the retranslation process of KoreanAmerican author Min Jin Lee’s English novel Pachinko for the Korean publishing market.
Pachinko has attracted considerable attention after the Apple TV+ series’ adaptation which
boosted sales and pushed the translation to the top of the bestseller lists. However, sales of
the translated book were discontinued over a rights dispute. This followed the new
publishing house, Inﬂuential Inc., releasing a translated version even though the author
wished to edit the ﬁrst translation as the translator’s copyright belongs to the (previous)
publisher in Korea. The research employs Actor Network Theory to investigate how(re)translation actors form practical networks, which evolve and develop in speciﬁc social
circumstances. Speciﬁcally, the study identiﬁes various human and non-human actors andtheir interactions in the production of the Korean retranslations. The investigation throughtranslation ANT revealed that the publishing contract and copyright were important nonhuman actors that launched the retranslation with human actors such as literary agents andpublishers that are often overlooked in Translation Studies. A previous actor-network
constructed for the initial translation also can be a non-human actor in a following projectthat excludes the ﬁrst translator. The ﬁndings of this research have signiﬁcant implications
for the understanding of how actor-networks are built in a complex setting that includes
various actors and copyrights for 2nd use for adaptation. Moreover, greater eﬀorts areneeded to make the complex network and actors’ roles visible in the process of translationand publication.
Bio
Eun-Kyoung Choi is a lecturer who was educated and trained in the ﬁeld of English
Translation at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul, Korea. Her research interests
are mainly in the area of literary translation and the sociology of translation focusing on the
English translation of Korean literature and its dissemination. Her MA thesis concerned thetranslation of culture-speciﬁc references in the Korean novel and she holds a PhD from the
Hankuk University of Foreign Studies with a theses examining Actor-Networks of English
translation of Korean literature.

20

Multimodal translation in the age of artiﬁcial intelligence
Ying-Ting CHUANG
National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology
This paper investigates the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) applied in multimodaltranslation models. In the age of AI, a particular neural network generates digital meanings
for translators, particularly those in East Asia, to experiment with new forms, deal with newmaterials and accommodate new resources in the multimodal text. As a tentative attempt
to consider the strengths and limitations supported by AI in multimodal translation, thispaper examines the differences between new and existing norms, and the evolving concept
and practice of multimodal translation. The paper adopts a social semiotic perspective toinvestigate the representation of various methods of translation in the verbal modes, thedigital interpretation of non-verbal modes and the integration of all modal meanings in
multimodal translations. The intent is to show that the interplay of semiotic modes and theestablishment of new paradigm in multimodal translation may benefit from AI-based
interpretation of the original. This is due to the following norms: (1) semiotic cohesiveness is
significant in multimodal translation; (2) the co-existence of different modes is a key toovercome the restrictions of the medium in multimodal translation; and (3) considerable
leeway exists in multimodal translation because of the multiplicity of modes. The study istheoretically and practically useful in that it outlines underlying concepts of a special kind oftranslation activity and provides useful suggestions for translators.
BioYing-Ting Chuang is an associate professor in the Graduate Institute of Interpreting &Translation at the National Kaohsiung University of Science and Technology, Taiwan. Her
research interest is mainly concerned with multimodal translation and approachingtranslation from a social semiotic perspective. She is currently working on a theoreticalframework to address the impact of AI technology and cultural globalization and to explore
new forms and new environments for translation, in particular audiovisual translation andwebsite translation.

21

Revisiting Futabatei’s literary translations from Russian:His treatment of third-person pronouns
Hiroko COCKERILL
University of Queensland
When, in 1888, Futabatei Shimei published his first translations, ‘Aibiki’ [The Tryst] and‘Meguriai’ [A Chance Encounter], from Turgenev’s Svidanie [The Rendezvous] and Tri
vstrechi [Three Meetings], he opted not to translate third-person pronouns as pronouns.
Both Svidanie and Tri vstrechi are first-person narrative stories, in which a narrator
protagonist witnesses romantic encounters, and in both stories women are cruelly
abandoned by men. In Tri vstrechi, Turgenev employs the female third-person pronoun ona
so frequently when referring to the female protagonist that it would seem to have beendifficult for Futabatei to avoid using the Japanese third-person pronoun kanojo. Futabatei
overcame this difficulty by replacing all third person pronouns with fujin [a lady] or onna [awoman]. Prior to Futabatei’s debut translations, third-person pronouns were hardly everused in Japanese literary translations from European languages. If Futabatei had employedthird-person pronouns in combination with his consistent use of past tense verbs, he would
have been the first to introduce the innovative genbun-itchi narrative style. Surprisingly,
Futabatei did make abundant use of the Japanese male third-person pronoun kare in his
1905 translation ‘Jiu no ukiyo’ [The Hard Life of a Jew], a translation of Gorky’s ‘Kain i Artem’[Kain and Artem]. This is a third person narrative, in which a tramp named Artem forms a
brief friendship with a Jewish pedlar named Kain. Had Futabatei retained his use of verbs
ending in ‘-ta’ to express the past tense, this might have been the very first Japanesetranslation of a third-person narrative to employ both third-person pronouns and past tenseverbs. I shall conduct a thorough examination of Futabatei’s use of the third-person
pronoun kare in ‘Jiu no ukiyo’ and consider how Futabatei’s treatment of third-person
pronouns has influenced other translations into Japanese and contemporary Japanesenovels.
Bio
Hiroko Cockerill is an honorary research fellow at the University of Queensland in Australia.
Her main research ﬁeld is translation studies, and she is a practising translator from Russianand English into Japanese, and from Japanese into English. Her research publications include
Style and Narrative in Translations (St. Jerome, 2006) and Futabatei Shimei no roshiago
hon’yaku [Futabatei Shimei’s Translations from Russian] (Hōsei University Press, 2015). Her
translations have included Watashi [I] (Gunzosha, 2013)—a translation of Alexander
Potemkin’s Russian novel Ya [I], and Four Years in a Red Coat (Wakeﬁeld Press, 2022)—atranslation of Miyakatsu Koike’s historical memoir Yokuryu nikki: Yonen kan no akafuku
seikatsu [Internment Camp Diary: Four Years Life in a Red Coat].

22

Translated emotions: Covid-19, aﬀect, and narratology in Chen Qiufan’s ‘Contactless Love’
Martina CODELUPPI
University of Insubria
The importance of emotion for crafting a literary text is well-known, but what happens tothese emotions once the original text is translated into another language? This article
explores the interplay between emotions and literary translation by focusing oncontemporary Chinese science ﬁction writer Chen Qiufan 陳楸帆’s short story ‘Wu jiechu zhi
lian’ 無接觸之戀 (Contactless Love, 2022) and its English translation. The plot revolves
around the protagonist’s fear and worry about the Covid-19 pandemic, envisioning a futurein which the virus is still present and Artiﬁcial Intelligence helps humanity to deal with it. By
applying the theoretical framework of Aﬀect Studies to narratology, this article will identify
the main strategies adopted by the English translator and analyse their impact on thedescription of emotions in the target text. Indeed, while the inﬂuence of ‘aﬀect’ on literarytexts has been widely explored, the same cannot be said for their translations, especiallywhen these involve a process of translation from Chinese into a Western language. This
study contributes to the understanding of how emotions are represented in literary texts
and their translations, emphasizing the narratological impact of such choices.
Bio
Martina Codeluppi is Assistant Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Insubria. She
holds a PhD in contemporary Chinese literature from Ca’ Foscari University of Venice andSorbonne Nouvelle University – Paris 3. She specializes in contemporary Chinese literaturefrom a comparative perspective and her main publications deal with migrant literature, selftranslation and literary theory. She is the author of the book Fictional Memories:
Contemporary Chinese Literature and Transnationality, published in 2020 by L’Harmattan,
and the translator of ﬁction by contemporary Chinese authors such as Shi Yifeng, Hao
Jingfang, Wei Wei, Yan Ge, and Cao Wenxuan.

23

The nexus between translation conventions and Japanese writing styles
Irina ĆOŠKOVIĆ
Kindai University Technical College
When we discuss translation conventions in general, it is axiomatic that the translation
product is created by means of the target language (TL) in a (written) form that is normallyrecognized as ‘contemporary’ and accessible to the TL reader. In the context of Japaneserealities, however, such a statement is not so unequivocal since, for an extended period, thewritten language in Japan was represented by numerous, sometimes highly similar, and yet
disparate, orthography-bound stylistic forms, collectively known as bungotai (Seko 1968;
Gottlieb 1991). Moreover, the very notion of translation and its associated conventions, as
they are understood today, underwent continuous evolution (Clements 2015; Maruyama &Katō 1998; Kondō & Wakabayashi 2009; Yoshitake 1974) The argument I would like to put
forward is that since the Meiji period (1868–1912)—when the correspondent translation
was gaining momentum—translation conventions in Japan have not only implicitly regulated
the form of the target text (TT) (in terms of its faithfulness regarding the source text [ST]),but also limited the range of writing styles available for interlingual translation. With thegradual establishment of the modern Japanese colloquial writing style (kōgotai) there
appeared an apparent correlation between translation norms and a particular form of theJapanese written language. To substantiate this argument, I will provide examples oftranslations and adaptations of both non-ﬁction and literary foreign works, mainly ofWestern origin, and demonstrate how Japanese renderings progressively conformed to the
new translation paradigm in terms of language. The study also shows that while pre-modern
literary forms have nearly disappeared, some micro-elements of the bungotai style have
seeped into modern writing, occasionally surfacing in translations, particularly in the form of
yakuwarigo (role language) (Kinsui, 2003).
Bio
Irina Ćošković is an Assistant Professor in the Department of General Education at Kindai
University Technical College in Nabari, Japan. Her main research interests include
comparative literature (in particular, translated and native children’s literature in Japan),literary translation, translation theories, and foreign language policies. Since 2020, she has
been conducting comprehensive interdisciplinary research on the literary works of Diana
Wynne Jones, often referred to as the ‘Queen of British Fantasy,’ and the reception of thismaterial within the Japanese context. She completed her dissertation, ‘Moving Howl’s Castle
to Japan: English–Japanese Literary Translation as a Product of Diﬀerent Agents,’ at Kansai
University in March 2023. Currently, her research focuses on the ‘hollowing out’
phenomenon within the niche of Japanese children’s literature during the Heisei period(1989–2019).

24

Politics and translation norms in China: The selection criteria of Shijie Wenxue (World
Literature) from the Late Cultural Revolution to the Early 1980s
Feng CUI
Nanyang Technological University
Shijie Wenxue (World Literature) was founded in 1953 during the context of the East-West
Cold War. It was the only publicly distributed journal on mainland China dedicated totranslating foreign literary works from the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in
1949 to the early 1980s, a period encompassing Chinese reform and opening-up.
Additionally, it served as the oﬃcial publication of the China Writers Association, agovernment organization. This journal is an essential subject of study when examining thehistory of contemporary Chinese translated literature. Inﬂuenced by the Cultural Revolution,
Shijie Wenxue ceased publication from 1966 to 1976. Following a two-year period of internal
circulation starting at the end of the Cultural Revolution in 1977, it was oﬃcially reissued for
public distribution. This article primarily focuses on the historical period from the end of the
Cultural Revolution to the early 1980s. It explores how changes in China’s national ideology
and power structure inﬂuenced the selection criteria of Shijie Wenxue. The study examines
the evolution of the selection criteria during the journal’s internal circulation and its
subsequent public reissue. It considers how these criteria both continued the translation
strategies used before the Cultural Revolution and introduced corresponding changes.
Ultimately, this phenomenon reﬂects the intricate interplay between politics and translation
norms.
Bio
Dr. Feng CUI is a Senior Lecturer and a Ph.D. Supervisor in the Chinese Department at
Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. He is currently serving as the Deputy
Director of the Master of Arts in Translation and Interpretation (MTI) program at NTU. His
research focuses on translation history in China. Dr. Cui has published nearly 50 journal
papers and book chapters, including papers in SSCI, A&HCI, CSSCI, and THCI journals. His twomonographs, Translation, Literature, and Politics: Using World Literature as an Example(1953-1966) was published by Nanjing University Press in 2019, and The Brief History ofTranslation Thought in China by Nankai University Press in 2021. Han Suyin: Literature,
Politics and Translation (The Special Issue of the Journal of Postcolonial Writing), an A&HCI
journal he edited, was published by Routledge Publisher in 2021. Medio-translatology:
Concepts and Applications, a book he edited, was published by Springer in 2022.

25

Japanese visual narrative in translation
Matteo FABBRETTI
Ritsumeikan University
This presentation deals with the translation of autobiographical essay manga into English. In
particular, the article aims to shed light on the strategies employed in translation to‘perform authenticity,’ in order to preserve the referential pact that autobiographical works
seek to establish with their readers. Within the medium of Japanese manga it is possible todraw a distinction between serialised story manga originally published in weekly or monthly
manga magazines and other types of visual narratives published in standalone book format.
An example of such narratives alternative publications are ‘tōjisha manga’, defined by
Yoshiko Okuyama as autobiographical graphic memoirs that deal with the topic of mental
health. In her work, Okuyama also describes the broader category of ‘essay manga’, definedas the Japanese equivalent of western autobiographical comics (Okuyama 2022, 77). For the
purpose of this presentation, I want to draw attention to the relationship that essay manga
authors seek to establish with their readers. Writing about autobiographical comics,
Elisabeth El Refaje explained that the definition of autobiography depends on a ‘referential
pact,’ a tacit understanding between author and reader which commits the former to a‘sincere effort to be a truthful as possible’ (Lejeune 1989 in El Refaje 2012, 17). Essay mangacan be also said to draw on this special relationship between the text and the reader, aiming
to establish a ‘referential pact’ based on the tacit understanding that the events depicted in
the story are truthful, and that they correspond to the author’s lived experience. In light ofthis referential pact, how does the autobiographical nature of essay manga affect the way
they are translated?
Bio
Matteo Fabbretti currently teaches translation theory at Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto andat Kobe City University of Foreign Studies in Kobe, Japan.

26

A hood is not a hat: Translating fairy tale retellings
Lucy FRASERUniversity of Queensland
Fairy tales are born border-crossers, combining oral, written, and visual texts from acrosstimes and cultures into what Cristina Bacchilega calls the ‘fairy tale web’ (18). In Japan,translations of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’ began to be published from the late nineteenth
century, and the story has been retold and reimagined countless times since then. In thispaper I reﬂect on the process of translating one relatively recent Japanese retelling of ‘Red
Riding Hood’ into English; that is, into a language where the fairy tale already has its own
strong tradition and a myriad of reimaginings. The story, ‘Zukin kurabu’ (‘The Riding HoodClub’), was ﬁrst published in Japanese in Otogibanashi no wasuremono (Lost and Found
Fairy Tales) (2006), a collection of four fairy tale retellings by the notable contemporary
Japanese author Ogawa Yōko (1962-). Ogawa wrote the stories in response to four sets of
discomforting fairy-tale-themed illustrations provided by the artist Higami Kumiko (1963-).
As an academic working in fairy tale studies in Japanese and English, I therefore had a richbody of visual, audiovisual, and written resources to draw upon to translate Ogawa’s shortstory. The fairy tale’s long cultural history also created particular challenges, beginning withthe ﬁrst word in Ogawa’s story title: the archaic Japanese term zukin, used to translate‘riding hood’ (English), chaperon (French), and rotkäppchen (German). These terms are notquite parallel and each has diﬀerent connotations, complicating the option of the simple‘back-translation’ of zukin into ‘riding hood’. I will show how translating Ogawa’s story withan eye to its intertexts exposed some complex interactions with ideas of ‘Japanese-ness,’‘Western-ness,’ and gender in Japanese retellings of European fairy tales. Meditating on thetranslation process can reveal some of the strands and some of the in-between spaces in theerratic and ever-expanding ‘web’ of fairy tales.
Bio
Lucy Fraser is Senior Lecturer in Japanese at The University of Queensland, Australia. Her
research focusses on fairy tales, fantasy, and folklore in Japanese and English, with aparticular interest in girl cultures and animal-human relationships. She is the author of The
Pleasures of Metamorphosis: Japanese and English Fairy Tale Transformations of ‘The Little
Mermaid’ (Wayne State University Press, 2017). With Akiko Uchiyama she has co-translated
a Japanese-language retelling of a traditional Ainu story. She has translated literary work by
Kawakami Hiromi and Hoshino Tomoyuki, as well as literary and cultural studies criticism byrenowned Japanese scholars such as Honda Masuko and Kawasaki Kenko.

27

Human bonds and trust in community translators:
Case studies of English–Japanese translation
Maho FUKUNORMIT University
To enable communication that transcends linguistic and cultural borders through translation,
the establishment of trust in the translator, as perceived by both the client and target
audience, is paramount. This trust-building process becomes particularly crucial incommunity translation, where the purpose is to inﬂuence the behaviour of the target
readers through eﬀective communication. In modern history, rooted in the Anglophonetradition, professionalism emerges as a key factor in the professional gaining trust.
Professionalism serves as both internal and external assurance of their expertise,competence and positive intent, aligning with universalistic and impersonal standards(Evetts, 2016). This professionalism discourse, encompassing professional ethics andcredential systems, also prevails in the ﬁeld of translation. In contrast, research on
multicultural communication in the aftermath of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake(Cadwell, 2019) and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia (Hajek et al., 2022; Pym,
2022) highlights the role of interpersonal and social bonds as vital components in building
the trust of the target readers in the translator and the source of information. Recognising
the eﬀective contribution of human and interpersonal bonds to the success of community
translation and multicultural communication, how can we reconcile the impersonal natureof professional ethics with the personal dynamics of translators in community translation,
including crisis situations? This presentation explores this question by examining the casestudies of English–Japanese community translation in Japan and Australia. The study
demonstrates how translators make 'empathetic' decisions by constructing their own
imagined target readers drawing on their personal experiences and beliefs and by judging
the context-sensitive priority between personal values and ethical principles. By
foregrounding the dual nature of current professional ethics, both empowering anddisempowering the translator, this research aims to contribute to the increasing body ofresearch on the role of and trust in community translators.
Bio
Maho Fukuno is a lecturer in Japanese studies at RMIT University. She is an applied linguist
whose research interests lie in the interdisciplinary ﬁeld of translation studies, interculturalcommunication, language education and moral philosophy. Her academic and professional
work is focused on fair, empathetic and morally sensitive language practice, education andservices as critical infrastructure in a multicultural society. Her PhD dissertation exploredtranslators' personal journeys and the human and moral aspects of their practices incommunity translation.

28

Mapping Chinese commercial translation research: A bibliometric analysis
Daniel GALLEGO-HERNÁNDEZ
University of AlicanteThis study aims to conduct a bibliometric analysis of research in commercial translation
undertaken by scholars aﬃliated with China or involving the Chinese language. To achieve
this objective, we have compiled an extensive bibliographic corpus by drawing from twosources: 1) BITRA (Bibliography of Interpretation and Translation), the world's largest
specialized bibliographic database in Translation Studies, at least in terms of Western
coverage in the ﬁeld of translation, and 2) the Chinese generalist databases CAOD and CNKI.
Once the bibliographic corpus was assembled, we applied a series of bibliometric indicatorswith the purpose of characterizing Chinese commercial translation research. These
indicators encompass the temporal evolution of research production in commercial
translation, the distribution of publications by format, the geographic origin of authors, thelanguages of publication used in the research, the distribution of authors according to
Lotka's Law, author typology, the identiﬁcation of the most proliﬁc authors, the thematic
distribution of research, keywords used in paper titles, combinations of study subjects, and,ﬁnally, the journals that have published the majority of articles in this ﬁeld. The results not
only signiﬁcantly expand the coverage of BITRA but also enrich research in commercial
translation by identifying thematic areas of interest, highlighting commonly employedmethodologies, and suggesting potential avenues for future investigation. Given the growinginternational interest in this ﬁeld, reﬂected in its widespread practical application in the job
market and its inﬂuence on translator training programs, we consider this research highly
pertinent. It contributes to the advancement and consolidation of commercial translation asa vital object of study within Translation Studies and serves as a foundational resource for
future research in this ﬁeld.
Bio
Associate professor in the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alicante, Spain, Daniel GallegoHernández’s research interests include business translation and translation training. His
publications on business translation include two books entitled Traducción económica ycorpus [Business Translation and Corpora] and Traducción económica e investigación en
España, Estudio bibliométrico [Business Translation and Research in Spain. A BibliometricAnalysis], and various editions and co-editions of books and special issues. He has also
initiated the ICEBFIT series (International Conference on Economic, Business, Financial andInstitutional Translation).

29

Revision - the 'truly invisible' step in the translation process
Heather GLASS
University of Melbourne
There is general acceptance in corporate and institutional quality assurance standards, suchas ISO 17100, of process-reliant translation, which incorporates revision. There isnevertheless a general lack of consensus on whether revision by someone other than atranslator improves a translation, and scarce research on how visible and valuable are theeﬀects of revision to the end-user. Revision is a key step in quality assurance, if only because
every translator makes mistakes. The invisible reviser and their inﬂuence on ﬁnal
translations are nevertheless absent from research and theoretical discussions to the extent
that the reviser, more so than the translator, has been described as the ‘truly invisible’
participant in the translation process. This research surveyed Australian-based translators in
the Japanese-English language pair to ﬁnd out their experience in and attitudes to revision.
Ten translators from among over 50 respondents were then asked to complete a revisiontask, the results of which were rated and ranked by over 60 English ﬁrst language readers.
The interim results already provide some insight into unanswered questions about theeﬃcacy and visibility of revision and enable some comment to be made on approaches torevision taken by same and opposite language revisers and on translator and end-userperceptions of what is important in translated text. The sudden prominence of ChatGPT and
its rewriting ability in the latter stages of the research raises the question – will thetechnology extinguish entirely the yet-to-be-visible reviser?
Bio
Heather Glass’ career has spanned over 40 years, interpreting and translating in businessand diplomatic domains for diverse clients around the Asia-Paciﬁc. Heather works as atranslator, technical writer and instructional designer and is also pursuing research as a
Masters (by thesis) candidate at Melbourne University. She manages interpreting teams andthe production of high-quality bilingual material incorporating multiple quality assurance
steps. Heather’s work as an interpreter has included interpreting for Prime Ministers andother senior politicians, interpreting in conferences, courts and for bilateral negotiations, on
oil rigs, in abattoirs and in shipyards. Heather is also a trainer and assessor in Australia’s
regulated vocational education and training system (VET) and an occasional university tutor
in Japanese interpreter and translator skills. Her students come from commercial, migrantand Aboriginal language backgrounds. Heather is also a teacher of language service users, inparticular health clinicians, lawyers, police and judicial oﬃcers.

30

The assessment of professional interpreters’ accuracy and strategies in English-to-Chinese
on-site simultaneous interpretation
Zheng HAN
University of Queensland
Simultaneous interpretation (SI) has been the focus of interpreting studies. However, there islittle research on quality in English-to-Chinese SI regarding ear-voice span (EVS), information
density, strategies, and accuracy. This paper reports the ﬁndings of an exploratory
experiment investigating the impact of EVS and information density on accuracy and which
strategy improves accuracy. The research task is underway in an authentic conference
setting. This article focuses on two targets. The primary target is measuring the EVS andinformation density under propositional analysis and data comparisons (e.g., correlation
calculation and regression model). The second target is employing a meaning-based microanalytical approach to examine the diﬀerent SI strategies (e.g., segmentation, substitution,
generalisation, and repetition), especially the impact of segmentation on SI accuracy. The
key ﬁndings of this research are that EVS and information density are two predominant
indicators of English-to-Chinese SI accuracy. Additionally, the segmentation is high-frequency
to release the short-memory load. Based on the assumptions raised in this article, thecorrelation and regression model results reveal that segmentation ensures accuracy
eﬀectively.
Bio
China University of Political Science and Law Bachelor of Laws
University of Queensland Master of Arts in Chinese Translation and Interpreting
University of Adelaide Master of Teaching (Secondary)31

Translation and the memories of the war refugee child
Barbara HARTLEY
University of Queensland (honorary)
Born in Niigata in 1933, poet Takarabe Toriko was taken as a three-month old infant to thepuppet Manchurian state. She was eleven when Soviet tanks rolled across the border into
the Chinese northeast in the week prior to the Japanese surrender. Repatriated to Japan in1946 with her mother and two younger brothers following the death of her father andyounger sister, Takarabe documented in her poetry the catastrophic impact of war on
children and women. This presentation discusses the translation of selected Takarabe works
that document both the images of atrocity viewed by the child and the aftermath of suchviewing. Three verses are proﬁled: ‘Jizen no fuyu’ (Benevolent Winter) from the 1965
collection Kodomo no goro datta (It was When I Was a Child), ‘Chūshū no tsuki ga’ (The Full
Autumn Moon), from the 1968 compendium Fushoku to tōketsu (Putrifaction and Freezing),and ‘Rakuhaku’ (Ruination), featured in the 2002 collection Monokuro, Kuronosu(Monochrome, Cronus). The publication date of the third conﬁrms that memories of thepoet’s childhood experiences as a refugee repatriated to Japan remained vivid almost six
decades later. Questions addressed include how to convey sensitively – without diluting
Takarabe’s language – themes of war and atrocity when the narrative voice is that of a childand the perennial translation dilemma of the absence of knowledge on the part of readersof the translated work of the sociohistorical context in which the original was produced.
There is a strong imperative to circulate globally material by this poet who is little known
outside Japan. Her starkly elegiac images can be read as representative of the war-time
refugee experiences of children and women generally in the modern era and thus applicableto the on-going torment of civilians in sites such as Yemen, Syria, Ukraine and Palestine
today.
Bio
Barbara Hartley is an honorary researcher with The University of Queensland. Her
publications relate to girls and women in modern Japan and modern Japanese literarystudies. She also researches representations of Asia and Asian women in modern Japanesenarrative and visual production. While her focus is literary studies and she is co-editor with
Akiko Uchiyama of the 2023 collection from Routledge entitled, Border-Crossing Japanese
Literature, in which she has a chapter on Tawada Yōko, she has also published a series oftranslations of literary material over several decades. These include solely- and jointlytranslated (with Tomoko Aoyama) essays for the edited collection Women Critiqued (2006), a
co-translation (with Tomoko Aoyama) of Kanai Mieko’s Koharu biyori, translated as Indian
Summer (2012, Cornell University Press, several chapters in the 2017 TransPaciﬁc Press
publication, Aftermath: Fukushima and the 3:11 Earthquake and, most recently, a translationof an excerpt from the Satonaka Michiko manga on the Nara era Empress Kōken, entitled‘Abe: A Young Woman Emperor-in-Waiting’ for a Hiromi Tsuchiya-Dollase and Masami Toku
edited forthcoming work on women’s representation and voices in manga.

32Murakami Haruki’s Rewriting for the Untranslatable “I”:
On Machi to sono futashikana kabe (The City and Its Uncertain Walls)
Keisuke HAYASHI
Hosei University Junior and Senior High School
The Japanese novelist Murakami Haruki said that he called himself “boku” because“contemporary Japanese has no equivalent to the pure idea of the ﬁrst-person pronoun like“I” in English” (Murakami 1982: 39). You could call yourself “boku” to anyone, anywhere,
whereas “watashi” was diﬃcult to use in everyday life. Murakami saw “I” as untranslatable
in Japanese and tried to rewrite it for his writing. This paper examines how the shift of theﬁrst-person pronoun from “boku” to “watashi” was inﬂuenced by the citation of world
literature, focusing on his most recent work, The City and Its Uncertain Walls (2023).
While the novella “The City, [sic] and Its Uncertain Walls” (1980) was rewritten once tobecome the long novel Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), thisnovella was rewritten again to become the current work. The ﬁrst rewrite was marked by thechange from “boku” to “boku” and “watashi”, the double “I”. The “I” of the protagonist was
divided into two, “boku” for the dreamlike part and “watashi” for the more realistic part.
In the second rewrite, however, the protagonist calls himself “boku” and “watashi” foreach age, “boku” in his teens and “watashi” in his forties. This new rewrite is characterisedby a reference to Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera.
The original Spanish version was published in 1985, the same year as Murakami's ﬁrst
rewrite. In addition, the reunion of the protagonist with his girlfriend after his separation is
the theme of both Marquez's text and Murakami's second rewrite.
Murakami's two rewrites illustrate that it is through the rewriting of the “I” in world
literature that the double “I” moves from division into two characters to unity with the samecharacter.
Murakami Haruki. (1982). Boku ga “boku” ni kodawaru wake (The reason why I am
particular. about “boku”). Kokoku hihyo, No.35, 38-40.
BioKeisuke Hayashi is a Japanese language teacher at Hosei University Junior and Senior HighSchool. He has published journal articles and book chapters on modern and contemporary
Japanese Literature, especially on Haruki Murakami. The main articles are ‘Itsutu no “boku”
tachi: Murakami Haruki bungaku o sekai bungaku ni kaeru “Tosho kan kitan”’ (‘Five “I”s:
Rewriting "Strange Library" Transforms Haruki Murakami's Literature into World Literature,’)Nana Sato-Rossberg. (ed.) Honyanku to bungaku (Translation and Literature). Tokyo: Misuzu
shobo. 2021; ‘Sekai bungaku no “henshin”: Murakami Haruki “Koi suru Zamuza” ron’(“Metamorphosis” of World Literature: Haruki Murakami’s “Samsa in Love””), JunCture.
Vol.14. (2023); and ‘Saigo no “boku”: Murakami Haruki “Kaeru-kun, Tokyo wo sukuu”’ (TheLast “Boku” in Post-Disaster Literature: Haruki Murakami’s “Super-Frog Saves Tokyo”), Border
Crossings: The Journal of Japanese-Language Literature Studies. Vol.17. (2023).

33

When AI and CAT tools become negotiators:
How can Chinese Chengyu be translated into French?
Manon HAYETTE
University of Mons
Mandarin Chinese chengyu, ﬁxed non-compositional four-syllable phrases geneticallyintertwined with their nation’s culture (Chen 1999, p. 122) which have been considered as
the most representative type of Chinese idioms (Conti, 2019; 2020, p. 412), have long
constituted a major hindrance for translators, causing linguistic issues and cultural tensions.
They represent an even more worrying matter for translation educators (Lu, 2017) who have
until now been deprived of suitable tools to tackle this challenging task. Indeed, althoughcommonly used in all types of Chinese discourse, chengyu have so far been almost
disregarded by translation studies and translation education experts (Conti, 2020, p. 412 &Guo, 2017, p. 101). Therefore, one might wonder if technological innovations such as AI andCAT tools may help extricate scholars and practitioners from this dilemma. Therefore, thispaper will focus on whether and how the convergence of CAT tools (Google Translate,
DeepL, Bing Microsoft Translator, 百度翻譯 Baidu Fanyi, 雲譯 Cloud Translation), AI
softwares (ChatGPT) and parallel corpora (OPUS2 corpus available on SketchEngine) can helptranslators and translation trainees render better translations of these idioms, consequently
contributing to improving translation techniques and thus transcending linguistic andcultural borders. In a case study, we will use a parallel corpus (ZH-FR) composed of 魯迅 Lu
Xun’s short stories contained in the collection 《吶喊》 Nahan, and of Sebastian Veg’s 2010
controversial French translation, Cris. Previously extracted chengyu will then be randomly
selected, and their translations by the aforementioned tools will be analysed and comparedto the French version. This multi-modal approach will contribute to a better understandingof AI and CAT tools applications to both lexicography and translation training.
Bio
Manon Hayette holds a master’s degree in translation with a specialist focus on
multidisciplinary translation and a master’s degree in translation with a research focus fromthe University of Mons (Faculty of Translation and Interpretation – School of International
Interpreters). She is currently working on her PhD thesis (under the supervision of Kevin
Henry and Loïc Aloisio) and teaching Chinese as well as French-to-Chinese translation in thesame institution within the Chinese and East Asian Languages, Translation and Cultures
Laboratory unit. Her dissertation focuses on the lexicographic processing of chengyu, i.e.
quadrisyllabic Chinese phrasemes. On a broader scope, her research interests include
translation studies (especially translation criticism), translation training and language
teaching, comparative linguistics (mainly lexicology and phraseology), lexicography,
comparative literature, and Chinese studies.

34

China across borders: How Chinese online news is negotiated in French through translation
Kevin HENRY
University of Mons
Since the advent of Xi Jinping in 2012 and the rise of the ‘wolf warrior diplomacy,’ China hasrelentlessly tried to assert its voice on the international scene. In a country where thepolitical and media landscapes are inextricably intertwined, and where news coverage issubordinated to the ruling Communist Party, one can wonder whether and how Chinesepolitical discourse is altered in oﬃcial media when rewritten for foreign audiences. In thispaper, applying tools from translation quality assessment (House 1997, 2015) and critical
discourse analysis (Van Dijk 1998; Chilton 2004; Charteris-Black 2011, 2014; Fairclough 2013)
to translation (Wang & Munday 2021; Ho 2023; Caimotto & Raus 2023), we will examine
how the website of Xinhua, the oﬃcial Chinese state news agency, has been localized into
French. To this end, we will analyse and compare (meta)data in recent Xinhua articles
written both in the original Chinese (http://www.xinhuanet.com) and in French(https://french.news.cn). This study will be limited to articles from the 2023–2024 periodthat report China’s point of view on international aﬀairs (i.e. accounts of press conferencesfrom the Ministry of Foreign Aﬀairs). We will show how this translation project is held by ashort number of non-French-native translation agents that try to accommodate theexpectations of the intended audience, especially through changes in the macrostructure of
the texts. However, our results will point to a constant hesitation between a softening of theoriginal, confrontational tone and a preservation of some key phrasings, which may soundforced and unnatural in French. In that way, our contribution will help assess the role oftranslation of online news as propaganda in China (Liu 2019; Xia 2019; Zhang & Feng 2021),
and how this political endeavour may be challenged by linguistic (including pragmatic) andcultural tensions with the target audience.
Bio
Kevin HENRY is an associate professor at the Faculty of Translation and Interpreting–Schoolof International Interpreters at the University of Mons (Belgium), where he is heading the
Chinese and East Asian Languages, Translation and Cultures Laboratory (ChinEAsT). His
research focuses on translation exchanges between China and the French-speaking world,
especially through the lenses of translation criticism, discourse analysis and phraseology.
Besides his academic career, he also works as a professional translator from Chinese into
French, specialized in contemporary literature and social and human sciences.

35

Ideology for children: Translating Japanese and Chinese fairy tales in Communist Romania
Irina HOLCATokyo University of Foreign Studies
Romanian cultural production from the late 1940s until the late 1980s bears the mark ofcensorship and/or self-censorship imposed by communist power structures which actively
limited the circulation of works and ideas from the ‘imperialistic’ and ‘decadent’ West. In
this context, intellectuals often turned their attention to the ‘non-threatening’ non-West for
inspiration; writers banned from publishing their creative works would also use translationfrom such cultures as a means of self-expression. Throughout this period, Japanese
literature in Romanian translation (via intermediates such as Russian, but also English andFrench, and under the inﬂuence of Western translation theories) was a powerful tool forquestioning contemporary ideologies, presenting the reader with an in-between space of
East-meets-West, modern-meets-traditional. Similarly, during the same time-period, Chinese
literature translated into Romanian— despite the obvious overlap in the two countries’
political systems— also tended to mainly emphasise the image of China as an Oriental Other,and only secondarily as a Communist Big Brother. After having discussed the role ofJapanese and Chinese literature geared at adults in communist Romania in my previous
research, in this paper I intend to focus on the translations and adaptations of folktales, fairy
tales, legends, myths, etc, that circulated in the country as ‘children’s literature.’ Appearing
from specialised publishing houses, such publications were sometimes included in ‘world
fairy tales’ series or volumes. With the source often anonymous (or omitted), many display
strong ‘localising’ tendencies, while also including illustrations and other visual prompts withan orientalising penchant. By analysing the translation and adaptation methods employed in
the texts, as well as focusing on the materiality of these books, I plan to shed light on therole they played in reinforcing orientalising perceptions of China and Japan, while also
identifying instances where they conversely succeeded in subverting contemporary
stereotypes about the ‘Orient.’
Bio
Irina Holca is Associate Professor at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and specialises inmodern and contemporary Japanese literature. One of her most recent projects revolves
around the translation of Japanese (and Chinese) literature in communist Romania (1950s1980s). Her published papers on the topic include: ‘Minor Exchanges: Romanian Anthologies
of Translated Japanese Poetry Published during the Last Decades of the Communist Regime’(2022) and ‘Translating “Japan” in Communist Romania: Theory and Practice in “The 20th
Century”’ (2019). She is currently working on a volume focusing on the reception of Japan inCentral and Eastern Europe, entitled Japan Behind the Iron Curtain (co-edited with George T.
Sipos, to be published at West University of Timisoara Press, Center for East Asian Studies
Research series).

36

Pruning translation of logical and accidental polysemy in Chinese medicine terminology
Yuehui HOU
Guangdong University of Foreign Studies
Excessive and arbitrary polysemy within Chinese Medicine (CM) terminology presents a
notable challenge to both the intralingual standardization of CM terms and the interlingual
development of a CM knowledge system. This presentation categorizes CM polysemy basedon the origins and relationships of the senses polysemous terms: Inherent polysemy, whereterms retain their everyday meanings; logical polysemy, encompassing terms with botheveryday and professional meanings; and accidental polysemy, referring to terms with
exclusively professional meanings. For addressing logical and accidental polysemy, thispresentation proposes ‘pruning translation,’ a methodology in terminology translation thatreﬁnes and aligns a term closely with its original form by reducing multiple senses to its
most essential meanings for enhanced clarity and precision.
Three approaches demonstrate the application of pruning translation with ﬁve
examples: ‘centralization’ for an underspeciﬁcation account, ‘aggregation’ for an
overspeciﬁcation account, and ‘literal translation’ for literalism. The rationale for pruningtranslation stems from two key aspects: ﬁrstly, the generation of polysemy, highlighting theneed to eliminate context-dependent, unrecognized, or superﬁcial meanings for accurate
cross-lingual translation; secondly, the representation of polysemy, supported bypsycholinguistic evidence indicating that multiple senses in one language can often beeﬀectively represented by a single lexical form in another, facilitating the consolidation ofsenses into a uniﬁed translation.
This proposed methodology of pruning translation represents an innovative approachin the translation of polysemous CM terminology, contributing to the ﬁeld of terminology
translation.
Bio
Hou Yuehui, a licensed Chinese Medicine practitioner, is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in
Translation Studies at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. With academic credentials
from Shanxi University of Chinese Medicine and Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese
Medicine, he later obtained a Bachelor of Arts in English from Shanghai International Studies
University. Yuehui's diverse roles include teaching at Shanxi University of Chinese Medicine
and Youjiang Medical University for Nationalities and serving as a laboratory technician at
Hezhou University. Recognized by leading Chinese medicine federations, he holds council
positions within the World Federation of Chinese Medicine Societies (WFCMS) and theChinese Association for Research and Advancement of Chinese Traditional Medicine(CARCM). He is also a Youth Member of the China Association of Chinese Medicine (CACM).
An accomplished translator and editor, Yuehui has worked on notable publications, focusing
on the intricacies of translating traditional Chinese medicine into English.

37

Globalization and internationalization as a form of censorship in game localization:
A case of Taiwanese game developers
Hao HSU
University of Auckland
Game localization is the complex industrial process of linguistic, cultural, and technicaladjustments to meet the requirements of target markets. This is now a rapidly growing
subﬁeld in translation studies. While its deﬁnition is rather contextually bound, localization
cannot be fully understood without being contextualized in reference to the framework of
GILT (Dunne 2006), namely globalization, internationalization, localization, and translation.
Referred to as a general concept involving all processes of GILT, localization has to be‘collaboratively conceived from the start of the development cycle’ (Jiménez-Crespo 2019,300). Early activities during the development cycle are termed internationalization, deﬁned
as ‘a set of processes to secure that the product does not need to be reengineered once thelocalization process starts’ (Jiménez-Crespo 2020, 377). This helps facilitation following
region-speciﬁc adjustments, which is the deﬁnition of localization in its narrow sense. While
there is already a robust literature on localization and translation of video games, works oninternationalization, especially with sociocultural considerations, are still scarce intranslation studies. During my 15 in-depth interviews with Taiwanese game developers, it
has become evident that they often target global markets from the start and plandevelopment accordingly. Instead of making individual changes for diﬀerent regions, they
prefer to make narrative, visual, gameplay, or other changes to their original products tocreate a one-for-all base version while limiting localization to almost only linguistictranslations. Reasons include budget constraints and sociocultural considerations for speciﬁcmarkets, and globalization and internationalization work in this way as a form of censorshipto the developers for their creative ideas and original products. Grounded in translation
studies with the GILT framework as a backdrop, this presentation discusses the potential
ramiﬁcation of circulating video games internationally with the case of Taiwanese gamedevelopers.
Bio
Currently a PhD candidate in the University of Auckland under the supervision of Minako
O’Hagan, Hao Hsu assumes multiple roles in the ﬁeld of video game localization, including
industry practitioner, researcher, author, and lecturer. After three years of working full-time
for a top-tier global game localization agency, Hao shifted his focus to teaching and academic
studies. He has designed and given courses on topics such as game localization, subtitling,
and translation basics in both Taiwan and New Zealand, and has also guest lectured on gamelocalization in the translation programs (bachelor/master levels) of universities around theworld. He authored an entry book on video game translation in (Traditional) Chinese titled
電玩翻譯：新手譯者的生存攻略 (A Beginner's Guide to Game Translation) published in
2022.

38

An alien among aliens in East Asia:
Multilingual identities in Singapore’s contemporary theatre
Bei HU
National University of Singapore
As an incisive, unflinching engagement with Singapore’s post-independence and nationalbuilding period, the late Singapore playwright Kuo Pao Kun’s work delves into political andcultural changes, speaking to contemporary issues, such as multiculturalism and ethnic
hybridity in the in the East Asian context, and the experiences of political and cultural exiles
resulting from migration and diaspora (Quah 2020; Wee 2020). However, there has been
limited research on how Kuo, an ethnically Chinese intellectual and playwright, employedtranslation to navigate identity dynamics and negotiations within his extensively multilingual
plays. Furthermore, the significance of translation in the clash between Singaporean
playwright artists, who were primarily educated in Chinese, and the Singaporean
government’s de-Sinicisation policy with the implementation of enforced multilingualism
remains largely unexplored. Thus, this study aims to explore the ways in which Kuo Pao
Kun’s multilingual narratives in the play Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral (1995) shapeideological and cultural identity on a contemporary stage. Through allegory, the play depicts
the historical figure of Zheng He, a Muslim admiral from the Ming dynasty (1371–c.1435), asa symbol of the culturally restrained Singaporean who paradoxically seeks to expand theircultural identity while yearning for their distant homeland. By comparing the Chinese andEnglish versions of the play, our investigation focuses on Kuo’s approach to translation,
examining how he grapples with the quest for self-identity during a period marked bysignificant social, political and cultural transformations. By analysing how multilingual
narratives employed by Kuo intricately construct and negotiate cultural identities within a
rapidly evolving national context, we argue against a simplistic interpretation of themelancholic tone in his performance on a contemporary stage as mere nostalgia for ancient
China or an expression of nationalist isolationism. Instead, we posit that this melancholy
signifies Kuo’s role as a postmodernist traveller across time and space, an alien among
aliens, embodying a sense of alienation amidst diverse cultural landscapes in East Asia. The
study seeks to shed light on Kuo Pao Kun’s complex engagement with self-identity,translation and cultural representation, offering insights into the unique position ofSingaporean multilingual playwrights as translators who navigate the interstices of multiple
cultural spheres.
References: Kuo, Pao Kun. 1995. Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral. In Two Plays by Kuo
Pao Kun: Descendants of the Eunuch Admiral and the Spirits Play, edited by C. J. Wan-ling
Wee and Lee Chee Keng, pp. 38–67. Singapore: SNP Editions. Quah, Sy Ren. 2020.
‘Intellectual Consciousness and the Negation of the Intellectual Class: Kuo Pao Kun’s
preDetention Drama and its Context.’ Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 21 (2): 212–224. Wee,
Wan-ling. 2020. ‘Beyond national identity: Kuo Pao Kun’s contemporary theatre and an
open culture.’ Inter-Asia Cultural Studies 21 (2): 251–265.
Bio
Bei Hu is an assistant professor of translation and interpreting studies in the Department ofChinese Studies at the National University of Singapore. Her research area revolves around39

high-stakes multilingual communication. Her scholarly works have been published intranslation academic journals, including Target, Translation Studies, The Translator,
Interpreting, and Across Languages and Cultures, as well as in book series by John
Benjamins, Routledge, and Palgrave Macmillan.

40

Investigating trust in video remote interpreting within the Australian healthcare context
Bei HU
National University of Singapore
Xiaofang YAOThe University of Hong Kong
Effective language service provision is paramount in healthcare communication, ensuring
equitable access to healthcare for patients with limited English proficiency, particularly
those from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds (Rosenberg et al. 2007). Amidst the
global COVID-19 pandemic, video remote interpreting has emerged as a prominent
alternative mode of communication (Napier et al. 2018) and has gained significant traction
in interpreting studies. However, with a few exceptions (De Boe 2020; Klammer &Pöchhacker 2021), the majority of existing literature in this field, which is often surveybased, has been disproportionately centred on conference interpreting (e.g., Chmiel &Spinolo 2022). Notably, there is a significant lack of empirical data specifically addressing theimplementation of video remote interpreting in healthcare settings. This paper presents anongoing project with the objective of exploring the experiences and perspectives ofhealthcare stakeholders, including interpreters, interpreter service managers, andhealthcare professionals, regarding video remote interpreting in the post-COVID healthcare
landscape in Australia. The focus is particularly on East Asian language pairs. We conductedquestionnaire surveys and semi-structured interviews, using a public hospital in North
Melbourne, Australia as a case study. This mixed-methods approach facilitates thetriangulation of descriptive findings with multifaceted narrative evidence on the potential
and challenges of video remote interpreting. The primary emphasis is on the ethicalconsiderations of stakeholders in technology-driven healthcare interactions. The diverse
opinions of various stakeholders are examined in the context of interpreting technologies,
especially in high-stakes language-diverse clinical settings. This study also proposes a set of
preliminary strategies aimed at building trust in health-related remote interpreting settings.
Ultimately, this research aims to contribute to the improvement of language service
provision in the healthcare sector, fostering better understanding and bridging knowledge
gaps between patients, interpreters, and healthcare professionals in an evolving remotecommunication landscape in the post-COVID era, with a specific focus on East Asian
languages.
References: Chmiel, A. & Spinolo, N., ‘Testing the impact of remote interpreting settings oninterpreter experience and performance: Methodological challenges inside the virtualbooth,’ Translation, Cognition & Behavior 5.2 (2022), 250-74,
https://doi.org/10.1075/tcb.00068.chm; De Boe, E., Remote interpreting in healthcare
settings: A comparative study on the influence of telephone and video link use on the qualityof interpreter-mediated communication (Doctoral thesis, University of Antwerp, 2020),
https://hdl.handle.net/10067/1682650151162165141; Klammer, M. & Pöchhacker, F.,‘Video remote interpreting in clinical communication: A multimodal analysis,’ Patient
Education and Counseling 104.12 (2021), 2867-76,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2021.08.024; Napier, J., Skinner, R. & Braun, S. (Eds), Here or41there: Research on interpreting via Video Link, Gallaudet University Press, 2018; Rosenberg,
E., Leanza, Y. & Seller, R., ‘Doctor-patient communication in primary care with aninterpreter: Physician perceptions of professional and family interpreters,’ Patient Education
and Counseling 67.3 (2007), 286-92, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2007.03.011.
Bios
Bei Hu is an Assistant Professor of Translation and Interpreting Studies in the Department ofChinese Studies at the National University of Singapore. Her research revolves around highstakes multilingual communication. Her scholarly works have been published in translation
academic journals, including Target, Translation Studies, The Translator, Interpreting, andAcross Languages and Cultures, as well as in book series by John Benjamins, Routledge, andPalgrave Macmillan.
Xiaofang Yao is an incoming Assistant Professor at the University of Hong Kong. Her researchinterests include linguistic and semiotic landscapes, multilingualism, and digital humanities.
She particularly focuses on the intersection of language, culture, and space as they relate to
the Chinese diaspora and ethnic minorities.

42

Motivations and strategies for S. I. Hsiung’s self-translation of The Bridge of Heaven
Jiaxing HU
Lingnan University
This study delves into an in-depth analysis of the motivations and strategies employed by S.
I. Hsiung in the process of translating his own work, The Bridge of Heaven. Contextualising
Hsiung’s social trajectory within the realm of Sinophonic literature, this study draws upon
Simona Anselmi’s classiﬁcation of self-translator’s motivations to decipher the underlying
reasons for Hsiung’s decision to undertake self-translation. The investigation commences by
exploring the circumstances surrounding Hsiung’s departure from China and his subsequent
return to the Sinophonic literary community. One of the central motivations behind Hsiung’s
self-translation endeavours was his longing to reintegrate into the Chinese literary circle
after facing marginalisation from the mainstream literary community. Furthermore, thepaper sheds light on the ﬁnancial challenges Hsiung encountered after his migration to Hong
Kong, which played a pivotal role in propelling him towards self-translating his own works asa means to attain commercial success. Subsequently, this study conducts a meticulous
examination, including a comparative analysis, of both The Bridge of Heaven and its Chinesecounterpart, Tianqiao, bringing to the forefront Hsiung’s distinct self-translation strategies
designed to achieve his multifaceted objectives. Notably, Hsiung adeptly employed
foregrounding of irony and cultural editing to craft a domesticated version of his work. These
strategies, coupled with his active participation in Hong Kong’s literary and social events,
facilitated the realisation of Hsiung’s self-translation motivations. As a result, Tianqiao not
only achieved commercial success but also garnered critical acclaim, thereby demonstrating
the eﬀectiveness of Hsiung’s self-translation endeavours. In essence, this study provides acomprehensive exploration of the motivations that propelled S. I. Hsiung to self-translate
The Bridge of Heaven and the strategic measures he employed to accomplish his goals,
shedding light on the intricate interplay between self-translation, literary aspirations, andthe dynamics of the Sinophonic literary world.
Bio
I am currently a doctoral student pursuing my PhD in Translation Studies at Lingnan
University. Prior to this, I completed my Master's degrees in Translation Studies at the
University of Glasgow and in English Language and Literature at Nankai University. My
research interests encompass self-translation, translation history and literary history.

43

Machine-translated poeticness:
How do readers receive poems translated with and without machine translation?
Ke HU
Chinese University of Hong Kong; University of Melbourne
Poetry translation has long been considered a territory beyond the reach of machinetranslation (MT). However, encouraged by the improvements in MT quality brought about byneural machine translation, a small number of researchers (e.g., Humblé, 2019; Seljan et al.,2020) have started investigating the actual quality of machine-translated poetry. They ﬁndthat, in some European language pairs, the quality of machine-rendered poems can be‘decent’ (Seljan et al., 2020, p. 1044) or ‘quite acceptable’ (Humblé, 2019, p. 41). Given thatlittle research has investigated machine-translated poems between distant language pairs,
this mixed-methods study examines two English poems that have been translated into
Chinese in three modes: raw machine translation, post-edited machine translation, and fully
human translation. Taking a reception-based approach, we adopt three methods to compare
131 Chinese L1 participants’ reading experience of the human- and machine-rendered
poems: a translation-rating task in which the readers rated the poetry translations in areading experience questionnaire, a translation-annotation task in which the readers
annotated the target-text elements that aroused their positive and negative reception, andpost-hoc interviews in which the readers gave comparative comments on the diﬀerent
modes of translations. These three methods consistently reveal that, although the raw
machine translations incurred less favourable reading experiences than the other translation
versions, a considerable number of machine-rendered elements in both poems received
positive appreciation from the majority of readers. Furthermore, the lightly post-edited
machine translations surprisingly received similar or even higher evaluations than did theprofessional human translations. Lastly, similar to the machine-assisted translation versions,the professional human translations were also subject to both positive and negative
receptions from the readers. Based on these ﬁndings, a re-conceptualisation of translation
creativity is proposed, which sees creativity not as a quality solely possessed by humans, but
as a capacity actualised through human-machine interaction.
Bio
Ke Hu is a lecturer of Translation Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen(CUHK-SZ). He received his Ph.D. and M.A. in Translation Studies from the University of
Melbourne. Before joining CUHK-SZ, Ke worked as a Teaching Fellow at the University of
Melbourne. Ke’s research interests lie in large language models, translation technologies,
corpus studies, and translation reception research. Ke is also a Professional Translator
certiﬁed by the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters (NAATI) of
Australia.

44

Translating adventure: Adventure ﬁction in Late Qing China
Xuejiao HU
Shanghai International Studies University
Little in the Chinese literary tradition came close to western adventure novels since theadventurousness they celebrate sit opposite to Confucian virtues. But late Qing China
witnessed an outbreak of adventure ﬁction as one major genre of ‘New Novels.’ Tarumoto
Teruo’s catalogue of late Qing and early Republican novels records about 200 pieces ofadventure ﬁction with the publisher genre label of maoxian xiaoshuo 冒险小说(adventureﬁction), two-thirds being translation. This study attempts to historicize the transcultural
migration of adventure ﬁction from the West (via Japan) to late Qing and early Republican
China and to observe how this genre sedimented with Western ideologies and responded to
speciﬁc cultural anxieties of adapting to the Chinese realities of transitioning to a modern
nation-state. This was particularly the case on the three most pertinent dimensions:celebrating masculinities, imagining New Woman and fantasizing the ‘World.’ Adventure
novels’ reception and development in Japan will also be looked at because Japan’stranslating and writing of adventure novels preceded and to a certain degree led to that ofChina. The study aims to add to knowledge about Chinese adventure ﬁction and moregenerally about late Qing ‘New Novels,’ to further research on adventure ﬁction as a world
genre within a transcultural framework. In addition, adventure ﬁction serves both as theprimary research object and a heuristic perspective to observe Chinese cultural dynamics at
a transition period .
Bio
Hu Xuejiao is a PhD candidate of translation studies and comparative literature at Shanghai
International Studies University and was a CSC visiting researcher at the Institute for Area
Studies, Leiden University (2019-2020). She obtained her master’s degree in Translation
Literature at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research interests mainly lie in
Chinese reception and reconstruction of foreign discourses, translation studies andadaptation studies. She also herself engages in literary translation practice and has had threeworks published.

45

A cultural broker in a postcolonial context:
On S. I. Hsiung’s cross-cultural theatrical narratives in Lady Precious Stream
Yidan HU
University of Glasgow
S. I. Hsiung is a translator and English playwriter of the Chinese diaspora in the West in thetwentieth century. The blending of both cultural sources in his cultural identity, together
with the practical imbalanced power relations between the East and the West in the 20th
century, has led to his complicated cultural stand which turns out to be a combination of two
seemingly paradoxical tendencies: a close attachment to the Eastern culture and an
inevitable Orientalism.
Through the lens of postcolonialism and Anthony Pym’s research method of translation
history, this research will expound on S. I. Hsiung’s cultural identities in the history of SinoWestern cultural exchange with a case study of Hsiung’s adaptation of Lady Precious Stream,in an endeavour to elucidate the interplay of images and his cultural identities in literary
writings through narratives of ‘China.’ This investigation of Hsiung’s cross-cultural theatricalnarratives about China will mainly cover two layers: a layer of theatrical conventions
presented in Hsiung’s plays and a layer of national image construction during his cultural
productions. Accordingly, the presentation attempts to explore how Hsiung’s works
represent a shift in discursive endeavours within a culturally oppressive environment and torecognise the various possible forms and patterns of the literature’s cultural transmission ina cross-cultural context.
This scholarly work considers the appearance of Hsiung’s theatrical narratives to be ofvital signiﬁcance in challenging or even inverting the stereotypical image of ‘China’ and‘Chineseness.’ This has been persistently framed by colonial legacies and Oriental visions of
the Old Cathay in an age when the Yellow Peril was very much alive and subtly embedded inWestern culture through the twentieth and into the twenty-ﬁrst century.
Bio
Yidan Hu is a PhD student of theatre studies at the University of Glasgow, supervised byProfessor Anslem Heinrich and Dr Cheng Jin. She obtained a Master’s degree and graduatedwith distinction from the Joint Graduate School of Nankai University and the University ofGlasgow. Her research focus lies in the ﬁeld of theatre translation. She is now participating ina localisation project commissioned by IOHA (The Institute of Human Anatomy), translating
subtitles for a YouTuber who is popularising medical knowledge on the internet. Alongside
her broader translation portfolio, she also has provided translation services for IFAW(International Fund for Animal Welfare) and HoGem, a high-tech enterprise in Beijing.

46

Untranslated, unpublished, and unsolicited:
The (trans)national production ﬁelds of contemporary Chinese science ﬁction
Tao HUANG
University of Hong Kong
Since the beginning of the 2010s, contemporary Chinese science ﬁction has gained
increasing visibility internationally through translation into other languages. In addition to
the eﬀorts of committed individuals, the PRC state’s presence and engagement constitute asigniﬁcant factor in the transnational production of contemporary Chinese science ﬁction. In
light of this, this study focuses on the transnational publishing of contemporary Chinesescience ﬁction in English. It examines the ‘untranslated,’ ‘unpublished,’ and ‘unsolicited’
elements in the initiative to uncover how the state as a powerful agent in the ﬁeld shapes
the national and transnational production of the genre. Based on Johan Heilbron’ssociological conception of ‘the world system of translations’ and André Lefevere’s theory oftranslation as rewriting, this study investigates the state’s relations with the ‘untranslated,’‘unpublished,’ and ‘unsolicited’ in the transnational ﬁeld of literary production by using
paratextual materials such as publication details, news, and reviews together with selectedsource/target texts. Speciﬁcally, this study argues that the state 1) patronizes and ﬁnancestranslations via state-owned publishers, and one of the purposes is to cope with the factthat Chinese science ﬁction remains largely ‘untranslated’ in opposition to the massiveinﬂow of foreign works; 2) censors domestic writings of science ﬁction, which is attested by
the fact that some translations derive from ‘unpublished’ versions or titles; 3) receives‘unsolicited’ reviews from readers since the state as the patron attempts to charter anavenue of interpretation for ideological reasons. In conclusion, the study argues thattranslation can be used as a prism through which to consider certain aspects of a literary
production ﬁeld.
Bio
Huang Tao is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Chinese at the University of Hong Kong. His
doctoral thesis examines the translation and circulation of contemporary Chinese science
ﬁction in the Anglophone world. He is interested in both textual and paratextual aspects ofliterary translation, sociological approaches to translation studies, and world literaturestudies.

47

Lost in translation: Balancing authenticity and accessibility in Potehi
Tsui-Ling HUANG
Wenzao Ursuline University of Languages
Taiwanese glove puppetry, known as ‘布袋戲’ (budaixi; potehi: pòo-tē-hì), is a traditional
form of theatre deeply rooted in Taiwan's culture. The most prominent diﬃculty whentranslating these works lies in striking a balance between preserving the original meaning
and avoiding distortion. Translating the ‘四句聯’ (sì-kù-liân) four-line verses or dialogues
from Potehi into other languages raises the critical question of whether the local audiencecan truly grasp the intended signiﬁcance. Furthermore, the translation may result in
diﬀerences in emotional and contextual understanding for native-speaking audiences.
Taiwanese puppetry faces a challenge in overseas performances: ensuring local
audiences not only understand but also resonate with Potehi to promote culturaldissemination. Language proficiency issues hinder this, with the retention of Taiwanese inrhymed verses serving emotional purposes but posing translation challenges. Potehi goesbeyond art, embodying a linguistic complexity in cross-cultural translation. Balancing
authenticity and comprehension in diverse cultural backgrounds is the key translation
strategy.
This paper focuses on textual analysis and translation strategies, discussing the central
use of either foreignization or domestication strategies. The aim is to express the complete
meanings of key personal and object names, as well as the Confucian, Buddhist, and Daoist
connotations embedded in the text. It seeks to convey the essence and cultural richness ofChinese culture, exploring the significance of the ‘real’ and how to translate the importanceof the ‘ineffable.’ Additionally, through guiding students in constructing vocabulary related
to glove puppetry, the paper encourages active student participation. This collaborative
effort aims to interpret different languages and cultures with dedication, thereby initiating afantastical journey for foreign friends to appreciate the charm of Taiwanese puppetry andglove puppetry.
Keywords: Taiwanese glove puppetry, budaixi, four-line verses, cross-cultural
Bio
Assistant Professor of the Department of Translation and Interpreting
Specialties include Translation Theory and Practice, Intercultural Studies and Translation andalso Trademark and Brand Translation

48

The Chinese novel or/as a source of knowledge:‘Scraps from Chinese Mythology’ in The China Review (1872–1901)
Lingjie JI
Chinese University of Hong Kong
This article explores the ways in which Sinologists’ translation manipulates the blurrycategorical division between Chinese ﬁction and folk religion texts to produce knowledge
about China. Published in the leading Sinological periodical The China Review (1872–1901),‘Scraps from Chinese Mythology’ is a series of English translations of experts from four
Chinese ‘gods and demons novels’ (shenmo xiaoshuo 神魔小說) collectively known as the Si
you ji 四遊記 (The Four Journeys). The four Chinese novels contain numerous stories,
concepts, and description of rituals from Chinese Buddhism, Taoism, and folk religion. This
discussion argues that, without explicitly specifying either the Chinese original or the English
translation is from a work of novel, the translator, the American missionary Dyer Ball (1796–1866), and the annotator, his son and Sinologist James Dyer Ball (1847–1919), appropriate
the translation to become a point of references to Chinese religion and folklore. This
presentation examines the textual and cultural translation of religious knowledge found in‘Scraps from Chinese Mythology’ by analysing the cultural parameters within which thetranslation is situated, the translation strategies, and the extensive footnotes provided by
the annotator that serve multiple purposes, including oﬀering detailed backgroundknowledge on Chinese religion and quoting English-language religious and literary works forcomparative reading. This article also discusses the comparative and interdisciplinary
perspective and method adopted in the translation that connect the East with the West as
well as weave together religious, literary, and folklore studies. It ﬁnally considers thesigniﬁcance of the periodical The China Review as a site for knowledge production, wherein
the translation makes constant intertextual references to other publications and thecommunity of Sinologists who are active in the same periodical.
Bio
JI Lingjie took her PhD in Chinese Studies at the University of Edinburgh. She is now AssistantProfessor in the Department of Translation at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her
research interests include translation history, literary translation, and generally the literary
and knowledge exchange between China and the Anglophone world during the longnineteenth century. Her current research projects focus on the British sinologists’ writings
and translations of Chinese literature, investigating the interplay between literary translationand Sinological knowledge. She has published articles in Monumenta Serica, Journal of
Oriental Studies, Journal of Translation Studies, and Archiv orientální: Journal of African andAsian Studies.

49

A brief historical and geographical overview of fansubbing
Daniel E. JOSEPHY-HERNÁNDEZ
Ryūtsū Kēzai Daigaku
Fansubs are subtitles made by fans of a speciﬁc series or ﬁlm. In the early years offansubbing, fansubbers worked almost exclusively with anime (otaku—fans of anime, manga
and videogames—were the ﬁrst sub-culture in the world to bring forth the issue of piracy,
legitimacy and copyright law concerning videos). Today, with diﬀerent pieces of software
available to anyone with an internet connection and a computer, inserting subtitles into a
ﬁlm or TV show is very easy even for relatively inexperienced users (Bogucki) New users canstart creating subtitles with a few hours of practise using computer programs previously
mentioned. Fansubbers have an essential role in the distribution of diverse audiovisual
products; talking about anime speciﬁcally, Denison explains that ‘Anime pirates have played,and continue to play a vital role in the transnational anime market; their increasing emphasison speed and, indeed, on quality, have placed them in closer competition with the mostsigniﬁcant industries that create their objects of fandom’ (2011: 463). Hence, fansubbers
have an important role in distributing and disseminating speciﬁc audiovisual products.
Fansubbing has been studied from diﬀerent perspectives. They have been generally
described (e.g. O’Hagan 2003, Díaz-Cintas and Muñóz-Sánchez 2006, Pérez-González 2006),
studied as a source of creativity (Nornes 1997, Jenkins 2006) and even seen as promoting
anarchism (Massida 2014, Josephy-Hernández 2017, Khoshsaligheh and Ameri 2017). This
talk seeks to present a historical overview of fansubbing, from its humble beginnings withVHS distribution, to the powerful online dissemination it now has. It also seeks to present acurrent mapping of fansubbing trends worldwide, comparing and contrasting the cases ofNorth America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. It is argued that whilst in North America
fansubbing was once a source of creativity and diﬀérence, it is now a for-proﬁt industry thatprimarily concentrates on cataloguing, distributing and plagiarising oﬃcial subtitles; thiscontrasts with the fansubbing tendencies in other parts of the world, e.g. Italy and Iran.
Hence, a new and critical perspective regarding the ideology and motivation of fansubbing is
discussed in this talk.
Bio
Daniel E. Josephy-Hernández holds a PhD in Translation Studies from the University ofOttawa. He is currently adjunct professor at Ryūtsū Kēzai Daigaku, Japan, and Universidad
Estatal a Distancia, Costa Rica. His research concentrates mainly on gender and audiovisualtranslation in anime, focusing on critical analyses of hegemonic gender portrayals in themedium. He also studies the censorship and distribution of anime and the translation ofanime dialects and their yakuwarigo. He has published articles and reviews for Meta, Babel,
MonTI, Mutatis Mutandis, Perspectives and Routledge.

50

The tradition of ﬁlm subtitler prestige in Japan in the age of streaming
Tom KABARA
Nagoya University
For decades, foreign language ﬁlm subtitlers in Japan have enjoyed a long tradition of
uncommon prestige. Whereas in most parts of the world, ﬁlm subtitlers are usually kept in
the shadows of anonymity, Japanese ﬁlm subtitlers, such as Toda Natsuko, have garnered aconsiderable degree of fame publishing books, delivering lectures, and appearing on
television. Nevertheless, there is no guarantee this elevated status will continue with thenext generation of ﬁlm subtitlers. Recent trends in ﬁlm consumption in Japan present to thistradition a two-fold challenge. First, audiences are watching fewer foreign ﬁlms. In 2008, thedomestic theatrical ﬁlm market overtook the foreign ﬁlm market, ending decades of
Hollywood dominance. Moreover, the few foreign ﬁlms Japanese audiences are watching arelargely action/adventure or Disney ﬁlms, genres where subtitles have a diminished
importance. Second, the advent of streaming services has resulted in more work foraudiovisual translators but also more anonymity. In the past, ﬁlm subtitlers were given clear
credit at theatrical exhibitions or on DVD or VHS box covers. Conversely, credit for subtitlingis rarely supplied on streaming versions of the same content. Further muddying the waters,
streaming services occasionally create new subtitles for ﬁlms that already had subtitles
made for theatrical release. In the age of AI-aided translation, these developments havedeep implications for the status of this once prestigious profession. This presentation will
explore how these new developments challenge the traditional prestige of ﬁlm subtitlers inJapan. Through an analysis of discourse, surveys and opinion polls, and other documents,
the presentation will provide a look at how ﬁlm subtitlers are currently perceived in Japanand what it means for the future.
Bio
Tom Kabara has taught translation studies at various universities in Japan, including Mie
University and Aichi Shukutoku University. He earned his M.A. in Translation Studies at Kent
State University and his Ph.D. in Japanese Studies at Nagoya University. His research focuseson Japanese ﬁlm subtitling practices and their reception with an emphasis on cognition andinferential reasoning. He currently teaches at Nagoya University.

51

Translating multilingualism in the streaming era
Ji-Hae KANG
Ajou University
This study analyzes the ways in which translation and multilingualism are represented inaudiovisual products within the evolving landscape of global media streaming. Drawing on
the concept of ‘multilingual imagination’ (Kramsch 2009: 201), the paper examines two wellknown and critically acclaimed audiovisual products available on streaming services: 1)
Pachinko (2022), an Apple TV+ original series based on Min Jin Lee’s novel of the same title
and created in Korean, Japanese, and English; and 2) Okja (2017), a film created in Korean
and English by the South Korean film director Bong Joon-ho and released on Netflix.
Although the two differ significantly in genre, storyline, tone, and the spatial and temporal
setting of the story, both Pachinko and Okja are original productions of global streaming
service companies and feature Korean as one of the main languages. More importantly, inboth audiovisual products, multilingualism and translation lend authenticity to themultilingual characters and societies they portray. Additionally, the two works exhibit
creativity in the subtitling of dialogues that involve code-switching and multilingualexchanges, creating additional layers of meaning that propel the narrative forward. I argue
that in Pachinko and Okja, subtitling is not simply a linguistic transfer of meaning but also anaesthetic and political choice, one that plays a crucial role in fostering a ‘multilingual
imagination’ among audiences. This pushes viewers to envision new ways of seeing andunderstanding the interconnected world. The findings suggest that although subtitles havetraditionally been seen as ‘a supplement to the original language of the film’ (O’Sullivan
2007: 82), the complexity of communicating in multiple languages and the imaginative
presentation of subtitles in multilingual films and series on streaming platforms function toheighten awareness of the increasingly intricate flows of global culture. They also offer
viewers unique sensory experiences, allowing the multilingual spoken and visual (displaying
creative subtitles) landscapes to act as catalysts for more engaged viewing experiences.
References Kramsch, C. (2009) The Multilingual Subject. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
O’Sullivan, C. (2007). ‘Multilingualism at the multiplex: A new audience for screentranslation?’ Linguistica Antverpiensia, New Series–Themes in Translation Studies 6, 81-95.
Bio
Ji- Hae Kang is Professor of Translation Studies at Ajou University, South Korea. Her research
focuses on translation in institutional settings and issues of power and discourse in thetransnational production of knowledge. She is the guest-editor of the special issue
Translation in Institutions (2014, Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and Practice)and co-editor of Translating and Interpreting in Korean Contexts: Engaging with Asian andWestern Others (2019, Routledge).

52Selecting Japanese women authors for translation:
Challenges and insights in the Turkish publishing landscape
Asli Idil KAYNAR
University of Queensland
In recent years, translations from Japanese to Turkish have seen a significant increase,marking a shift from Japan’s relatively limited presence in the Turkish publishing market.
The increase in translation activity highlights the importance of translation in facilitating
cultural exchange between Japan and Turkey (Albachten, 2017). Over the past few years,
two notable factors have emerged in the context of publishing Japanese literature in Turkey:
the first is related to the publication of works by authors from the modern era whose
copyrights have expired, and the second factor involves a preference for authors who havegarnered a significant readership in the West (Erdemir, 2023). My presentation delves into
the dynamics of Japanese literature translation into Turkish, with a particular focus ongender disparities and preferences in the Turkish publishing industry, drawing upon my own
experiences as an English-Turkish and Japanese-Turkish translator. The primary aim of mypaper is to explore the criteria and decision-making processes employed by Turkish
publishers in selecting Japanese literary works for translation, particularly those authored by
women. I reached out to various publishers about introducing the works of Japanesewomen authors from the early twentieth century, such as Uno Chiyo, Sata Ineko and Osaki
Midori, to Turkish readers. During my inquiries, I encountered recurrent obstacles related tocopyright issues, and an inclination among publishers to adhere to their rosters of
predominantly well-known authors. Although Enchi Fumiko was not on my list, I was
assigned to translate Enchi’s Onnamen (1958) by Ithaki, a renowned publishing house basedin Istanbul. To my surprise, I discovered that the same publisher had published Okamoto
Kanoko’s ‘Kingyo ryōran’ (1937) in 2022, which happens to be the only book authored by awoman among the thirty-four in their catalogue. Why were these specific women authors
chosen? While the copyright of Okamoto Kanoko’s works has expired, the publisher
acquired the copyright for Enchi Fumiko’s works; if the choice was not solely based on
copyrights, could it be because the publisher believed Turkish readers would resonate moredeeply with these authors’ texts? In my presentation, I will incorporate the responses
obtained from publishers during my inquiries to determine the factors that play a role in thedecision process. I will also look at various secondary sources written on Turkish translationsof Japanese texts to understand what these factors reveal about the broader culturalcontext of Japanese-Turkish translations.
BioAslı İdil Kaynar graduated from Boğaziçi University, Department of Western Languages andLiteratures in 2016. She completed the Asian Studies Master's Program at the same
university in 2019. Her areas of academic interest encompass comparative literature,
Westernisation, modernism, and feminism in Japan and Turkey. While pursuing her doctoral
studies in the School of Languages and Literatures at the University of Queensland, she also
engages in freelance editing and translation work. Her PhD project is centred on the
representations of modern girls in Japanese and Turkish women’s writing, aiming to shedlight on modern girls' shared experiences and desires in these culturally distinct societies.

53

How poetry ‘evolves’ through translations:
Sagawa Chika (1911-1936) and the art of poetry translation
Rina KIKUCHI
Shiga University / University of Canberra
How do we translate the multiple layers of a poem? Is it impossible and is it that poetry iswhat gets lost in translation after all? Poetry translation has been discussed in many
diﬀerent ways, such as ‘transcreation’, ‘transplantation’ and even ‘reincarnation’. In thispresentation, I would like to discuss the relationship between translating poetry and writing
poetry in terms of ‘poetry evolution’ and explore what we can gain through the act of poetrytranslation using Sagawa Chika, a pioneer modernist poet in Japan, as a case study.
Sagawa translated modernist poetry from English to Japanese when she was writing her
own poems in Japanese in the 1920s and 30s. Her poetry strongly reﬂects what she wastranslating at the time, and it often seems that the boundary between poetry translationand poetry creation was blurred. Her unique and experimental poetic style, which is often
recognized as ‘unnatural’ in the Japanese language, for instance, can be argued as a direct orword-to-word translation from English. Then, what happens when Sagawa’s poems aretranslated into English? Does the ‘awkwardness’ of Sagawa’s poetry, which is strongly
inﬂuenced by English grammar, get ‘lost’ in English translation?
This presentation ﬁrst analyses how Sagawa used what she learnt from translating
English poetry in her own poems to create ‘freshness’ in Japanese modernist poetry andthen discusses the possible ways of translating Sagawa’s poems into English, using examples
from Selected Translations of Sagawa Chika’s Poems (tr. Rina Kikuchi & Carol Hayes, Shichosha, 2023). The discussions will include detailed examples, potential advantages of cotranslation and comparisons with the previous translations from The Collected Poems of
Chika Sagawa (tr. Sawako Nakayasu, 2015). Through the analyses, I hope to demonstrate theimportance of multiple translations and how poetry translation can enrich both the original
and the target languages and cultures.
Bio
Rina Kikuchi is a Professor of Literature at Shiga University, Japan, an adjunct Associate
Professor of Poetry in the Faculty of Arts and Design at the University of Canberra and apoetry translator. Her research areas are modern and contemporary women's poetry inJapanese and in English with a focus on Ireland.
Her books of poetry translations include Selected Translations of Sagawa Chika’s Poems(Shicho-sha, 2023, co-translated with Carol Hayes), Pleasant Troubles: Japan-Australia
Bilingual Poetry Anthology (Recent Work Press, 2018, co-edited with Harumi Kawaguchi) andPoet to Poet: Contemporary Women Poets from Japan (Recent Work Press, 2017, co-editedwith Jen Crawford). Her translations and co-translations of modern and contemporary
women poets’ works have been published in various journals and magazines such as Modern
Poetry in Translation, Meanjin, Westerly, Cordite, Transference and Gendai-shi-techo(Contemporary Poetry Journal). She has organized, participated in and been invited to manybilingual poetry readings and poetry translation workshops/symposiums in Japan and inAustralia. She is currently working on another bilingual anthology of contemporary Japanesewomen poets, a collaborative poetry translation project on Misaki Takako and a research
project on Japanese women’s poetry of the Asia Paciﬁc War published in the 1930s and 40s.
54

From the sea to the battleﬁeld: Performing Eugene O’Neill in China’s wartime capital
Yifei KONG
University of Glasgow
Eugene O’Neill’s play Beyond the Horizon (1918) won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1920.
The play explores the life choices of individuals in the context of their loves, dreams, andcareers. A Chinese version of the play was performed in 1941 in Chongqing, China’s
provisional capital during the Second World War. Adapted by Li Qinghua, the play now
combined personal choice with duty to the country. Li negotiates various borders intransferring this piece of theatre from its source to a new cultural, social and political milieu
where patriotic sentiments were preponderant. The divergence between the original andthe translation reﬂects tensions in the varying roles of theatre. In addition to Li’s objective ofstrengthening the people’s commitment to the war through theatre, the cultural andpolitical conditions in Chongqing dictated the scope of possibilities for Li’s translation andaﬀected the feasibility of onstage performance. Modern Chinese theatre (huaju 话剧) was
promoted during the war because of its potential for instant and direct eﬀects on theaudience and for engaging in debates on the building of a new national identity. Li’s version
draws on the various narratives in Beyond the Horizon but attempts to expose the tragedies
that follow any decision by Chinese youth to not prioritize the war of resistance against
Japan. This places the play inside not only the needs of wartime crisis but also China’s
ongoing discourse of individual struggle and national destiny and the tensions therein.
Bio
Yifei Kong is a PhD candidate in translation studies at the University of Glasgow. Her current
project concerns the reception of Eugene O’Neill in China’s Republican period.

55

Examining the translation of multilingual writing through a translanguaging lens:A case study of the Taiwanese novel Tanch'e shihch'ieh chi and its English translation
The Stolen Bicycle
Szu-Wen KUNG
National Taiwan University
The integration of multifaceted languages in a literary work mirrors the unique perspectivesof a society’s culture, development, and history. The Taiwanese novel, Tanch’e shihch’ieh chi,and its English translation, The Stolen Bicycle, are the point of such relevance. This work is
distinctive in its author’s use of multifaceted languages, including Chinese, Taiwanese,
Japanese, English, and indigenous language, reﬂecting the multilingual landscape embedded
in Taiwan's social, historical, and political reality. Against this background, this research
investigates how the translation manoeuvre of such a text into English demonstrates two
main points: 1). the creative use of multifaceted languages as a repertoire of a dynamic
embodiment of assemblage comprising various distributed linguistic and semiotic elements;
and 2). the generative interaction between language and cultures as a translanguaging
practice. For such an investigation, this research draws on the theoretical concept of‘translanguaging,’ which refers to the dynamic language practice of multilingual users thattranscends the boundary not only of languages understood in the conventional ‘code view’
but also between languages and other semiotic resources applied in the meaning-making
process. The qualitative textual analysis focuses on the consistent appearance of the direct
textual approach and the deployment of non-textual semiotics. These textual and nontextual practices highlight not only how the textual normativity presented through therecognised written languages can be destabilised, but also how the translanguaging acts ofmultifaceted languages and their translations in a ﬁctional world make such texts visually
and acoustically cacophonous. This research argues translanguaging as a conceptual
framework can elucidate the non-substantive aspect of translation as a composite oftransculturation and inter-linguistic/-semiotic interplay.
Bio
Dr Szu-Wen Kung is Associate Professor at the Graduate Program of Translation andInterpretation, National Taiwan University, where she coordinates a number of translation
courses, including Translation Practicum - Chinese into English, Translation for Exhibitive
Purposes, Translation of Advanced Journalistic Texts, Translation of Social Science Texts, andIndustrial Internship Courses. Her research interests lie in the cultural turn and a sociologicalapproach to translation research, literary translation in cross-cultural and multilingual
contexts, nonprofessional translation, and multimodal translation. Her recent publications
include a monograph: Translation of Contemporary Taiwan Literature in a Cross-Cultural
Context: A Translation Studies Perspective (2021), published by Routledge, and a journal
article: ‘Critical theory of technology and actor-network theory in the examination oftechno-empowered online collaborative translation practice: TED Talks on the Amara subtitle
platform as a case study’ (2021) published by Babel: International Journal of Translation 67
(1).

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Common childhoods: Children's magazines in 1950s Taiwan and their Japanese sources
Sharon LAI
National Taiwan Normal University
In the 1950s, children’s magazines enjoyed popularity in Taiwan, serving as significant tools
for education and entertainment among school-age children. Notably, magazines like
Dongfang Shaonien (Eastern youth), Xueyou (Students’ friends) and Xin Xueyou (NewStudents’ friends) bore a distinct Japanese influence, raising questions about the potential
emulation of Japanese counterparts by Taiwanese writers and illustrators. However,concrete evidence to support this claim remained elusive. This present study endeavours toestablish that a substantial portion of the content within these Taiwanese magazines was,indeed, translated from Japanese sources, with no attribution to the Japanese writers andillustrators. The author has successfully identified the Japanese origins of more than 200
pieces of content found in these Taiwanese magazines, spanning genres such as fairy tales,
adapted literature works, children’s classics, science fiction, and adventures. While most of
the selected stories in the Taiwanese magazines were relay-translated via Japanese, such as
King Lear and Heidi, some were derived from Japanese sources, such as works by Edogawa
Rampo. The study has pinpointed a total of 17 magazines as sources. Among them, Shogaku
Rokunensei (Sixth Graders) and Shogaku Gonensei (Fifth Graders) contributed over 50 pieces
out of the 200, establishing them as the most translated magazines in Taiwan. As a former
colony of Japan, Taiwan in the 1950s boasted a wealth of Japanese-Chinese translators.
Many of these translators had grown up during the colonial era and were avid readers ofJapanese children’s magazines themselves. It is evident that, although the colonial era
ended in 1945, many young Taiwanese readers continued to access a multitude of stories
penned by Japanese authors, albeit through Chinese translations. The aim of this study is toenhance our comprehension of how world literature circulates among children in Taiwan
through Japan, extending its influence beyond the colonial period.
BioProf Sharon Tzu-yun Lai is a Professor at the Graduate Institute of Translation andInterpretation at National Taiwan Normal University. She received her PhD in Chinese andBilingual Studies from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. In 2014, her article titled “WhoAre They? — In Search for the Unknown Translators in Post-War Taiwan” was honored with aSpecial Mention at the Stephen C. Song Translation Studies Memorial Awards. Her book, A
Detective Agency for Translations, which delves into the translation history of Taiwan during
the Martial Law era, won the Golden Tripod Award for the best book of 2018 (non-ﬁction) by
Taiwan’s Ministry of Culture. Currently, she is engaged in a research project that investigates
the Japanese sources of translated world literature for children in Taiwan. To support thisendeavour, she secured a 3-year research grant (2016-2019) from National Science andTechnology Council and was granted a Japan Foundation Fellowship in 2021.

57

Panel Discussion
Negotiating the Borders, Challenges and Opportunities of Translation in East Asia
Gloria LEE
SOAS University of London
Bio
Dr. Gloria Lee comes from Hong Kong, and she has been co-organizer of East AsianTranslation Studies conferences since 2014. She is currently Lecturer in East AsianTranslation Studies at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, andrecently awarded the Fellowship of the HEA (Higher Education Academy). Her researchinterests include translation discourse in modern China, translation in Hong Kong, agency intranslation practice and translation pedagogy focusing on cooperative learning, inclusiveclassroom and learning technologies. Her recent publication ‘Representing Conrad inModern China’ is collected in an anthology of Joseph Conrad: Conrad Without Borders.
Transcultural and Transtextual Perspectives published with Bloomsbury in 2023.

58

Panel Discussion
Negotiating the Borders, Challenges and Opportunities of Translation in East Asia
Seryun LEE
Hankuk University of Foreign Studies
Bio
Dr Seryun Lee is a Research Professor at the Semiosis Research Center at Hankuk Universityof Foreign Studies, South Korea. She holds a PhD in translation and intercultural studies fromthe University of Manchester, UK. Prior to joining her current institution, she served as a
Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Korean studies at the University of Queensland. Her researchinterests centre on translation in digital media culture, audiovisual translation and screen
culture, online communication, and contemporary Korean culture and society. Her work has
been published in a number of international peer-reviewed journals in media and cultural
studies, including the International Journal of Cultural Studies, Social Media + Society, andContinuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies. She has also coordinated and taught various
undergraduate and postgraduate courses on translation theory and practice in Australia andSouth Korea.

59Subtitling dialect humour from Chinese to English: A reception study
Hanbin LI
Newcastle University
The use of dialect in audiovisual products, particularly for humour, has become increasingly
common in both Chinese and international productions. However, the translation of dialecthumour presents a formidable challenge, as both its key elements, dialect and humour, arefrequently deemed 'untranslatable.' This challenge is ampliﬁed by the constraints of
Audiovisual Translation (AVT) and substantial cultural diﬀerences, particularly when dealing
with languages/cultures characterized by distant cultural proximity, as is often the case with
Chinese and English. Consequently, there is a global tendency of standardisation, often
resulting in a loss of intended humour for the target audience. Recent research in AVT has
explored creative ways to translate dialects and accents and the preservation of linguistic
nuances that contribute to humour and cultural identity. This exploration has mainly taken
the form of case studies and comparative textual analyses. The study shifts the focus to thetarget audience's perspective, aiming to investigate how subtitling strategies inﬂuenceviewers' perception of dialect humour and whether this impacts their overall perception of
AVT, the audiovisual product, or the source culture. The methodology entails the use ofquestionnaires and interviews with a diverse selection of participants, encompassing both
source and target audiences. These participants will be exposed to a series of video clips
featuring dialect humour (original and subtitled versions). Subsequently, an analysis will be
conducted to discern the impact of these diﬀerent subtitling techniques on the target
audience's perception of humour and to assess whether their interpretations align with ordiverge from those of the source audience. By delving into the intricate relationshipbetween subtitling strategies, the reception of dialect humour, and their broader
implications for AVT and cross-cultural comprehension, this research seeks to provide amore nuanced understanding of the complexities of audience perception of diﬀerent
subtitling strategies for dialect humour.
Bio
Li Hanbin is a second-year PhD student at Newcastle University, specializing in subtitling andAudiovisual Translation, and is a recipient of the Newcastle University Overseas Research
Scholarship. Having obtained a Master's degree in Translating and Interpreting from thesame institution, Li possesses a solid academic foundation in translation and interpreting.
In addition to his academic pursuits, Li is an accomplished professional translator andinterpreter. With seven years of experience in freelance translation and interpretation, he
has diligently honed his skills and cultivated a genuine passion for the art of translation.
Li's dedication to the craft has been recognized through the publication of two
translated books. Additionally, for the past two years, Li has been actively engaged inproviding subtitling services to major streaming platforms, including Netflix, iQIYI, andDisney+. His portfolio predominantly comprises reality shows and television programs,
allowing him to explore the nuances of language and its hidden intricacies.

60Divergence and conﬂict: Interpreting the I Ching in Spain through the paratexts in translation
Hongying LI
Xianda College of Economics and Humanities, International Studies University
The I Ching is one of the oldest and most inﬂuential classics in Chinese culture. Since the17th century, the I Ching has been translated into many European languages, travelingthrough the Western world. Previous studies have demonstrated that diﬀerent versions ofEnglish translations have interpreted the I Ching from various perspectives, viewing it as abook of wisdom, a divination manual, a historical document, or a tool for psychologicalanalysis (see Wu 2017, 65-80). These value judgments have greatly inﬂuenced the utilizationand scholarly exploration of the book by Western readers. However, the study of Spanishtranslations of the I Ching remains notably limited, leaving considerable space for crosscultural studies between China and the Spanish-speaking world. Therefore, by analyzing theparatextual elements of three direct Chinese-Spanish translations of I Ching published in
Spain, this research aims to examine how the book has been interpreted in this country. The
ﬁndings reveal divergence and conﬂict among the three versions toward the I Ching’s status
as a ‘repository of wisdom’ and its association with ‘divination’ practices: (1) highlighting
cosmic sagacity, honoring Confucian insights, while distancing from divination; (2) esteemingboth philosophical implications alongside its divination facets, yet positioning philosophy as
the foundation; (3) accentuating practical divination, while critiquing historicalcommentaries for having distorted its essence. This exploration deepens our insights into
the transmission and comprehension of this ancient Chinese classic within the framework of
the Spanish language, society, and culture, thus promoting ongoing dialogue and mutual
inspiration between Chinese and Spanish cultures.
Elorduy, C. 1983. Libro de los cambios. Madrid: Editorial Nacional.
García-Noblejas, G. 2017. I Ching o El libro de los cambios. Madrid: Alianza Editorial.
Vilà, J. and Galvany, A. 2006/2019. Yijing. El libro de los cambios. Girona: Atalanta.

Wu，Lijing. 吴礼敬. 2017. ‘英语世界《易经》 诠释的范式转变’ [Paradigm Shifts in theInterpretation of the Yijing in the English-Speaking World]. PhD diss., Beijing Foreign Studies
University.
Bio
Dr. Hongying Li is a lecturer in the Department of Spanish Philology in Xianda College of
Economics and Humanities, Shanghai International Studies University. She holds a Bachelor’s
degree in Spanish Philology, a Master’s degree in Contemporary Philosophy and a PhD. in
Translation and Language Science. Her current research interests encompass cross-cultural
studies, classical philosophy translation, metaphor in translation, and metaphor-led
discourse analysis.

61

Rewriting for reform: Zhang Deyi’s pseudo-translation in his diplomatic journal
Jiaqi LI
Wuhan University
In order to gather reliable knowledge of Western countries, the Qing Empire (1644-1911)
sent out its overseas missions from 1866 onwards. Serving as a student interpreter and later
mission interpreter, Zhang Deyi (1841-1918) kept a series of journals to record what helearned from other countries. Sishuqi (the Fourth Journal of Strange Things Seen on My
Voyage, 1881) was written after he was promoted as legation interpreter to the United
Kingdom in 1876. Compared with other diplomatic journals written by Qing Envoys during
the same period, Zhang’s Sishuqi seemed to focus on the translation of daily life instead ofpolitical issues. However, recent research has noticed that certain translations in this journal
were actually invented by Zhang to represent domestic politics but in ﬁctitious backgrounds.
Drawing on Gideon Toury’s deﬁnition of pseudo-translations and André Lefevere’s deﬁnitionof rewriting, my research will further examine the source, feature, and motive of Zhang’s
ﬁctitious translation. It reveals that Zhang’s translations were based on the recordings of his
superior oﬃcer Liu Xihong (dates known), who was dismissed for his failure to impeach Li
Hongzhang (1823-1901), the leader of the imperial self-strengthen movement in 1881.
Zhang rewrote over 90 entries of Liu’s diplomatic journal under the name of translation.
Analysing these rewritings shows how Zhang advanced alternative solutions to the imperial
crises for domestic readers in a less controversial way. This case study will enrich theunderstanding of the phenomena of pseudo-translation in the genre of autobiographicalwriting.
Bio
Li Jiaqi serves as an assistant professor at the School of Chinese Language and Literature at
Wuhan University. His research interests include Translation History of Late Imperial China,
Sino-Western Cultural Interaction, Chinese Modern Intellectual History, and Media Discourse
in Contemporary China. His current project focuses on the translation and dissemination ofChinese diplomatic diaries in the 19th-century English world. He presented his research atinternational conferences held by the University of Oxford, the University of Cambridge,
SOAS University of London, and the University of Edinburgh, and received fellowships to visit
Waseda University as well as the University of Zurich in the last ﬁve years. His article
examining the 19th-century British newspaper discourses on a Chinese diplomatic diary, waspublished by the Journal of Chinese Studies in Hong Kong. For more information refer to:https://chinese.whu.edu.cn/info/1044/1884.htm

62

A multimodal social-semiotic approach to the study of translated book covers:
A case study of highly successful English works by Chinese émigré writers
Long LI
Chinese University of Hong Kong
This paper conducts a comparative multimodal study of the covers of highly successful
English works by first-generation émigré writers from the Chinese mainland, and the coversof their translations into Chinese, using multimodal social semiotics to reveal culturaldifferences in their design for different markets of readers. Translated book covers are ahighly prominent paratext (Genette 1997) with a disproportionate ‘semiotic weight’ that
influences reader decisions. Cover information can be particularly revealing of how
Anglosphere publishers position the books as well as the China and East Asian people thatthe books represent to intended readers. Translated book covers have begun to receive
more scholarly attention with growing publications (cf. Mossop 2018; Batchelor 2018).
Amongst these studies, social semiotic approaches (cf. Yu 2019; Li 2021) offer more
systematic and transparent methodologies for studying both the verbal and visual elements
within a common framework. Elsewhere, I proposed an analytical framework for translated
book covers (Li et al. 2019; Li 2021) based on the seminal works in visual communication by
O’Toole (1994) and Kress and van Leeuwen (1996/2021). The present study applies myframework to investigate a larger corpus of translated book covers of a similar genre (highly
successful but politically volatile English works by Chinese émigré writers) and translation
directionality (English>Chinese). The study will shed light on how the book cover
representations of China, in the Anglosphere and in Greater China, as analysed throughmultimodal social semiotics, reflect the cultural and ideological differences between these
two spheres. It calls for more formal recognition of a multimodal turn in translation studies
by further advocating multimodal social semiotics as an empowering tool.
Keywords: Translation; book covers; register; visual grammar; Chinese migrant writers;
multimodality
References: Batchelor, K. (2018). Translation and Paratexts. Routledge. Genette, G. (1997).
Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation, trans. J. Lewin. Cambridge University Press. Kress,
G., and van Leeuwen, T. ([1996] 2021). Reading Images: The Grammar of Visual Design.
Routledge. Li, L. (2021). ‘A translated volume and its many covers: A Diachronic, SocialSemiotic Approach to the Study of Translated Book Covers,’ in M. Kim, J. Munday, Z. Wang,& P. Wang (eds.), Systemic Functional Linguistics and Translation Studies (pp. 191–210).
Bloomsbury. Li, L., Li, X., & Miao, J. (2019). ‘A translated volume and its many covers – amultimodal analysis of the influence of ideology.’ Social Semiotics 29 (2), 261-278. Mossop,
B. (2018) ‘Judging a translation by its cover,’ The Translator 24(1), 1-16. O’Toole, M. (1994).
The Language of Displayed Art. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. Yu, H. (2019).
‘Recreating the Images of Chan Master Huineng.’ A Systemic Functional Approach toTranslations of the Platform Sutra. Equinox.
Bio
Long Li is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Translation at the Chinese Universityof Hong Kong whose research interests include Chinese migrant writers’ successful English
works, ideology in translation, multimodality, and SFL-based contrastive linguistics between
63

English and Chinese. Long obtained his M.A. from the University of Queensland and PhDfrom Macquarie University. In addition to research and teaching, he works professionally as
an interpreter, translator, and examiner for NAATI.

64

Chunking as language processing in interpreting:A corpus-based investigation of chunking patterns
Wenjian LI
Hong Kong Baptist University
Chunking, a memory-managing strategy, has been considered helpful or even necessary forinterpreters to relieve cognitive burden. Previous studies have mostly approached chunking
from a process-oriented perspective, in which case chunking is deﬁned beforehand or
identiﬁed via inference as a strategy that is motivated by the need to reduce cognitive
burden while being reﬂected in the linguistic or behavioural data. Some other studies
postulate chunking, with the same motivation, to be realized through the employment of
formulaic sequences in the product. While the nature of chunks is often deﬁned
heuristically, the notion of chunking in interpreting calls for a more deﬁned reconsiderationthat looks into the linguistic details of this process that manage memory, whereas inpsycholinguistics, particularly with a usage-based orientation, chunking as a domain-generalprocess underlies language processing, learning, and change. This paper adopts the usagebased account for chunking, and aims to harness the power of interpreting corpus data of
English and Chinese to explore how structural cues embedded in the source speech, i.e.,
prosodic, syntactic, and probabilistic predictors, help shape the perceptual chunking
patterns, signalled by the prosodic and sequential features of the target speech, whileinteracting with each other. By aligning chunking in interpreting with up-to-date
psycholinguistic theories, this paper describes the linguistic regularities of chunking in theconstrained language processing of interpreting.
Bio
Ms Wenjian Li is a second-year PhD student at the Department of Translation, Interpreting,and Intercultural Studies, the Hong Kong Baptist University. She obtained her Master’s
Degree in Translation and Interpreting from the Graduate Institute of Translation andInterpretation, the Shanghai International Studies University. She is currently working on her
PhD project examining the cognitive process of chunking in a corpus-based approach. She isalso interested in corpus stylistics and its application in popular music studies.

65

Action research in a hybrid translation classroom:
Integrating human trainee translators and ChatGPT
Wayne Wen-chun LIANG
Soochow University
The emergence of ChatGPT as a potent machine translation (MT) tool marks a signiﬁcantmilestone in the interplay between artiﬁcial intelligence (AI) and human language. This
paper investigates the strengths and weaknesses of ChatGPT in translating culturally speciﬁctexts, addressing the crucial gap in the ﬁeld of Translation Studies concerning the nuanced
intercultural and linguistic demands of literary translation. Although previous studies haveaddressed the eﬃciency of using ChatGPT for translating generic commercial and medical
texts (see Larroyed 2023; Myers et al. 2023; Wang 2023), the complexity of literary texts –characterized by unique writing styles and deep cultural contexts – presents a distinct
challenge for MT systems. Moreover, the use of ChatGPT in translation classrooms has notbeen extensively explored. This study employed a hybrid approach to scrutinize theperformance of ChatGPT in literary translation tasks, focusing on its handling of subtle
linguistic and cultural nuances and the interactions and assessments of the ChatGPTgenerated translations by human trainee translators. The trainees were third-year students
taking a compulsory general translation course in the Department of English Language andLiterature at a university in Taipei, Taiwan. Questionnaires were administered to this groupof translator trainees to understand how they perceived the application of ChatGPT in theirtranslation processes. It is hoped that the present study will contribute to the ongoing
discourse by presenting an action research framework within a hybrid translation classroom
setup. It attempts to evaluate the practicality of integrating AI tools like ChatGPT intotranslation education and to enhance the pedagogical strategies employed in translator
education. By investigating the intersection of human expertise and AI capability, the study
seeks not only to understand the current limitations of MT, but also to forecast the potential
for future collaborations in the ﬁeld of translation pedagogy.
BioWayne Wen-chun Liang is Associate Professor in Translation, Soochow University, Taiwan.
Wayne’s research interests include literary translation, sociology of translation, translation ofregional literature, and machine translation. He has published in international venues,
including Perspectives, Babel and mTm.

66

Explorations of translation strategies for textless back translation:
A case study of two Chinese versions of Spring Moon
Liyuan LIU
Southwest Jiaotong University
In general, when mentioning foreignization and domestication as opposite translation
strategies, scholars presuppose that translating involves two diﬀerent kinds of cultures. A
source language-oriented translation strategy is named as foreignization, and a target
language-oriented approach as domestication. However, in the case of textless backtranslation, with both the source text, though written in a foreign language, and the target
text involved belonging to the same cultural system, the translator is unlikely to selectbetween two cultural directions and show cultural preference. The questions to beanswered are: Can these translation strategies of foreignization and domestication proposedby scholars be fully applied in the process of textless back translation? As a kind of backtranslation, is there any distinction between textless back translation and other kinds oftranslations? If so, what is it? These questions are central tasks of this thesis. When applying
Cultural Return as a strategy, translators face only one option, bringing the ‘exiled Chinese
cultural elements’ back to their homeland. During this process, translators may weather
twists and turns. The more the exotic elements are erased, the better the eﬀect of thereception.
Bio
PhD candidate in the Southwest Jiaotong University School of Foreign Languages andCultures67

Translation as a vehicle of imaging China:
Eileen Chang’s self-translation ‘Stale Mates’ as a case in point
Yifei LIU
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Translation, serving as a pivotal domain for cross-cultural exchange, assumes a multifaceted
and intricate role. Eileen Chang (Zhang Ailing, 1920-1995), an eminent ﬁgure in the annals ofmodern Chinese literature, espouses an instrumental perspective in her approach totranslation, discernible through her extensive corpus of correspondence and prose. This
perspective accentuates the utilitarian function of translation in shaping the ‘image of China’
which is inherently interwoven with the complex fabric of power dynamics, encompassing
Western imperialism, modernization, and ideological polarization. Grounded in Chang’s
instrumental viewpoint, this paper investigates her self-translated work, ‘Stale Mates’(1956), with a particular focus on her deliberate and strategic deployment of translation as atool intricately interwoven within the prevailing ideological currents. It is found that amidst
the crucible of the Cold War, where a shared political agenda was dominant in the UnitedStates, distinct power structures envisioned China through speciﬁc lenses. In navigating theterrain of these divergent power structures, Chang adroitly mobilizes her cultural and social
capital to transcend the prevailing narrative of China. Besides, Chang’s aesthetic notion of‘equivocal contrast’ serves as a political disposition, oﬀering her freedom to balance various
power structures and seek literary expressions, all while preserving her artistic and literary
integrity. In doing so, she portrayed a modern image of China that diﬀered from the Western
mainstream narrative and was closer to what she personally regarded as the ‘authentic’
China.
Bio
I am currently a PhD student in the Department of Translation, The Chinese University ofHong Kong (CUHK). I received my MA degree from Sun Yat-sen University (SYSU). My
research interests include translation history, translation theory and literary translation.

68

Adapting Chinese knowledge into the Japanese context:
Satō Haruo’s compilation and translation of Chinese short stories
Yunrou LIU
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Satō Haruo 佐藤春夫 (1892-1964) is an inﬂuential writer, poet, and a literary critic in
Japanese literary history. However, Satō’s role as a translator has barely received scholarly
attention. In 1936, Kawade Shobō 河出書房 published a translation collection of Chinese
short stories with Satō as the editor, which is the focus of this present study. Satō’sknowledge of Chinese short stories stemmed from Lu Xun’s 魯迅 A Brief History of Chinese
Fiction, in which Chinese ﬁction dating from the Han to the Qing Dynasty was examined.
However, Satō surprisingly ignored Chinese short stories before the Tang Dynasty andincluded those produced in modern China, indicating the inconsistency of the text’s choiceswith Satō’s knowledge of Chinese short stories. To investigate the inconsistency, the author
describes and analyses intertexts of A Brief History of Chinese Fiction in Japan, and delves
into the social milieu within which these intertexts originated. The paper ﬁnds that Satō’s
text choice was interrelated with his response to the Japanese literary circle in the 1930s,
and therefore the receiving culture plays an inﬂuential role in shaping intertexts. By probing
the case with a translational perspective, it is argued that intertextual world incurred bytranslation creates a space where previous knowledge undergoes reformation.
Bio
I am a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Research Centre for Translation, The Chinese University ofHong Kong. I obtained my PhD in Translation Studies from The Chinese University of HongKong. My research interests include literary translation, translation history, translation andpolitics, and Hong Kong literature. I am currently conducting research on translations ofHong Kong literature and Hong Kong literati’s translation of world literature.

69

Multimedia localization:
The Taiwanese production Wave Makers makes waves in global markets
Yun-Fang LO
Chung Yuan Christian University in Taiwan
Netflix’s marketing localization strategy has brought translation into a new paradigm,
allowing many countries to produce original content with multilanguage subtitles. The eﬀort
to translate audiovisual products into the global lingua franca, English, has also propelledlocal ﬁlms and series to popularity worldwide. Taking the drama Wave Makers (人選之人－
造浪者) as an example, it marks the ﬁrst Taiwanese political series to premiere on Netflix in
2023. The series vividly portrays Taiwan’s vibrant election culture and delves into issues suchas sexual harassment, capital punishment, anti-plastic campaigns, LGBTQ equality, and more.
It sparked the ﬁrst wave of the #MeToo movement in Taiwan and, in the process, showcased
Taiwan’s democracy to the world. The objective of this study is to investigate the impact ofNetflix’s translation and localization services on its audience and to explore the reasons why
Wave Makers has garnered global attention. The multimedia localization process,encompassing script translation, subtitling, and dubbing in multiple languages, not only
beneﬁts local audiences but also allows the international viewers to enjoy compelling stories
produced by other countries. Netflix’s technical localization services break down cultural andlinguistic barriers, especially when combined with a well-crafted script. The production of
Wave Makers underscores Taiwan’s capability to create high-quality content for international
audiences. The study, therefore, takes this award-winning miniseries as a case study toinvestigate the sociocultural and political milieu of Taiwanese content and examine how its
English subtitles have captured the attention of foreign audiences.
Bio
Yun-fang Lo received her PhD in Interpreting and Translating Studies at Newcastle University.
She is currently working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Applied Linguistics
and Language Studies at Chung Yuan Christian University in Taiwan. Her research interests
include literary translation, cultural translation, audiovisual translation, cognitive-pragmaticstudies, and literary communication.

70

‘Hard Translation’ and the imagination of proletarian literature:
A study of Lu Xun’s translation of Coke, People, Refractory Bricks
Minqiu LU
Peking University
Lu Xun’s ‘Hard Translation’(硬译) is a more thorough form of direct translation, serving as aunique translation theory in modern China. I argue that ‘Hard Translation’ comprises a seriesof operative mechanisms, including selection, assimilation, translation, exposition, anddissemination. It deeply engages in the evolution of the language, stylistic forms, concepts,
and the construction of proper nouns in the context of Chinese new literature. Concurrently,
they yield novel historical experiences and aesthetic paradigms, opening up bidirectionaland even multidirectional interlingual interactions. Proletarian literature in the 1920s and1930s was not a self-evident concept but rather a dynamic and productive conceptual
framework. The key challenge lay in how to conceive, discuss, and construct proletarian
literature. During the mid to late 1920s, Lu Xun dedicated signiﬁcant eﬀorts to translating
Soviet literary theories and works through Japanese translations. He actively engaged inintense debates concerning the ‘class nature of literature,’ the construction of proletarian
literature, and translation issues. In the context of Lu Xun’s translation practice, ‘Hard
Translation’ went beyond the cultural transfer across multiple linguistic boundaries,
emerging as a radical language revolution and a highly subjective method of imagination andconstruction. Lu Xun’s 1933 translation of Coke, People, Refractory Bricks from Japanese is apiece of Soviet proletarian literature identiﬁed as ‘reportage literature.’ It narrates topics
related to socialist industrial construction and ‘Shock Brigades,’ embracing the intersectionof anthracite and culture, revolution and literature, intellectual labour, and physical labour.
Through his method of ‘Hard Translation’ and the strategy of distinguishing reader cohorts,
Lu Xun induced the revolutionary and imaginative potential of language and style, oﬀering
insights into the form, essence, and trajectory of proletarian literature. His translation works
also contemplate and call for a ‘new intellectual class,’ ultimately, a boundary-breaking ‘newhumanity,’ transcending the traditional limits between intellectual and physical labour.
Bio
Minqiu Lu, a PhD student at Peking University in Beijing, China. My Master’s thesis at PKU isApproach to Proletarian Literature: An Examination of Lu Xun’s Translation of Russian andSoviet Union Literature. My primary research objective and interest is in the area of Leftwing literature, the study of translation and the study of Lu Xun.

71

Seeing with your eyes… and ears:
Museum audio description for the Chinese cultural heritage
Paolo MAGAGNIN
Ca’ Foscari University of Venice
This paper aims to investigate the main factors inﬂuencing accessibility to the Chinese
cultural heritage via translation, focusing speciﬁcally on the production of scripts formuseum audio description (AD). Museum translation is generally understood as a set ofpractices and strategies ensuring the interlingual transfer of textual (verbal) materials
available in an exhibition venue. Museum AD, on the other hand, involves a set of inclusive
practices that improve accessibility to the cultural heritage by blind and partially sighted
visitors, while potentially oﬀering sighted visitors an enhanced museum experience. In the
Chinese-speaking context, both museum translation and museum AD aim to ensure eﬀective
cross-cultural promotion and the highest degree of accessibility to the Chinese cultural
heritage by non-Chinese-speaking visitors. This goal can be achieved through speciﬁctranslation strategies based on a culturo-conceptual approach, with particular reference tothe treatment of culture-speciﬁc items and stylistic features, the (re)creation of emotional
engagement, and the ﬁltering of the ideological and social factors that form an integral
component of museum communication. Drawing on my experience in the teaching ofaudiovisual translation from Chinese, and through the analysis of a set of case studies from
diﬀerent areas of the Chinese-speaking world, I intend to outline a preliminary methodology
for the production of AD scripts for museums. To do so, I will specially focus on the practicesof translation (both interlingual and intersemiotic), rewriting (transediting andtranscreation), and simpliﬁcation (understood here as the reduction of cultural and sensory
barriers) at play in AD script writing for the Chinese cultural heritage.
Bio
Paolo Magagnin is Associate Professor of Chinese Language and Translation at Ca’ Foscari
University of Venice, Italy. His current research focuses on translation studies applied tomodern and contemporary Chinese language and culture, especially on the sociology ofliterary translation, and museum and tourism translation. In addition to his scholarly
research, he is a translator of contemporary Chinese ﬁction.

72

‘It seems to me’: The untranslatable softening of opinion in Kōda Aya’s ‘Hina’ (1955)
Laura MARSHALL
University of Sydney
Since the ‘cultural turn’ of the 1990s, translation studies have increasingly considered theeﬀect of culture on translation. It is still uncommon for literary scholars, by contrast, toconsider the impact of translation on the works they study. This has led translation scholar
Susan Bassnett to lament the existence of ‘an abyss between the study of world literatureand the study of translation’ (1). My research seeks to cross these disciplinary borders byconsidering the ‘untranslatability’ of modern Japanese literature. Untranslatability refers to
the idea that languages contain elements which are particularly diﬃcult to render into otherlanguages. My research’s translational reading methodology identiﬁes so-called
untranslatables by comparing modern Japanese literary texts with multiple English
translations. This paper will seek to demonstrate the usefulness of considering
untranslatability in highlighting the eﬀect of cultural diﬀerence on Japanese to English
translation. It will present my analysis of the ﬁrst-person use of passive thinking verbs as apotential untranslatable within Kōda Aya’s ‘Hina’ (1955 trans. Tansman 1993 and Sherif1997). This linguistic feature is commonly associated with the Japanese cultural tendency towant to avoid appearing overly assertive (Wakabayashi 115). Hina’s English translators’
diﬀerent strategies regarding this element, I will argue, result in two drastically diﬀerent
versions of the central father character: one, a distanced intellectual ﬁgure who expresses
his opinion judiciously, ‘it seems to me that’s not quite the way to use your energy’(Tansman 188), the other, a rebuking authority ﬁgure who declares harshly that ‘I’m having a
hard time swallowing your way of putting on a show’ (182-83). By highlighting thesetranslators’ varying responses to untranslatability, this paper will reinforce the insights to begained by crossing the borders between literary and translation studies as we seek to better
understand translation’s role in transcending boundaries between languages and cultures.
Bio
Laura Marshall is a PhD candidate in the Japanese Studies Department of the University ofSydney’s School of Languages and Cultures. Her doctoral research considers theuntranslatability of modern Japanese literature by performing comparative translational
analyses of works by the key modern authors Natsume Sōseki, Kawabata Yasunari, Kōda Aya
and Dazai Osamu.
Laura’s research builds on her background in translation and literary studies. This
includes a 2021 Master of Translation at the Australian National University, where she
specialized in literary translation, producing short story translations and analyses of key
modern Japanese literary ﬁgures Kōda Aya and Shimao Toshio, translating Shimao’s ‘Tetsuro
ni chikaku’ (‘Near the Rails’ 1956) and Kōda’s ‘Nōkon’ (‘Navy Blue’ 1970). Before this, Lauraalso completed a literary studies major and degree with honours year at the University of
Melbourne that included a thesis analysing the multiple dimensions of the ‘I’ in Dazai
Osamu’s Ningen shikkaku (No Longer Human 1948).

73

A corpus-based analysis of semantic shifts in the localization of English video game titles
into Chinese
Luis Damián MORENO GARCIA
Hong Kong Baptist University
In the context of the burgeoning global video game industry, the translation and localizationof game titles serve as a critical ﬁrst point of contact between the product and potential
players. Accurate and culturally sensitive translation can signiﬁcantly impact a game's
reception and success in foreign markets. This research underscores the importance of this
aspect of video game localization by employing a corpus-based approach to investigate thesemantic shifts that occur in the translation of English video game titles into Chinese. The
paper compiles a signiﬁcant set of English video game titles along with their Chinesetranslations. This corpus is subsequently analysed to categorize and scrutinize the data. The
research focuses on identifying instances of semantic shifts in the translated titles. Semantic
shifts, changes in meaning extending beyond direct linguistic translation, often occur astranslators adapt to the cultural and linguistic expectations of the target audience. Throughcluster analysis and data visualization, these shifts are examined and categorized based on
their nature and extent. The study also discusses how these semantic shifts reﬂect thestrategies employed by translators and localizers. The implications of these semantic shifts
for both the gaming industry and translation studies are explored, discussing how
understanding these shifts can aid localizers in eﬀectively adapting game titles and othercontent for the Chinese market.
Bio
Dr. Luis Damián MORENO GARCÍA is an Assistant Professor and Chinese-Spanish translator.
He holds a BA in Spanish-English Translation, an MA in Multimedia Translation, an MA in
Teaching Spanish as a Foreign Language, and a PhD in Audiovisual Translation. His researchinterests lie in the ﬁelds of audiovisual translation, translation technologies and localizationin Chinese, English, and Spanish. He freelances as a video game localizer/LQA tester in the
Chinese-Spanish language pair and is also a certiﬁed English-Spanish sworn translator. He is amember of the European Society for Translation Studies, the International Association forTranslation and Intercultural Studies, and the Hong Kong Translation Society.

74Two interpreters in nineteenth-century Japan:
What can TIS ﬁnd out about what historiography has been overlooking?
Mikako NAGANUMA
Kobe City University of Foreign Studies
This paper explores the intersection of seemingly unrelated historical figures in an attempt
to advance the field of Translation and Interpreting Studies (TIS) as an interdisciplinary
endeavour. It does so by examining different categories of interpreters in nineteenthcentury Japan. Focusing on two contrasting interpreters from a TIS perspective is akin toattempting to connect separate dots in order to draw a new line. They have never been
discussed together in historiography. The central focus is on Otokichi (c. 1818-1867) andErnest Mason Satow (1843-1929). Both served as Japanese-English interpreters and eachplayed significant roles in different diplomatic settings. The former was a shipwreck survivor
who was later employed by the British government and involved in a series of negotiations
that led to the Anglo-Japanese Friendship Treaty in 1854. The latter was a renowned British
diplomat and Japanologist who embarked on his career as an official student interpreter
sent to Japan in 1862. This exploration raises intriguing questions. Why have historians not
examined these two individuals together, and how do they relate to each other in TIS
despite appearing so unrelated? The key lies in their roles as interpreters working for the
British government in distinct capacities. It sheds new light on the historical interpreters
who influenced diplomatic relations at the dawn of Japan’s modernization.
Bio
Dr Naganuma is Professor of Translation and Interpreting Studies at Kobe City University ofForeign Studies in Japan. Her research areas include theory, practice, and education basedon her extensive experience as a professional interpreter and translator. Among her current
research topics is to problematize Japan’s modernization from a viewpoint of Translation andInterpreting Studies. One of her main books, Yakusareta Kindai (Translated Modernity),
published in 2017, is now available in Korean as well as in Japanese.

75

Exploring barriers and facilitators for translators and interpreters in audiology clinics:
A mixed-method investigation
Mehwish NISAR
University of Queensland
East Asian languages, including Mandarin, Vietnamese, and Cantonese, rank among the top
ﬁve non-English languages spoken at home in Australia. The East Asian diaspora in Australia
often encounters additional cultural and language tensions when accessing healthcare
services, despite the availability of free government healthcare. Hearing services for children
and older adults are one such case. The increasing involvement of translation andinterpreting (T&I) services in hearing clinics has the potential to enhance access to hearing
care for East Asians with limited English proﬁciency. This study aimed to identify barriers andfacilitators experienced by interpreters/translators from East Asian backgrounds engaging
with hearing care professionals in audiology clinics. This investigation used a mixed-method
approach, including online surveys (n=110 ) and interviews (n=10) with translators andinterpreters across Australia. The COM-B health behavioural model was utilized to identify
barriers and facilitators in behaviour (B) change, in relation to capability (C), opportunity (O),and motivational (M) factors. About one-third of survey respondents reported diﬃculties intranslating English audiology terms. Half (49%) expressed a preference for face-to-faceinterpretation in hearing clinics, and most interpreters (72%) sought a brieﬁng fromaudiologists/audiometrists before appointments. Thematic analysis of interviews revealed
facilitating factors including longer appointment durations with a lower volume ofinterpretation, adapting communication strategies to align with the patient’s cultural norms
and foreknowledge of the patient’s language dialect. Barriers included a lack of educational
resources for translation and interpretation in hearing clinics, interpreters needing to speak
loudly to patients, client concerns about conﬁdentiality and the absence of pre-appointment
brieﬁngs for interpreters on patients’ health conditions. Key strategies that could facilitate
T&I services in hearing clinics include audiologists providing a brieﬁng about patient hearing
loss to interpreters, good quality informational resources about hearing for interpreters,
privacy assurances for patients and setting up systems for regular feedback about T&I
services.
Bio
Dr. Mehwish Nisar is a skilled researcher, trained medical practitioner, and proﬁcient
educator, with a robust career spanning over a decade in both overseas and Australian. Her
research focuses on conducting mixed-methods studies centred on chronic diseases, healthbehaviours, and healthcare access within diverse populations. Dr. Nisar's commitment lies in
identifying factors associated with fostering integration and ensuring equity in various
communities.
As an active member of several professional associations and community organizations,
including the World Health Organization (WHO), Public Health Australia, AustralianMulticultural Health Collaborative, and the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) Collaborator
Network, she has garnered global recognition and media coverage for her impactfulresearch. Notably, she was recently honoured with the Health Promotion Early Career Award
from the Public Health Association Australia.

76Currently serving as a Research Fellow at the UQ School of Health and Rehabilitation
Sciences, she is working on an NHMRC-funded project dedicated to enhancing access tohearing services for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) communities in Australia. Her
keen interest extends to exploring the eﬀective engagement of translation andinterpretation services in hearing clinics. Through her multifaceted contributions, she
continues to make substantial strides in promoting health equity and access within diverse
populations.

77

Rewriting the ‘dirty times’ in the Korean peninsula:
Cultural negotiation in translating division ﬁction in Korea
Suseong PARKSOAS University of London
The Korean War is one of the most tragic and deplorable events in Korea’s modern history,
which marked the prelude to the Cold War and caused terrible massacres with weapons
provided by great powers. The 1950s was the most difficult time and so-called ‘dirty times’
in literature as most of the peninsula was destroyed by the war, essential food for survival
was hard to come by, people could not trust even close neighbours and relatives due tosharp ideological confrontation and innocent people were murdered just because ofdifferent ideologies. However, the Korean War and the division of the country are not over,
but are still ongoing, affecting the lives of the people in all aspects of Korean society,economy and culture. Therefore, it is essential to acknowledge this critical event and hardtimes to understand modern Korean society and culture. Many writers began writing war
stories to testify to future generations of their own experiences of war, and these stories
have firmly established themselves as the genre of division literature in Korean literature.
This study aims to examine how narratives about the Korean War, Korean society andpeople at that time are compromised and changed, forming new narratives based on andconsidering for Western readers’ perspectives and cultural differences when vivid
recollection of this miserable time in Korea is rewritten for Anglo-Saxon readers throughtranslation as a tool, especially for American readers who led and participated in the War.
Bio
Suseong Park is a book translator who has published more than a dozen translated books
from English into Korean, covering various genres from children’s books to business books.
She is a PhD candidate in Translation Studies at SOAS University of London. Her research
focuses on division ﬁction in Korea as peripheral literature, narrative changes in translationand the consequent impact of and strategy for the translation and circulation of peripheral
literature.

78

The concept of heaven in Yan Fu’s translation of Thomas Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics
Yuhan QI
Vrije Universiteit Brussel
After the failure of the Chinese government in the Sino-Japanese War in 1895, Yan Fu (18541921) translated Thomas Huxley’s (1825-1895) Evolution and Ethics (1894) in the hope of
introducing evolutionary ideas including natural selection and survival of the ﬁttest. The ideaof evolution was a Western idea that conﬂicted with traditional Chinese thought. Yan Fu did
not faithfully translate Evolution and Ethics. He chose to translate certain parts andrestructured Huxley’s texts. This article will take the practice of Yan Fu’s translation of
Evolution and Ethics by adding the word ‘heaven’ as an example to discuss how Yan Fureconstructed evolutionary thought from the category of biology to the category of politics
and society.
Thomas Huxley did not use the word ‘heaven’ in Evolution and Ethics, but ‘heaven’ is thecore of Yan Fu’s translation. Yan Fu used ‘heavenly evolution,’ ‘the operation of heaven,’ and‘the selection of heaven’ to translate evolutionary concepts such as evolution, cosmic
operation, and natural selection. He even entitled his translation Theory of Heavenly
Evolution. Since the Zhou Dynasty of China (BC 1046-256), heaven was seen as the source ofpower for the ruling class. On this basis, Confucianism, Taoism and other schools of thought
have put forward the idea of governing the world with heaven like ‘the unity of heaven andhumans.’ Huxley’s texts can be seen as his narrative of evolution. Through the translation of‘heaven,’ Yan Fu reframed the narrative of evolution by labelling, which shows the initiativeof a translator to build his own narrative, according to Mona Baker.
Keywords: Yan Fu; Evolution and Ethics; heaven; Chinese political thought; narrativeBio
Qi Yuhan is a PhD candidate in Translation Studies at Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). Her
PhD focuses on ‘heaven’ in Yan Fu’s translation of Thomas Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics. Yan
Fu combined Chinese culture and political thoughts and his translation to create his own
narrative of the evolutionary theory. Yan Fu’s translation inﬂuenced Chinese society andinspired some promoters in the 1911 Revolution and the New Culture Movement. Thesestudies intend to provide a new perspective to study Yan Fu’s translation of Evolution andEthics and to encourage translators to make their own narratives in the world. Qi Yuhan
obtained her master’s and bachelor’s degrees in Translation Studies at the East China
University of Political Science and Law (ECUPL). She had a one-year internship as a legaltranslator at Shanghai Jones Day Law Firm.

79

Translating Pachinko into Thai: Representations of cultures and the translator’s agency
Gritiya RATTANAKANTADILOK
Em-on POLSIRI
Prince of Songkla University
Pachinko, penned by Korean-American author Min Jin Lee, was published in 2017 and has
been translated into more than thirty languages, including Thai. The translations of culturally
speciﬁc items (CSIs) that represent Korean and Japanese cultures in this novel are examinedin this study. In translating CSIs deﬁned as words or phrases speciﬁc to one culture in
Pachinko into Thai, ‘relay translation’ is at work. In this process, at least three texts are in the
chain and the translation is made from another translation. CSIs from their original
languages, Korean or Japanese, are translated into English by the source text author, Min Jin
Lee, and then the translator of the Thai version, Thitiphong Luengarunlert (2023), translates
these CSIs into Thai. After compiling all Korean and Japanese CSIs in the three books ofPachinko from the English source text and the Thai translated text, the 315 CSIs are ﬁrst
categorized into three levels of culture based on the Iceberg Model, which Katan (2009)
adapted from Edward T. Hall’s iceberg model called ‘Triad of Culture’ (1959). The translation
procedures used by the Thai translator are then analysed by the conceptual grid (Dickins2012). Footnotes that accompany the CSIs in the Thai translated version are also collected.
The accompanying footnotes are then analysed by delving deeper into the functions they
perform, based on the assumption that the level of culture that inﬂuences the translator themost will determine the extent of the translator’s intervention in translation. When CSIs areaccompanied by footnotes, the second voice, that of a translator, is present. By adopting theconcept of agency, which focuses on the signiﬁcance of the people behind the texts,
footnotes can provide a window on translators’ perceptions of their readers and on theirviews of their own task and role.
Bio
Em-on Polsiri is a MA student in Applied English Language Studies in the Faculty of Liberal
Arts, Prince of Songkla University, Thailand. She earned her BA from the same university,
majoring in English and minoring in Translation. As a BA student, she presented a research
paper on queer translation at a conference. She has studied Korean and has been a private
tutor in Korean for several years.
Gritiya Rattanakantadilok is an Assistant Professor of Translation Studies, Faculty of Liberal
Arts, Prince of Songkla University, Thailand. Her published articles and book chapters focus
on literary translation and gender and ideology in translation. Her most recent publication isthe co-authored book chapter entitled ‘Sinophone Thainess: the Problematic Landscape ofCreolization in the Thai-Chinese Translation Zone,’ in Of Peninsula and Archipelago: theLandscape of Translation in Southeast Asia, published by Routledge. Her current researchinterests cover literature written by the Sino-Thais and the Malay Muslims (in the threesouthernmost provinces in Thailand) and paratextuality in translation.

80

Translation, adaptation and ‘reimported’ texts:
BDs and illustrated books of Haruki Murakami’s works
Miki SATO
Sapporo University
The aim of this study is to analyse translations that deviate from the usual ST-TT relationship,using the case of the ‘reimported’ texts of the bande dessinée (BD) of Haruki Murakami’s
works and illustrated books. The BD is based on the French translation of Murakami’s
original stories by Corinne Atlan and Hélène Morita, comicized by Jean-Christophe Deveney(storyline) and PMGL (illustrations). The BD was published in Japanese as a series of ninebooks, Haruki Murakami 9 Stories, from 2017 to 2021, and then in French as a single
volume, Haruki Murakami: Le septième homme et autres récits, in 2021. It is also translated
into English in two volumes in 2023 and 2024. The BD is a distinctive and multifaceted
rendition. Although the original Japanese text is retained in the BD, not all the original
sentences are used, and some parts have been added as part of the comic adaptation, thus
there must be a process of ‘(re)translation’ from French to Japanese. However, the names of
the translators are not given in either the Japanese or English versions. The books illustrated
by Kat Menschik were the German translations of Murakami’s works. The format with her
illustrations has been published in other languages, including Italian, Spanish and Chinese. It
was ‘re-imported’ to Japan as an ‘art book,’ and four Japanese versions have been publishedso far. Two of them, Nemuri (Sleep) and Fushigi na Toshokan (The Strange Library), challenge
the notion of original and translation, as Murakami himself revised the original texts,
inspired by the illustrations. These two cases of ‘reimportation’ of Murakami’s works raisecomplicated questions about the deﬁnitions of ‘original,’ ‘translation’ and ‘adaptation,’ andthe relationship between ‘ST and TT.’ This study attempts to approach the unique circulationof complex transfers and rewritings of Murakami’s texts.
Bio
Miki Sato is a Professor at Sapporo University, Japan, where she teaches English, English
Literature and Translation. She holds an MA in Comparative Literary Theory (University of
Warwick, UK) and a PhD in International Media and Communication (Hokkaido University,
Japan). Her research interests include the reception of foreign literature through translation,paratextual analyses of literary translation, ‘rewritings’ of foreign literature, and the historyof translation and interpreting in early modern and modern Japan. She has recently edited
Tsuji, Interpreters in and Around Early Modern Japan (2023, co-edited with Mino Saito).

81

Is novelization translation?
Nana SATO-ROSSBERG
SOAS University of London
Nichibun-ken
Novelization is very popular in Japan, much more than in other countries. What is
novelization? It is a common practice in Japan to create games, animes, TV dramas, and live
action ﬁlms based on manga or novels. From these derived cultural products, Japanesepublishers then again create novels. Novelizing writers ‘rewrite’ these stories. Novelizations
can sometimes sell more than the original novels, often exceeding sales of 100,000 in theﬁrst edition. Hence, this is a large market for Japanese publishers. There are several famousnovelizers such as Shinobu Momose (1967-), whose novelization of 送り人 (Departure,
Shōgakukan 2008) sold over 1,000,000 copies. I have been working on this subject for four
years. But the pandemic disrupted the work. In this paper, I will discuss novelization as aform of translation and novelizers as translators. This work is based on interviews that I
conducted with novelization authors and publishers. Through analyses of these interviews
and novelizations, the paper aims to reveal the publisher’s strategy in this translation
business and the role of novelization authors as translators. I conclude that novelization isanother creative form of translation, which is struggling with similar issues of recognitionand socioeconomic pressures as traditional literary translation.
Bio
Prof. Nana Sato-Rossberg (Dr) is Chair of the SOAS Centre for Translation Studies (CTS),
Convener of the MA Translation at SOAS, and Executive Council member of the International
Association for Translation and Intercultural Studies (IATIS). Her recent publications include『翻訳と文学[translation and literature]』[ed. Nana Sato-Rossberg] (Misuzu 2021),『 学
問 と し て の 翻 訳 [translation as an academic discipline]』(Misuzu 2020), Diverse Voices
in Translation Studies in East Asia, co-edited with Akiko Uchiyama (Peter Lang 2019),‘Translation in oral societies and cultures’ in The Routledge Handbook of Translation andCulture, edited by Sue-Ann Harding and Ovidi Carbonell Cortés (Routledge 2018), Translation
and Translation Studies in the Japanese Context, co-edited with Judy Wakabayashi(Bloomsbury 2012), Her research interests include cultural translation, contemporary historyof Japanese Translation Studies, and novelization as translation.

82

Who is translating whom?
On omissions of the race narratives from Japanese texts into English
Raj Lakhi SEN
Kanazawa University‘Who is translating whom’ is also the unavoidable question concerning the race and identityof the translator and their relationship with the power dynamics of the author’s culture,political ideologies, and languages. Thus, the translation of narratives serves a dual purpose– it not only serves literary objectives but also highlights the signiﬁcance of politics andhistory, particularly when translations deal with racial representation. This paper focuses on
the works of Japanese writer Mizumura Minae, including The Fall of Language in the Age ofEnglish (translated in 2014) and An I Novel from Left to Right (translated in 2021). Mizumura
Minae, who lived in America and was beloved by the generation of the ‘American boom’ inJapan, explores the quest for Japanese identities inﬂuenced by American media culture andtheir connection to the age-old traditions of Japan’s own literary history. The paper discusses
how her writing and memoirs depict her Japanese race and identity, with a signiﬁcant focus
on the epistemology of the Japanese language and literature within the broader context of
the American race narratology landscape. Notably, these works are translated incollaboration with the author herself and translator Juliet Winters Carpenter, who hasreceived a prestigious lifetime achievement award for her contributions to the translation ofJapanese literature, particularly her translation of Mizumura Minae’s works. On the
responsibility of translator, as Suzanne Jill Levine stated, the translation should be a criticalact, but create doubt, pose questions to the reader recontextualizing the ideology of theoriginal text. (The Subversive Scribe: Translating Latin American Fiction, 1991). This paper
analyses source texts within the context of their political and national identity, as well as thetranslator’s responsibility and positionality in relation to the ideologies presented by theauthor of the ST. It also examines cases where the translation of racial narratives werepartially and un/intentionally omitted, and how these omissions appropriated into the larger
framework of the publisher and readers preconceived the TT and ST(s).
BioPresenter: Raj Lakhi Sen (PhD, University of Tsukuba) is an Associate Professor at Kanazawa
University, Japan. Her research includes Japanese Literature and Law and its translations,published Adoption law and Higuchi Ichio in Modern Japanese literature 2016, PhD thesis‘Critical Analysis of Modern Japanese Literature and Adoption law’(Meiji Bungaku Sakuhin ni
okeru Yoshiho-seido) 2016, papers on ‘Translating Food culture in Murakami Haruki’s novels(2016), forthcoming book chapter is ‘Politics of Translations: What if India, Bangladesh andPakistan munch Doraemon’s ‘honyaku-konnyaku’?, Hiraishi, Noriko. (eds). Japanese PopTexts in Global Contexts, (2023), also published book chapter on ‘Japanese Literature in
English: ‘Dialogue on Japanese Literature in Context of World literature’ (Nihon Bungaku notame no Eigo: Sekai to Kaiwa no Tame no Eigo ni yoru Nihon Bungaku Kenkyu )’ Bungaku
Kouryu Nyumon, (2023).

83

The public perception of Chinese fansubbers in an English as a lingua franca world
Zhourong SHEN
Beijing International Studies University
This paper explores the public perception of Chinese fansubbers in an English as a Lingua
Franca (ELF) world following a mixed-method approach. The analysis is based on aquestionnaire that collects both quantitative and qualitative data from 327 respondents. In
an ELF world, the Chinese viewership has become more linguistically competent toappreciate the works of fansub groups, which in turn reinforce their language learning.
Fansubbers are often treated as amateur translators when compared with professionaltranslators. The ﬁndings reveal that such distinctions, already blurred in the discussions ofacademia, do not seem to matter to the public. Fansubbers are not just translators to the
public, they are also cultural brokers and language educators. They not only teach, but also
motivate a generation of Chinese viewers to engage with foreign language, culture, andtranslation. The public perception of Chinese fansubbers can be positively favourable forreasons beyond good translation quality.
Bio
Zhourong Shen is a Lecturer in the School of Interpreting and Translation, BeijingInternational Studies University. His research interests include translator and interpreter
evaluation, identity and pedagogy. He is also a PhD student of Translation and Interpreting
Studies at the School of International Studies, University of International Business andEconomics, China. Zhourong is a professional translator and interpreter with ten years ofexperience. He has interpreted for hundreds of international conferences and translated six
books.

84

Writing as translation: Exploring translational space in Sayonara, orenji
Akiko UCHIYAMAThe University of Queensland
In their influential work on postcolonial writing, The Empire Writes Back (1989/2002),
Ashcroft, Griffiths, and Tiffin explain the linguistic and cultural alienation that characterizes
the relationship between self and place. Discussing the dislocation that particularly resultsfrom circumstances such as migration and removal, they note how: ‘The gap which opens
between the experience of place and the language available to describe it forms a classic
and all-pervasive feature of postcolonial texts’ (9). We might say that postcolonial writing is
also very much about translation in that the translator negotiates the linguistic and culturalgap between the source and target texts. This presentation posits the link between
postcolonial writing and translation as an investigative framework to discuss Sayonara,
orenji (2013; Farewell, My Orange), the debut novel, written in Japanese and set in an
Australian coastal town, by Australia-residing Japanese author Iwaki Kei. I examine the novel
as the representation and translation of Australia intertwined with the multicultural
identities of Iwaki’s characters whose stories of negotiating self and place in their adopted
country are narrated in the Japanese language. In the fabric of postcolonial
writing/translation, I place a particular focus on epistolary communications from a Japanese
woman character to her former English teacher, putatively written in English, and her
struggle to write a novel in English. The translational aspect of Sayonara, orenji was given afurther layer of complexity, moreover, with the appearance of an English translation,
Farewell, My Orange, published in 2018. I will explore the intricate layers of translation
embedded in the novel, layers that mediate alienation from within.
Bio
Akiko Uchiyama is a Lecturer in the School of Languages and Cultures at the University of
Queensland, where she coordinates the Master of Arts in Japanese Interpreting andTranslation (MAJIT) program. She has research interests in literary translation, modern andcontemporary Japanese literature, gender in translation, postcolonial translation studies,and the cultural history of translation in Japan. Her recent publications include ‘Shinseinenno bungaku-teki tenkai: Morishita Uson to ‘tantei shōsetsu’ no hon’yaku’ (Literary
Development in Shinseinen: Morishita Uson’s Translation of Detective Novels) in Hon’yaku tobungaku (2021) and ‘The Politics of Translation in Meiji Japan’ in The Routledge Handbook ofTranslation and Politics (2018). She co-edited the collections Diverse Voices in Translation
Studies in East Asia (2019) and Border-Crossing Japanese Literature: Reading Multiplicity(2023).

85

A border studies perspective on interpreting/translation zones in early modern Japan
Judy WAKABAYASHI
Kent State University
In a forthcoming chapter in the Routledge Handbook of East Asian Translation I comparedand contrasted diﬀerent groups of interpreters-cum-translators (tsūji) in early modern Japan,
focusing on their historical and professional realities. By contrast, here I seek to reexamine
the nature of tsūji’s work from the viewpoint of (critical) border theory, testing whether thisinterdisciplinary lens might oﬀer an additional means of grasping and linking diverse
phenomena from a holistic, macroscopic perspective. The paper explores the concept ofborders as a potentially meaningful structure or explanatory theory relevant to early modern
Japanese translation history (and, by extension, possibly relevant to other spatial andtemporal contexts of translation). The examples relate to the geographic, political, linguistic,translational, institutional, cultural, religious, professional, and disciplinary borders at workin tsūji contexts. The theoretical framework is applied to and illustrated by frontier scenarios
from Hirado, Nagasaki, Satsuma, the Luchu Islands, Tsushima, the Japanese waegwan on the
Korean Peninsula, and Ezo, involving a range of mostly Asian languages. These liminal spaces
were peripheral only geographically, not in terms of their importance asinterpreting/translation zones where international, national and local forces converged. The
discussion encompasses the antithetical functions of boundaries as barriers and as contact
zones, as well as the tension between building and crossing borders. The paper concludes by
self-reﬂexively addressing the problematic, the validity and the utility of applying a single
trope or metanarrative such as the concept of borders to translation history.
Bio
Judy Wakabayashi taught at the University of Queensland and at Kent State University in
Ohio. Her research mainly focuses on translation history in Japan but also in other parts ofEast Asia and beyond, with a particular interest in the methodology of translation
historiography. Wakabayashi is author of Japanese-English Translation: An Advanced Guide(2021) and numerous articles and book chapters, as well as co-editor of Asian Translation
Traditions (2005), Decentering Translation Studies: India and Beyond (2009), Translation andTranslation Studies in the Japanese Context (2012), Engaging with Asian and Western
Others: Translating and Interpreting in Korean Contexts (2019), and Translating andInterpreting in Australia and New Zealand (2022).

86What brought about the critique shift on Lin Shu’s translation:
A reﬂection on evolving societal expectations of translation
Xingzhi WAN
Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Lin Shu (1852-1924), renowned for his significant contributions to Chinese literature
through his translations of Western novels, emerged as a symbolic figure, almost a ‘brand’in literary translation (Hill 2013). His works represent, to some extent, the characteristics
and deficiencies of novel translations during the late Qing Dynasty and early Republican era(Zhang 2006). Despite garnering a wide readership and respect, Lin Shu’s reputation
experienced a sharp shift during and beyond the New Culture Movement (Mao Dun 1934).
The unique interplay between his opinion on translation, his noteworthy success, and thecriticism he faced offers an intriguing insight into the evolution of translation studies. This
study aims to trace the shift in critiques of Lin Shu’s translations, unveiling the complex
dynamics of societal expectations regarding translation during that era in China. By adopting
a historical perspective and a descriptive paradigm, we delve into the interactions anddebates between Lin Shu and key figures of the New Culture Movement around the 1910s,
supplemented by scholarly commentaries on Lin Shu’s translations. Preliminary results
reveal a significant shift in prevailing translation viewpoints and expectations during thisperiod, encompassing the transition in translation language from Classical Chinese to
Vernacular Chinese, debates over translation norms and quality, as well as the evolution oftranslation features from permitting free adaptation and rewriting to emphasizing fidelity tothe original text. These transformations account for the rise and eventual decline of Lin
Shu’s translations, prompting a reflection on the evolution, reinforcement, and challenges
of societal expectations of translation. Keywords: Lin Shu, New Culture Movement, Chinese
literary translation, critique shift on Lin Shu’s translation.
Bio
Xingzhi Wan is a second-year doctoral student in the Department of Translation andLanguage Sciences at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona (Spain). She holds a BA degreein Spanish Philology from Beijing Language and Culture University and an MA degree in
Global Translation between Chinese and Spanish from Pompeu Fabra University. Her
research focuses on the ﬁelds of comparative literature, translation theory, and intercultural
studies. Currently, her doctoral research revolves around the case study of back-translationof Mo Xia Zhuan, translated by Lin Shu. This study delves into topics such as indirect
retranslation, collaborative translation, and other pertinent theories. Furthermore, herresearch interest also encompasses translator studies and other sociological aspects oftranslation, shedding light on the intricacies of the translation process and its societal
implications.

87Redeﬁning margins in Sinology:
The underacknowledged contributions of Peter Perring Thoms
Chufeng WANG
Huazhong University of Science and Technology
Peter Perring Thoms, who had begun his career as a printer before joining the East India
Company, translated a diverse array of Chinese literary works, signiﬁcantly furthering crosscultural communication between China and the Western world, as well as contributing to
the development of Western Sinology. His translation eﬀorts alone should suﬃce to earn
him the title of a bona ﬁde ‘Sinologist.’ Nonetheless, when placed against the backdrop of
his 19th-century contemporaries, Thoms has received relatively scant attention andacknowledgement from both his British peers and modern Sinological scholars. Recent
academic research on Thoms and his work has been sporadic, lacking a systematic
elucidation of his translation ethos. This study employs qualitative, textual, andobservational methodologies to unearth Thoms’ translation principles through an analysis of
his translation methods, while factoring in the sociohistorical milieu of the 19th century. It
takes into account the pressing demands of Great Britain to penetrate the Chinese milieu forcommercial activities and the prevailing stereotypes of China perpetuated by earlierintercultural envoys, including diplomats, missionaries, and merchants. A steadfast
commitment to ‘faithfulness’ and ‘objectivity’ lies at the heart of Thoms’ translation
principles, which are discernible across four dimensions: the meticulous preservation ofsource text structure, the comprehensive portrayal of source customs, the earnest reverence
for source culture, and the profound humanistic regard for source communities. In an era
marked by Western cultural supremacy and prevalent stereotypes of China as authoritarianand underdeveloped, Thoms maintained an independent and impartial standpoint tounderstand and translate Chinese literature. He also advocated for the British government tosquarely engage with cultural diﬀerences and dispel biases. That stance was notably
advanced for a translator or Sinologist of his time. Until today, Thoms’ translation principles
are still of pioneering signiﬁcance.
Bio
Chufeng Wang is a PhD student in the School of Foreign Languages, Huazhong University of
Science and Technology, Wuhan, China. Her research interest is the history of English
translation of Chinese literature in the 19th century and how cultures and knowledges areshaped, reshaped and disseminated via translation activities.

88Chinese translations of Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman
Liehui WANG
Hong Kong Baptist University
The English novel Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman was initially published in the US in
2007. In the same year, it received the Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Fiction, a
prestigious queer literary award. Since then, the novel has been translated into four Chinese
editions, with two in Taiwan and two in mainland China. The most recent Taiwanese andmainland Chinese editions feature dust jackets adorned with the poster of the ﬁlm
adaptation based on the novel. This article explores the paratextual construction ofqueerness by examining and comparing the peritexts and translated peritexts of the novel,with a speciﬁc focus on the cover images and their interactions with the verbal peritexts.
The analysis applies the framework of visual grammar proposed by Kress and van Leeuwen(2006) to the original image as the departure point and its travelling to the ﬁrst two Chinesetranslations in Taiwan and mainland China. Moreover, the same framework is then used to
examine the image translated on the ﬁlm poster as well, followed by its retranslations in theposter jacketed Chinese editions in Taiwan and mainland China. Following that, with the helpof Roland Barthes’ classiﬁcation model of text-image relationship (1977), the intricate
translational shifts in the images are investigated in conjunction with the verbal peritexts on
the covers, in an attempt to reveal the verbal and non-verbal cooperation in achieving
diﬀerent queer representations of the four Chinese translations. The research is to shed lighton the intricate multimodal shifts that occur within the peritextual frames as they traverse
sociocultural contexts in Chinese-speaking communities. Meanwhile, the article aims to
uncover the subtle negotiations and contestations that peritextual translations engage inwith the prevailing ideologies of the target Chinese cultures.
Bio
Liehui Wang is a PhD candidate in the Department of Translation, Interpreting, andIntercultural Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University. He is also an Honorary Associate in the
Department of Languages, Cultures and Film at University of Liverpool. Meanwhile, he has
been an experienced practitioner in English-Chinese translating and subtitling for many
years. His doctoral research explores the Chinese translations of André Aciman’s English
novel Call Me by Your Name. The research seeks to identify the shifts between the source
text and the four editions of the Chinese translation in terms of the representations of malehomosexuality. He draws on the systemic approach to the study of translation to construct atheoretical framework within which to examine how the translated texts and their paratexts
enter into a dialogue with other texts in the cultural contexts of Taiwan and mainland China,
and with what ideological implications. His research interests are queer translation studies,translation activism, and translation censorship.

89

Exploring the eﬃcacy of ChatGPT in game localization:
An empirical study from player preferences
Peishu WANG
University of Liverpool
This study critically evaluates the potential of ChatGPT in the domain of game localization,
contrasting its AI-driven approach with the established methods of human expertise. As thegaming industry embraces a global market, the complexity of localization – merging linguistic
accuracy with cultural context – gains prominence. Centred on the Chinese gaming
community, the research investigates ChatGPT’s proﬁciency in grasping cultural subtleties
and its eﬃciency in reducing localization resources, benchmarking it against humantranslators. A robust mixed-methods approach is employed, involving a detailed examinationof player preferences through surveys, a comparative analysis of translations from the game
Disco Elysium, and the calculation of BLEU scores for objective assessment, supplemented byexpert reviews for a deeper understanding of qualitative aspects. The ﬁndings are expected
to illuminate the practicality of embedding AI tools like ChatGPT in the localization workﬂow
while discerning the indispensable role of human sensitivity in capturing the full spectrum ofcultural nuances, ultimately aiming to enhance the interplay between AI capabilities andhuman insights in the ever-evolving narrative of game localization.
Bio
Peishu Wang holds an MA degree from the School of Languages and Cultures, Lancaster
University, UK. She is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Liverpool. Her major
research interests are in video game localization and science ﬁction translation. Speciﬁcally,
she focused on the role-playing video game Disco Elysium. She also conducted the analysisof hard sci-ﬁ literature translation on The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke. She also hasstrong interests in translation theory, AI in modern translation strategy, and culturalization ingame localization.

90

BL webtoons in China: Translational fandoms, Chinese nationalism, and the Korean Wave
Qi WANG
Queen’s University Belfast
Korean BL (Boys’ Love) webtoons, famous for the elaborate depictions of homosexuality,
have constituted a new wave of the Korean Wave in China after the THAAD incident in 2016,a watershed moment signalling the deterioration of the bilateral relationship and thedecline of the previous Korean Wave featuring K-pop and K-drama. The scanlation groups
have garnered a significant following on the Chinese internet, especially for their faithfultranslations of the original sex scenes that are censored in the copyrighted translations by
Chinese comics platforms. Despite the undeniable success of Korean BL webtoons achieved
through networks based on Chinese fans’ voluntarism, the vibrant fandoms centred aroundscanlation groups remain unexplored. By situating the translational fandoms within thecontext of Chinese anti-Korean nationalism, the state’s censorship of queer erotica, and theglobal expansion of the Korean Wave, this paper argues that the voluntarism of Chinese fansis contributing to the creation of a new Korean Wave in China. This phenomenon reflects
the negotiations and interactions among nationalism, local content regime, andtransnational neoliberalism. Based on the fieldwork of digital ethnography across Weibo,
Twitter, Xiaohongshu, and Yidan, this paper examines how these fandoms take advantage ofnationalist and neoliberal narratives to seek validity in the state’s cultural governance. On
the one hand, fans and scanlation groups adopt a nationalist standpoint in their translationand consumption. On the other, nationalism does not necessarily lead to fans’ boycott of
the relevant webtoons and artists, as some fans believe consuming webtoons translated byscanlation groups is nationalistic, as they are not making financial contributions to theartists, who are in the business of webtoons. This paper provides a case study of howtranslations in East Asia are shaped by nationalism, gender politics, and neoliberal culturalindustries.
Bio
Qi Wang is a PhD student in translation at Queen’s University Belfast. Her research interests
include fandom studies, nationalism, feminism, social media, the platformization of cultural
production, and intra-Asian communications of popular culture and masculinity.

91How a Chinese social media platform recontextualises Russian strategic narratives:
A case study in news translation
Rui WANG
North China Electric Power University
The free circulation of online videos across platforms, languages and cultures due to their
low-cost and easy-to-produce characteristics allows participatory media agents (Jenkins
2004) to reuse and repurpose ready videos for their own political and commercial aims. This
paper explores this understudied phenomenon through a case study of news videos whichwere originally produced by a Russian international broadcaster RT (formerly Russia Today)
for YouTube but were later recontextualised by a Chinese state-aligned media agent, The
Observer, for Bilibili, which is a leading video-sharing platform in China. Using a contrastive
analysis, this paper examines the translation strategies that the video uploader adopted intheir appropriation of the RT source videos for Bilibili users. This paper also examines how
the uploader’s edits, like the selection of videos, contribute to changes to the Russianstrategic narratives (Miskimmon et al. 2013, 2017) in the target context. The data analysis
demonstrates that by adopting suitable editing techniques the Chinese media agent has
signiﬁcantly changed the Russian strategic narratives to serve its own political and market
agendas. As part of its translation process for the target media context, the uploader hastaken various factors into account, such as the Bilibili audiences’ consumption habits, theirentertainment needs, their pre-existing stereotypes of Putin, Russia and China, and its own
propaganda missions.
Bio
Rui Wang is a Lecturer in Translation and Interpreting Studies at North China Electric Power
University. With a PhD from the University of Manchester, her research interests are diverse,
including translation studies, media studies, political communication and digital cultural
studies. Her work has appeared in the journal Media and Communication and in an edited
volume titled Translation as a Set of Frames, published by Routledge.

92

‘Rebuilding the truth’ and the translation of the Kempeitai documents
Martin WARD
University of Leeds
The Japanese army sought hastily to burn top secret documents from the Kempeitai, Japan’s
wartime secret police, in NE China on the occasion of Japan’s defeat in 1945. However,running out of time they buried tens of thousands of pages, which were later unearthed andare now preserved in the Jilin Provincial Archives in China. Translations of over 1,100 pagesof the total cache of 100,000 documents into Chinese and English were produced andpublished in three volumes each (铁证如山 2014, Concrete Evidence 2015), and the English
translation was later recommissioned to this presenter, and eventually published again in afurther three volumes in 2021 (Insights into Japanese Imperialism Vol. 1-3). There are
significant indications that wider factors, including political motivations, played into theselection of texts for translation and the publicity surrounding the translation and making
public of the documents. This presentation will examine the history of the documents, theirdiscovery and the significance of their existence, situate them historically, outline existing
research into the documents (such as Sa 2014), and present findings from initial forays into
the primary sources, placing a spotlight on the rich and underexplored aspect of the roleand ‘use’ of translation in Sino-Japanese relations. It will examine ethical questions
provoked by the circumstances surrounding the above translations and related publicity anddiscuss the subject of the ‘weaponization’ of translation.
Bio
Dr Martin Ward (PhD, Hiroshima) FHEA PGCAP is an Associate Professor of Chinese andJapanese Translation at the University of Leeds, UK. He has published several China-relatedtranslations from Chinese and Japanese into English of historical documents, Chinesepolitical discourse (such as Chapters 7 & 8 of J. Bian, The Communist Party of China: A
Concise History: ACA Publishing Ltd, 2021), and literature, and also conducts research into
the translation of the Kempeitai documents, Chinese political discourse, translation
pedagogy and international telecollaboration. He is currently a Fellow of the Leeds Institutefor Teaching Excellence, researching barriers to COIL-type interventions, and also employs
international telecollaboration in his translation pedagogy. He is also the founder of the East
Asian Translation Pedagogy Advance (EATPA) network, which brings together educators
teaching East Asian language translation at HE level across the globe to share best practiceand advance pedagogic methodologies.

93Translating Chinese literature: Issues brought by the diversity in Chinese languages
Tin Kei WONG
University of Adelaide
This paper seeks to explore the challenges of translating Chinese literature posed by thediversity of the Chinese languages. While the conventional deﬁnition of Chinese literaturetends to refer to literary works written in standard Chinese from mainland China, Hong Kong,
and Taiwan, works written in a mixture of standard Chinese and dialects in these regions, aswell as other Sinophone communities with various ethnic backgrounds, have been
marginalized in the discussion. The inclusion of these works would further illustrate thecomplexities involved in translating Chinese languages. One of the central challenges stems
from the multilingual nature of the Chinese linguistic landscape. While a signiﬁcant portionof people with a Chinese background do not speak Mandarin, the standard spoken Chinese,as their mother tongue, the standard written Chinese is used in the written communication
system shared by most Chinese speakers. Chinese writers speaking various dialects or having
particular ethnic backgrounds have inserted their unique vocabularies, phonetic expressions,regional slang, cultural references, and grammatical structures into standard Chinese. It is,therefore, a formidable task to retain the distinct essence and cultural nuances of the source
text in translation. This paper aims to discuss these issues with the works of a few writersfrom Taiwan and Hong Kong as examples.
Bio
Tin Kei Wong is a Lecturer in Asian Studies at the University of Adelaide, teaching ChineseStudies and Translation Studies. She is a NAATI-certiﬁed interpreter and translator. Her
research interests include translation of children’s literature, women missionary translators,
and cultural studies.

94Panel Presentation: Taiwanese Aboriginal Literature
Translating Taiwanese literature and Taiwanese Aboriginal literature:Reﬂections on my translation projects
Shuhwa Shirley WU
University of Queensland
This study examines the translation of aboriginality, or indigeneity, in contemporary
Taiwanese Aboriginal literature. Informed by translation studies and postcolonial studies, I
ﬁrst examine the characteristics of this literature. The works studied include Spirits of the
Jade Mountain, Jade Mountain by Vava Husluman (1957-2006) of Bunun people, and Cold
Sea, Deep Love and Memories of Waves by Shammon Ranpoan (1947-). Both writers areamong the ﬁrst generation of Aboriginal People who picked up their pens and spoke to(wrote for) mainstream Taiwanese society. Both writers are among the pioneer Aboriginal
writers who successfully presented their tribal stories and spirit, given that they had to writein Chinese to speak to a wider readership. Through examples, I highlight that border-crossing
and identity construction are closely intertwined in these Aboriginal writings. Furthermore,
spanning over two decades, these works further illustrate the changing positions of theauthor, from marginal to the centre. Signiﬁcantly, Taiwanese Aboriginal literature opens up a
space of dialogue, sometimes a contentious site for the Han people and the Aboriginal
Peoples in Taiwan. The major part of my talk will focus on my translation projects, including
strategies used, and the translator’s positionality and ideology. During the process oftranslating these distinctive Aboriginal voices, I am a cultural researcher and interpreter,even an author – the English voice sometimes explains, sometimes resorts to rewriting. I am
both visible and invisible. Thus, when reﬂecting on my role as a translator, including its
challenges and ‘gains,’ I ﬁnd myself sitting in a dual viewpoint – both inside and outside. Like
the Aboriginal writers studied, I ﬁnd myself undertaking the discourse of Diaspora.
Signiﬁcantly, my journey as a translator also informs the search for my identity.
Bio
Shuhwa Wu obtained her PhD in the School of Languages and Cultures, University of
Queensland, Australia. Currently, she is teaching translation studies at UQ. Her researchinterests include Taiwanese literature, translation studies, and aboriginal literature. Her
thesis examines the colonial inﬂuence upon the construction of identities of TaiwaneseAboriginal people as reﬂected in Taiwanese Aboriginal Literature since the 1980s. She taught
aboriginal literature and culture at the National Cheng-kung University, as well as the
National Tainan University. Shuhwa also worked as a seasonal writer-in-residence at theMuseum of Taiwanese Literature, Taiwan. Wu’s publications include Writing to Find the Way
Home: Taiwanese Aboriginal Literature since the 1980s; Voices from the Mountain:
Taiwanese Aboriginal Literature; The Anthology of Taiwan Indigenous Literature – Short
Stories I; Short Stories II; Anthology: Prose; Anthology: Poetry (co-authored Anthology); andSelf Portrait: Poetry by Tseng Kuei-hai in Chinese, English and Spanish 黃昏自畫像: 曾貴海
華英西三語詩集 (English Translator).

95

Syntactic simpliﬁcation in interpreted English: Dependency distance and direction measures
Han XU
Hong Kong Polytechnic University
This study investigates the simpliﬁcation hypothesis in interpreting, as well as its cognitive
implications, by examining features of syntactic dependency in three language varieties:
English speech simultaneously interpreted from Chinese, original English speech producedby native speakers (L1 speech), and original English speech produced by non-native speakers(L2 speech). Two measures of the dependency relation, namely dependency distance anddependency direction, are employed to explore the distinction among the three language
varieties in terms of their syntactic complexity, amount of cognitive demand, and thetypological property of word order. The ﬁndings reveal that interpreted speech has thelowest mean dependency distance (MDD), followed by L2 speech and L1 speech, whichindicates that interpreted English speech is syntactically more simpliﬁed than original English
speech. The lowest MDD in interpreted speech is associated with the high cognitive demandin simultaneous interpreting, suggesting that increased cognitive demand in language
processing is likely to lead to simpliﬁcation of the syntactic structure of the linguistic output.
Furthermore, dependency direction analysis of the three language varieties indicates thatinterpreted English tends to be more head-ﬁnal than L1 English speech, conﬁrming atypological word order distinction between translational and original language.
Bio
Dr Han Xu is an Assistant Professor at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. Her researchinterests include translation and interpreting studies, corpus linguistics and computational
linguistics.

96

A case study in translating the untranslatable:
Japanese writing systems in Chinese and Korean translation
Hiroko YAMAKIDO
Fuji Women’s University
The Japanese language has three diﬀerent types of writing systems: kanji, hiragana andkatakana. Whereas kanji is morphographic, hiragana and katakana are phonographic (Rogers
2005). Japanese writing typically uses a combination of kanji for content words (e.g., nouns
and verbal stems) and hiragana for function words (e.g., particles and conjugational
endings); katakana characters are normally used for Western loanwords. In contemporary
Japanese novels, it is common to write in mixed kanji-kana style, but there are cases wheresome words unexpectedly appear in a diﬀerent type of writing system. For example, thespeech of young children is written mostly in hiragana to convey a sense of childishness
since children start with hiragana when they learn how to read and write in school. And evenin the speech of adults, words ordinarily written in kanji can appear in katakana to show thatthe speaker does not understand their meanings or cannot recall the appropriate kanji forthem (Kinsui 2018). Thus, Japanese authors sometimes use the technique of manipulating
the use of character types to create special eﬀects. A question then arises as to how thistechnique is dealt with in translation, given that many world languages have only one typeof writing. Do Chinese translators manage to express the eﬀects intended in the original bymeans of their language’s morphographic characters alone? How about Korean translatorswith their phonographic hangul? If not, what kind of techniques do they employ tocompensate for what is lost from the Japanese and still retain the intended eﬀects of theoriginal? In this paper, as a case study to explore these questions, I analyse the original
Japanese along with the Chinese and Korean translations of two novels and one short-short
by Haruki Murakami: Umibe-no Kafuka (Kafka on the Shore), 1Q84, and ‘Yoru-no Kumozaru’(‘The Evening Spidermonkey’).
References: Kinsui, S., ‘Shousetsu-ni okeru Kana-no Ichi Youhou: Murakami Haruki Sakuhin-o
Rei-ni’ [‘An Application of Kana in Novels: A Case Study of Haruki Murakami’s Works’),
Kotoba-to Moji (Language and Writing) 10 (2018), 83-89; Rogers, H., Writing Systems: A
Linguistic Approach, Malden, USA: Blackwell, 2005.
Bio[Name]: Yamakido, Hiroko[Degree]: PhD 2005, Linguistics, Stony Brook University (NY, USA)[Aﬃliation]: Fuji Women’s University (Sapporo, Japan)[Job Title]: Professor[Research Interests]: Translation studies; Japanese linguistics[Membership in Professional Organizations]: The Japan Association for Interpreting andTranslation Studies (JAITS); Linguistic Society of America; Linguistic Society of Japan;
Hokkaido Interpreting and Translation Studies Society
Board member of JAITS (October 2023-present); Kanto branch executive committee memberof JAITS (October 2022-present)[Publications (selected)]:97‘Murakami Haruki Sakuhin-ni okeru Kansai-ben-no Eigo Honyaku-ni tsuite’ (‘The English
Translation of the Kansai Dialect in Haruki Murakami’s Novels and Short Stories’), Tsuuyaku
Honyaku Kenkyuu-e no Shoutai (Invitation to Interpreting and Translation Studies) 22 (2018),
25-45; ‘Nihongo-no Bungaku Sakuhin-ni okeru Gengo Henshu-no Eigo Honyaku: Murakami
Haruki (Cho) Umibe-no Kafuka Nakata-san-no Hanashi Kotoba-kara Kangaeru’ (‘The English
Translation of Nonstandard Forms in Japanese Literature: A Case Study of Nakata’s Speech inUmibe-no Kafuka by Haruki Murakami’), Tsuuyaku Honyaku Kenkyuu-e no Shoutai (Invitation
to Interpreting and Translation Studies) 19 (2015), 1-21; ‘Role Language and Character
Language,’ Acta Linguistica Asiatica 5(2), 29-42 (with Satoshi Kinsui); The Evolution of Human
Language: Biolinguistic Perspectives, Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2010 (coedited with Richard Larson and Viviane Deprez).
[Languages]: Japanese (native), English

98

Negotiating the biological borders:
Pan Guangdan’s translation of Huntington’s The Character of Races (1928)
Caiping YAN
Chinese University of Hong Kong
While it has been agreed that China’s modern understanding of nation and race is largely aborrowed concept, the role of translation in the circulation of the knowledge of race andeugenics is often eclipsed. Centred on a case study of Pan Guangdan’s translation of
Ellsworth Huntington’s The Character of Races, in particular Chapters Ten to Thirteen (‘TheSelection of The Chinese’), this paper investigates how Western racial discourse wastranslated and deployed in Republican China’s quest for social modernity. As an Americantrained evolutionary biologist, Pan published extensively on eugenics, family and marriage,
and social problems in the late 1920s and early 1930s, offering his own lexicon on Cultural
Biology. In his 1928 translation, Pan incorporated Huntington’s theory of ‘natural selection’into his own interpretation of ‘Chinese characters’ as part of his intellectual endeavour toform a biological approach to humanities. Through a historical and textual analysis of thestrategies Pan adopted to translate concepts related to race into Chinese, this paper renders
Pan’s translation as a cultural negotiation between Western sociological ideas and Chinesereforming discourses. In addition to shedding new light on global histories of race, Pan’scase also illustrates the tension embedded in the circulation of the knowledge of eugenics incross-border and multilingual contexts.
Bio
Caiping Yan is currently a PhD candidate in the Department of Translation, The Chinese
University of Hong Kong. Her research interests lie in women’s studies and intellectual
thoughts in late Qing and early republican China. She is currently working on her dissertationon the historical translation of ‘family problems’ in 1920s China.

99

Translated modernity of romanticism:
Guo Moruo, Percy Bysshe Shelley, and May Fourth Chinese New Poetry
Hanjin YAN
Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications
May Fourth Chinese new poetry, whose main source of inspiration was Westernromanticism, does not ﬁt in with the prevailing modernist and Marxist theorizations ofChinese literary modernity. Identifying romanticism as the beginning of Western literarymodernity and recognizing translation as the mechanism for legitimizing Western modernity
in China, this article proposes to describe May Fourth Chinese new poetry as translated
modernity of romanticism because its dual commitment to aesthetic appeal andrevolutionary change, incompatible with modernist and Marxist theorizations, is traceable toWestern romanticism. Through an analysis of the leading May Fourth poet Guo Moruo’s(1892-1978) approach to the poetics and poetry of the British romantic Percy Bysshe Shelley(1792-1822), this article demonstrates how the modernity of romanticism, which displays
both aesthetic and political commitments, became appropriated or translated in the Chinesecontext. It then explores the pervasive presence of translated modernity of romanticism in
May Fourth China by examining Guo’s Shelleyan poetics and poetry assimilated into theworks of admiring May Fourth poets on divergent poetic paths and endorsing diﬀerent
Western romantics. The concept of translated modernity of romanticism, this article argues,
may illuminate the invention of modern poetics in East Asian countries and contribute to thestudies of global romanticism.
Bio
Hanjin Yan is a Lecturer in the Department of Translation at Nanjing University of Posts andTelecommunications. He received his PhD degree from Nanyang Technological University,
Singapore. His articles have appeared in Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory andPractice and NAN NÜ: Men, Women and Gender in China. His research interest covers
literary translation and comparative literature.

100

Investigating interpreter ideology through explicitation
Binyu YANG
Chinese University of Hong Kong
Recently, the study of interpreters’ ideologies has gained scholarly attention. While manystudies have examined interpreters’ ideologies in institutional settings associated with thecentral Chinese government, little research has been conducted on another significant
Mandarin-speaking region, Taiwan. Given that Taiwan is considered more democratic thanmainland China, it is intriguing to investigate how interpreters in political settings perform inthis particular context. In August 2022, US House Speaker Pelosi visited Taiwan and met
with Tsai Chi-chang, Deputy Speaker of the Legislative Yuan of Taiwan. Two interpreters
facilitated the meeting using consecutive mode, and the event was broadcast live by majorinternational media outlets. Given the scarcity of such data, this presents an intriguing
starting point for examining the ideological stance of Taiwanese interpreters. Taking aperspective that views interpreted output as a source of potential meaning, this study
adopts a descriptive approach. To comprehensively analyse the data, critical discourse
analysis (Fairclough, 1989), which effectively reveals interpreters’ ideological interventions
in transnational communications, will be employed in conjunction with the concept of
explicitation. While explicitation has been extensively discussed as a translation universal
and strategy (Baker and Olohan 2000), its exploration from the perspective of interpretingstudies, particularly within the realm of ideologically driven discourses, remains limited. This
study aims to innovatively combine these two notions to investigate the output ofinterpreting discourse, addressing the following questions: (1) Are there significant
ideological shifts in the interpreter-mediated discourse? (2) If so, how do interpreters
manifest these shifts through explicitation? The results show that the Taiwaneseinterpreter’s ideological stance plays a crucial role in the interpreted output, aligning withprevious research findings in the mainland China context (e.g., Gu 2018, 2019; Gao 2022).
What distinguishes this study is its focus on the less explored aspect of explicitation as an
approach to understanding the interpreter’s ideological stance and in its use of realinterpreting data from the context of Taiwan.
Bio
Binyu Yang is a PhD student in Translation Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong,
Shenzhen. He is interested in corpus-based interpreting/translation studies, critical discourse
analysis, and the role of interpreters. He holds a MA degree in Conference Interpreting fromthe University of Bath and was a government in-house interpreter and freelance conference
interpreter for many years. He also taught university-level courses at multiple universities in
China.

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Charting the evolving landscape of fan translation in China
Jun YANG
Swansea University
With the booming of social media and streaming sites, fan translation has gone beyond soap
opera, ﬁlm, animation, and video games. Fans have embraced more diversiﬁed ﬁelds andcontent types; the ways for translation production and circulation evolved as well. In the
Chinese context, translations are produced for user-generated video, celebrity livestream onsocial media, audio drama, podcast, and various learning resources, etc. ‘Danmu’ (bulletcomment) is used for instant subtitle production, short video apps are used for the
dissemination of fan translation, and there is a growing trend for tailored stylistic eﬀects infansubbing. Built upon Jenkins’ (1992) fascination/frustration of fandom and Hill’s (2002) fan
culture theories, the study showcases the new forms of fan translation in China’s media
space and discusses the dynamics of fan translation under the creator economy. I argue that
fan translation is no longer a pure intrinsically motivated hobby or playful activity, but has
been enmeshed to the systems of capital, be it consciously or unconsciously. The study
reveals the new cycle of fan translation production – how it is customized to better suit thecommunity’s preferences, how fan translation is circulated and recreated in a perpetualmanner, and how the value of fan translation is exchanged. It shows that fan translation is acombination of creative and productive practice, which makes it a kind of work and entails
translational labour whose value is actualized through transformative practices in theinternet-based media economy.
Bio
Dr Jun Yang is a Lecturer in English-Chinese Translation and Interpreting at Swansea
University. Her research interest lies in online collaborative translation, particularly in theareas of crowdsourcing translation and fan translation. She is now exploring the interaction
between translation and new media, and more speciﬁcally in the areas of the organization,
production, and consumption of fan translation.

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Selective translation and ideological tensions:
Kim Suyŏng’s adaptation of The Anthill by Suzanne Lavin
Miseon YOON
Dongguk University
This study delves into Kim Suyŏng’s translation of chosen excerpts from Suzanne Lavin’s La
Condition humaine en Chine communiste (1959), which was originally rendered into English
under the title The Anthill: The Human Condition in Communist China (1961). Subsequently,
Korean poet Kim Suyŏng undertook a translation into Korean, retitling it as The Yellow River
Flows: The Tragedy of Hong Kong’s Evacuees (1963). Kim Suyŏng, a prominent poet andtranslator (1921-1968), has provoked substantial critical discourse and controversy within
the annals of modern Korean literature. Of particular interest is the paradox that KimSuyŏng, who once openly identiﬁed as a ‘communist’ and advocated for the ‘resolution of
the Cold War,’ undertook the translation of a text that ostensibly reinforces Cold War
ideology. Kim’s translation strategy involves selective condensation, omissions, and theincorporation of his own commentaries into the text. He translated only eleven out of thenineteen chapters, excluding Chapters 12 through 15 and 19 entirely. Even within thechapters he chose to translate, substantial paragraphs were omitted. This research aims todecipher the underlying intentions behind Kim Suyŏng’s selective translation by means of a
meticulous analysis, both of the translated text itself and the accompanying paratextual
elements. Through this analysis, we endeavour to shed light on the intricate relationshipbetween Kim Suyŏng’s ideological convictions, the constraints of the Cold War era, and histranslation choices. This investigation contributes to a deeper understanding of themultifaceted dimensions of translation practices in a politically charged and ideologicallycomplex context.
Bio
Miseon Yoon is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow on the project team for the Development of
Future English Translation and Interpreting Studies Talents in Cognitive Science and Artiﬁcial
Intelligence at Dongguk University, Seoul. She teaches translation and interpreting practiceat Hankuk University of Foreign Languages, Seoul. She is also an audiovisual translator andhas translated several novels. Her research focuses primarily on postcolonial translation andaudiovisual translation.

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Developing a community of practice through collaborative translation:
Minority languages in translation technology teaching in Hong Kong
Chuan YU
Eugene Alexander BIRMAN
Hong Kong Baptist University
Translation supported by digital and technological tools has brought to the fore thecollaborative nature of translation in recent years (Author A, Jiménez-Crespo 2017). Related
issues that have been examined include translator motivations (Olohan 2014), the actual
process of collaborative translation (Jones 2019), the ethics of digital collaborativetranslation (Zwischenberger 2022), and online translation communities (Author B). Althoughlearning is a prominent motivating factor, the potential of incorporating digital collaborativetranslation into translator training has received scarce attention. This paper examines how
digital collaborative translation engaged in by trainee translators and South Asian (SA) ethnic
minority (EM) teenagers constitutes a learning process, and how the community repertoire
brought in by the participants is negotiated in the production of trilingual (English,
Cantonese, and Urdu/Hindi) videos in the community of practice (CoP) (Wenger 1998)
forged through their shared practice.
We ﬁrstly introduce the research background – our project that examines
multilingualism and multiculturalism in Hong Kong. We then move on to discuss an
ethnographic action research methodology adopted. Following eighteen-month-longethnographic ﬁeldwork, we brought in SA EM teenagers to the translation technology coursethat the ﬁrst author taught. Trainee translators and EM teenagers collaboratively plannedand executed their audiovisual translation projects upon the request of their job
commissioner – the project’s NGO partner. The data collected include ethnographic
ﬁeldnotes taken from the start of the project, course teaching and learning materials, therecordings of all four joint sessions engaged in by both EM students and trainee translators,
the reﬂective journals written by trainee translators, and interviews with all three parties.
Drawing on the CoP theory, the analysis sheds light on how repertoire and knowledge arenegotiated in a CoP in the classroom setting, how collaborative translation is understood by
the participants, and to what extent service-learning is beneﬁcial to translation technology
teaching.
References:
Author A.
Author B.
Fabbretti, Matteo. 2017. “Manga Scanlation for an International Readership: The Role ofEnglish as a Lingua France.” The Translator 23 (4): 456–473.
Jiménez-Crespo, Miguel. 2017. Crowdsourcing and Online Collaborative Translations:
Expanding the Limits of Translation Studies. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Jones, Henry. 2019. “Wikipedia as a Translation Zone: A Heterotopic Analysis of the Online
Encyclopedia and Its Collaborative Volunteer Translator Community.” Target 31 (1): 77–
97.
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Olohan, Maeve. 2014. “Why Do You Translate? Motivation to Volunteer and TED
Translation.” Translation Studies 7(1): 17-33.
Wenger, Étienne. 1998. Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning, and Identity. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Zwischenberger, Cornelia. 2022. “Online Collaborative Translation: Its Ethical, Social, andConceptual Conditions and Consequences.” Perspectives 30 (1): 1–18.

Bios
Chuan Yu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Translation, Interpreting andIntercultural Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University, Associate Editor of the journalInterpreting and Society, and an Aﬃliate Lecturer in the Department of Human Centred
Computing at Monash University. She is the author of Online Collaborative Translation in
China and Beyond: Community, Practice, and Identity (Routledge 2022), and the Principal
Investigator of the project Investigating the Role of Communities and NGOs in Supporting
Sustainable Crisis Translation in Hong Kong (22607423, Research Grants Council, Hong Kong
SAR). Her research lies at the intersection of Translation Studies, Anthropology, and Mediaand Communication Studies. Her research interests include collaborative translation, nonprofessional translation, crisis translation and communication, migration studies, the use of
ethnographic methodologies in TS research, citizen media, and Chinese internet research.
Her articles have appeared in journals such as The Translator, Translation Studies, and The
Journal of Specialised Translation.
Eugene Birman is an Associate Professor at the Academy of Music, Hong Kong Baptist
University, leading the Composition program. A Guggenheim Fellow, he is the creator ofnumerous highly awarded international multidisciplinary productions, with commissioners
and partners extending far beyond the concert hall to major international bodies such as theEuropean Union, Hong Kong SAR, the United States Department of State, and others. His
creative output, encompassing ambitious, socially relevant works for the stage, synthesizes
virtuosic musical content with cutting-edge technology; he has pioneered the use of largescale holography, immersive opera environments, and interactive digital media in classicalmusic. ‘High drama’ and ‘intense emotion’ (BBC), ‘magniﬁcent and compelling’ (OPERA
magazine), ‘the most stunning and divisive’ (Business Times), ‘the most radical andambitious’ (5:4), ‘animalistic’ (Eesti Kultuurileht ‘SIRP’), ‘from haunting and atmospheric toplain brutal’ (BBC Music Magazine), ‘a breakthrough in public art’ (ReNew Vision), ‘at once,
ingenious, hypnotic, brave, and beautiful’ (Festival Internazionale A.F. Lavagnino) – his work
exists at ‘the convergence of major current issues and supreme beauty’ (Gulbenkian).

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Australian English speakers’ reception on food translation in a Chinese culinary documentary
Jia ZHANG
University of New South Wales
Eve Jingwen CHEN
Australian National University
As much as being essential to human survival and well-being, food is considered a cultural
product all along the pathway of its production, preparation and consumption (Montanari2006). Translating food is thus translating culture. The reception of culture has emerged as apopular theme in empirical studies in the recent decade (Suojanen et al. 2015). However,users’ reception remains underexplored in food translation. Aligning with the principles ofuser-centred translation (UCT), which value the needs of the target audience, the quality offood translation is highly dependent on whether and how elements of the foodstuﬀs andfoodways are decoded and received by the audience. In this study, we examine the quality offood translation in a Chinese culinary documentary, A Bite of Shunde, by analysing thereception of an Australian-English-speaking audience on selected subtitled clips. Twenty-two
native Australian English speakers were asked to watch four selected clips and explicate theirunderstanding of the food-related content and its English subtitles in semi-structured
interviews. An informant group comprised of ﬁve professional Chinese translators was also
invited to share their insights to discuss further the strategies for translating food. We havefound that what the audience perceives may not always be consistent with the translators’
presupposition. An analysis of the participant responses shows that cultural misconceptions,problematic word choices, and cross-linguistic variation in stylistic devices are three major
issues. The audience expects the addition of brief but essential information to a foreignizedtranslation of culture-speciﬁc items. Precise wordings are critical for comprehension. As
opposed to translators’ general belief, visuals may not always reinforce understanding,especially when new food-related information is processed. The study is a methodologicalendeavour to examine food translation from a user-centred perspective, and the novel
empirical evidence also provides cross-linguistic and cross-cultural insights into foodresearch and translation practice.
Bios
Jia Zhang is a PhD candidate at the University of New South Wales. His research is mainly
motivated and informed by his experience as a Lecturer in Translation at Sun Yat-sen University
for six years and a Lecturer in Applied Translation Studies at Beijing Normal University – Hong
Kong Baptist University United International College for four years. His research interests
include audiovisual translation, translation technology and translator training.
Dr Eve Jingwen Chen is a Lecturer in the School of Culture, History and Language, College of
Asia and the Paciﬁc, The Australian National University. She has a PhD in Linguistics and mainly
conducts research in the ﬁelds of Culture Linguistics and Cognitive Sociolinguistics. Dr Chen’s
research interests include language and speakers, language and conceptualisations, language
variation in sociocultural contexts, and empirical and interdisciplinary studies on the nexus oflanguage, society, and culture.

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Boundary dis/continuity in fansubbing and professional subtitling of Chinese costume
dramas: Viki vs. Netflix
Ying ZHANG
University of Exeter
The practice of fansubbing came into being from resistance to culturally odourlesstranslations of Japanese anime products. Anime-centric fansubbing opts for unconventional
formal experimentation and foreignizing strategies to oppose the industry’s homogenizing
translation practices. However, the inventive and resistant nature is less prominent in postanime fansubs, as recent scholarship suggests exceptions and diversity among fansubs
across languages, cultures, and genres. The creativity in formal presentation and sourceoriented translations is also observed in professional subtitling. This status quo of subtitlingpractice appears to indicate that the boundary of professional and amateur subtitling isblurring. Here this phenomenon is termed ‘boundary continuity,’ since the two independent
subtitling practices develop a common domain knowledge that can permeate through thein-between boundary, subsequently informing each other.
Against this backdrop, looking beyond Japanese popular culture, this research turns
attention to a domain of Chinese media culture – Chinese TV costume or historical dramas inwhich Chinese traditional cultures abound. Following a revisit of the continuity (constancy)and discontinuity (change) in professional and fan subtitling practices, the research sets out
to investigate how CTCD are translated by fans and professionals. Speciﬁcally, it will examine
how fansubbers and professional counterparts deal with ‘cultural otherness’ imbued in CTCD
in the spirit of promoting familiarity or foreignness. It aims to ﬁnd whether, and if yes, why
there exists boundary dis/continuity and how it is represented in fansubs and professionallytranslated subtitles of CTCD, when it comes to preserving or diluting original ﬂavour of‘cultural otherness.’ It will conduct the comparative analysis of translations of some popular
CTCD by Viki’s fansubbers and Netflix’s professional translators. Also, it will adopt themethod of online archival research on fansubbers’ discursive practices about theirfansubbing work at Viki. The research will have implications for audiovisual translation
studies through subtitling Chinese media culture across borders.
Keywords: dis/continuity; fansubbing; professional subtitling; Chinese TV costume dramas(CTCD)
Bio
I am currently in the ﬁnal year of my PhD study on Translation Studies in the Department of
Languages, Cultures and Visual Studies of University of Exeter. My PhD project is Fansubbing
and xianxia media culture: A case study of ‘Eternal Love’ on Viki, focusing around xianxia
fansubbing culture. My main research question is how xianxia fansubbers translate xianxia
culture in the world of media convergence. The case study I look at is Eternal Love (2017),
the English of Chinese xianxia TV drama Three Lives Three Worlds, Ten Miles of Peach
Blossoms (2017). I explore two versions of English subtitles of the xianxia drama byfansubbers and professional translators on Viki and Netflix and discuss how fansubbers
contribute to the dissemination of xianxia culture.

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Three faces of heroism: An empirical study of indirect literary translation
between Chinese-English-Portuguese of Wuxia ﬁction
Mengyuan ZHOU
Chinese University of Hong Kong
This paper presents an empirical study using digital humanities methods to study thetranslation, circulation, and reconstruction of Chinese contemporary literature in thePortuguese-speaking world. It will focus on indirect translation practice through a case studyof a Portuguese-language version of Louis Cha’s The Legend of the Condor Heroes (《射雕英雄传》) derived from English translation. Using digital humanities methods, specificallycomputational topic modelling (LDA), the study will quantify the transformation of thematic
content related to the concept of heroism from the original Chinese (Xia Yi) as indirectlytranslated into Portuguese through English. It explores whether the Chinese themes ofheroism are adapted, reinterpreted, or even rewritten through the indirect translation
process. This research draws inspiration from the critical role that indirect translation playsin the global dissemination and reception of literature between (semi-)peripheral language
systems and assesses it in the context of Chinese and Portuguese. Scholars often consider
intermediated translations as ‘second-hand’ and ‘distorted’ due to the different target
readership, language and cultural context between the intermediated and target versions,but no empirical exercise has been done to examine the product of this process, especiallyby using the ‘distant reading’ method. This study intends to fill this gap by empiricallymapping and measuring such transformations from the perspective of topic distribution.
The application of the LDA model will enable the detection of underlying topics within thesource, intermediate, and target texts, allowing for a quantitative comparative analysis.
Findings from this research will contribute to the field of translation studies by providing adata-driven perspective on the ways Chinese culture-based concepts in literature arecirculated and reconstructed in the Portuguese-speaking world. This analysis will offer
guidance for improving indirect translation practice and turning ‘second-hand’ literaryexchange into first-hand understanding between (semi-)peripheral language systems.
Bio
Dr. Zhou Mengyuan is a Lecturer in the Department of Translation at the Chinese Universityof Hong Kong (CUHK). Her main research interests include Chinese-Portuguese-English
translation/interpreting studies, with a strong focus on digital humanities, sociologicalapproaches in translation studies, and translation technology. She had published several
articles in international peer-reviewed journals. She is currently working on projects related
to the application of digital humanities tools to analyse translations of Loius Cha’s Wuxia
ﬁction into English and Portuguese as well as amateur translations of the same literary
genre, which are funded by Research Institute for Humanities and Faculty of Arts at CUHK.

108

Post-translation eﬀects of Disney’s Mulan (1998) on queer viewers: A qualitative approach
Patrick Chenglong ZHOU
Chinese University of Hong Kong
This paper treats Disney’s Mulan (1998) as a form of translation in the context of posttranslation studies, and examines its post-translation eﬀects on queer viewers. Through anactive negotiation between post-translation studies and the critical scholarship in media
studies, this paper attempts to answer the question: Through the prism of queer reception,
what post-translation eﬀects of Mulan are projected in the political domain? To answer thisquestion, this paper adopts qualitative single-case study as a research method, which relies
on qualitative data collected from Twitter. They include the texts constructed by queer
community members in reception of Mulan, involving Tweets, illustrations of fan artworks(fanarts) and cosplays, as well as news reports and articles written by non-binary queer
authors. The data show that the queer viewers are zealous to identify with the crossdressing elements and characters in Mulan. In reference to cross-dressing, they tend to use
their own jargon and discursive material ‘drag.’ Based on the case analysis, I propose thatthe queer reception of Mulan takes the form of post-translation rewritings. The original
media sign cross-dressing is discursively rewritten as ‘drag’ by the queer viewers, in order toswell their community’s visibility on social media. The queer viewers’ rewriting practice is aform of political engagement of an activist nature. It constitutes the queer community’swider social practice of political participation, where the longer-term post-translation
repercussions of Mulan inhabit.
Bio
Chenglong Zhou (Patrick) received a PhD in Translation Studies from Monash University,
Australia. He now works as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Translation at the
Chinese University of Hong Kong. His research interests lie at the intersection between
translation theories and the critical scholarship in media studies.

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Translation as an attempt to ﬁll the ‘knowledge gap’ within fan community:
Fan translation in Danmei fandom
Yi ZHU
University of Auckland
Fan translation plays a pivotal role in the overseas journey of Chinese Danmei fiction, i.e. thelocalized version of BL (boys’ love) subculture on the Chinese Mainland, which was suddenly
brought into public sight following the phenomenal success of the TV drama Guardian in
2018. Fan translation activities of Danmei fandom distance from some other fan translation
practices in terms of its distinctive internal mechanisms.
Through case studies into two Danmei novels, namely Guardian by Priest (2018) andGrandmaster of Demonic Cultivation by Mo Xiang Tong Xiu (2018), this study investigates
the translation and dissemination of fan-contributed English translations with the help of
empirical data from online questionnaire surveys and interviews with fan translators, fancontent creators and readers. Borrowing the ideas of a new theoretical discourse termed
the Epistemological Interpretation of Translation, or Translation Studies ofKnowledge/Transknowletology developed by Chinese scholars including Yang (2022) andLan (2022), the author tentatively develops the idea of ‘translation incentivized by the gap in
the common knowledge system within a fandom.’ Upon data analysis, the authorsummarizes the following features of fan translation activities in Danmei communities: (a)translation quality is less regarded compared with the content; (b) the choice of contents tobe translated is decided by the ‘blanks’ and ‘gaps’ in the common knowledge system of thetarget language; (c) greater gaps in the ‘common knowledge system’ leave more room to
fan production and hence the activeness of fan translation. The author therefore argues
that such a ‘knowledge gap’ may be deliberately applied to the production anddissemination of translations in terms of fandom-based literary genres/texts.
Keywords: fan translation; danmei culture; BL culture in East Asia; epistemologicalinterpretation of translation
Bio
PhD candidate. Research area: translation of Chinese literature, game translation, translationof pop cultures in China, etc.

110

A dialogue between Sino-Western legal traditions:
A case study of Yan Fu’s translation of ‘natural law’ in Montesquieu’s The Spirit of Laws
Chiyuan ZHUANG
Shanghai International Studies University
As an integral component of legal culture, legal concepts possess distinct culturalcharacteristics. Translating legal concepts between diﬀerent cultures to facilitate eﬀective
cultural exchange and mutual understanding poses a signiﬁcant challenge for legaltranslators. This paper examines Yan Fu’s Chinese translation of ‘natural law,’ a key concept
in Montesquieu’s classic The Spirit of Laws, as a case study to analyse the connection
between legal translation and cultural traditions in relevant sociohistorical contexts. By
analysing Yan’s choice of words, the paper unveils how Yan Fu reinterpreted Western naturallaw from both religious and ethical perspectives, thereby creating a dynamic dialogue
between Sino-Western legal cultural traditions.
Bio
Dr ZHUANG Chiyuan received her PhD in Translation Studies from The Chinese University ofHong Kong, and is currently a Lecturer in the Translation Department, the School of English
Studies, Shanghai International Studies University. Her research interests include translation
history in China, translation and intellectuals, and legal translation. She is the principal
investigator of the research project ‘Translation and Academic Discourse: The Translation ofAmerican Sinology in Contemporary China’ funded by the China Postdoctoral Science
Foundation (2018-2020). She has (co)translated two books from English into Chinese: The
Old Burma Road (《老滇缅路》) and Draft Oﬃcial History of the China War, 1840-1842(《英国国家档案馆藏鸦片战争史稿》). She has been teaching courses on translation at
both undergraduate and graduate levels.

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