Author ｜
Chiang Yung-chieh
Abstract ｜
Su Manshu (蘇曼殊, 1884-1918) was known for his foreign language abilities. The source version of his 1903 newspaper serial Can Shehui (慘社會), which was reprinted separately as Can Shijie (慘世界) in 1904, has sparked many critical conjectures: some claim it was translated directly from Victor Hugo’s (1802-1885) original Les Misérables, some believe it was rendered from an English version, and still some speculate it was based on a Japanese text. These judgments are mostly based on the biographical, historical or linguistic information of Su. While each is convincing in its own reasoning, the answer to the question has remained inconclusive. Besides, although Can Shijie is a revised and supplementary version of Can Shehui, the former entails the disputed issue of translatorship for the additional three-odd chapters, and thus should be dealt with in a separate paper. Focused on Can Shehui only, the present paper attempts to trace the source of the Chinese translation by conducting an interlingual, intertextual comparison. After juxtaposing the Chinese text with possible Japanese, English and French versions and examining their relationships, this paper contrives to establish that Can Shehui is rendered from an English version, most probably from Charles E. Wilbour’s (1833-1896) translation.
keywords ｜
Victor Hugo, Les Misérables, Can Shehui, Can Shijie, Su Manshu