Author ｜
Chen Hung-shu
Abstract ｜
Bao Tianxiao (包天笑, 1876-1973) translated a number of education novels (教育小說) during the late Qing dynasty, among them Xin’s Journal about School Life (馨兒就學記) being the most renowned. It is known that the novel was translated indirectly from a Japanese translation of the Italian novel Cuore. Bao’s first education novel, Children’s Moral Cultivation (兒童修身之感情), is also based on a story in Cuore, though it was translated indirectly from another Japanese translation by Hara Hōitsuan (原抱一庵, 1866-1904), which was itself translated from an English translation by Isabel F. Hapgood (1850-1928) of the 39th Italian edition of Cuore. These successive translations constitute an intriguing case in translation history. Under the influence of the traditional concept of faithfulness, the notion of relay translation has often been laden with negative connotations, thus the study of relay translation has received little attention. However, it is undeniable that relay translation greatly contributed to the introduction of Western knowledge to late-Qing China and Meiji Japan, suggesting that the study of relay translation is indeed valuable. Prospective research may trace the translation route and attempt to depict the details of the relay process, whether the texts have been changed, what styles the translators have inherited, and what phenomena the evolution reflects. This study attempts to answer these questions through close reading and text comparison. It concludes with four observations as the primary results: 1) literal translation and appropriation happens more readily between similar languages; 2) preferences for archaic style indicate similarity among the translators; 3) effects of dramatic repetition have been accumulated and magnified; 4) omissions and mistranslations of one translator are unavoidably repeated in the following translators’ works, except when such mistakes are too obvious to ignore. The game “Chinese Whispers” is used as a metaphor to describe the relay process in which each player tries to re-present the information and style of the player before them. Closer similarity between languages and players’ preferences may contribute to a better re-presentation of the message, which may be one analogy suggesting why the final Chinese version does not differ largely from the Italian original. However dismissive our impression of relay translation has been, it undeniably has opened up more paths for cultural exchange, while not necessarily resulting in major differences in the end products. Looking deeper into the circumstances of these indirect translations may give us reasons enough to revise our long-held negative view of relay translation.
keywords ｜
Bao Tianxiao, Hara Hōitsuan, indirect translation, relay translation