Self-Translation as Method

This book explores the process, aesthetics, and politics of literary self-translation and transmediation in the Sinophone world. This volume will be of interest to scholars in literary translation, translation studies, Sinophone studies, and world literature.

Self-translation is here understood as the process through which authors translate their own writing into other languages, with transmediation taking this a step further by adapting work from one medium to another. The volume features longitudinal case studies of multicultural Sinophone writers’ practices of self-translation and transmediation, charting seminal authors’ lifelong processes across languages, media, and cultures to elucidate processes of cultural transcreation. Friedman examines the works of eminent émigré Sinophone authors Eileen Chang, Kenneth Pai, Ha Jin, and Regina Kanyu Wang toward better understanding how they defamiliarize their own texts and memories in the act of translating and revising their own writing and write themselves into the historical trajectories of world literature. The book reveals fresh insights into the ways in which Sinophone self-translators and transmediators have mapped China onto the world and vice versa, creating cosmopolitan palimpsests in dialogue with diverse cultural traditions and expanding our understanding of the Sinophone.

This volume will be of interest to scholars in literary translation, translation studies, Sinophone studies, and world literature.