Translation and Literary Production: East Asia in the Age of Globalization

Author: Hanping Chiu(Department of English, Tamkang University)

Vol.&No.：Vol. 55, No. 1
Date：March 2010
Pages：57-79
DOI：10.3966/207451922010035501003

Abstract：

Amid talk of East Asia’s rise in the coming decades, the role of Chinese characters in the literary/cultural production in this part of the world should not be obscured by the global use of English. English in its wide currency nowadays .nds a near analogy in Chinese, though in a smaller scale, before the advent of modern times. As East Asia enters the age of globalization, English is growing in significance as a cross-cultural and cross-regional medium of communication, with Chinese lying somewhere between the global language and the national languages in this region. This paper studies East Asia’s literary/cultural production from the perspective of translation in order to explore the role of Chinese in a cultural landscape where the national languages in this region are brought in juxtaposition with English. The conception of translation as the convergence of two languages brought to match each other .nds its origin in Walter Benjamin’s “The Task of the Translator”: “Fragments of a vessel that are to be glued together must match one another in the smallest details” (260). The signi.cance of this view lies in the potentials of becoming, as “the common limit of two convergent series,” (Deleuze, The Fold 17). What translation has in provoking transformations can be attributed to “the common limit,” which has the function of elevating individual traits “to a vision that carries them off in an indefinite, like a becoming that is too powerful for them” (Deleuze, Essays Critical and Clinical 3). To view Chinese as situated in a zone of proximity like this helps reveal singularities of East Asia, which can be treated neither as national, nor as global. Dictee by Theresa Hak Kyung Cha and the popular Korean TV drama Dae Jang-Geum (or Jewel in the Palace) are used for discussions.

Keywords：translation, literary production, cultural sphere of Chinese characters, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha, Dae Jang-Geum

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