Transformation,Reinvention,Complementation

Literary self-translators employ innovative techniques to rewrite,transform and complement the source text,thus providing the translation community at large with fresh food for thought.Nevertheless,the art of self-translation was largely marginalized by modern translation scholars until the turn of the 21st century.Indeed,there are few scholarly works focusing exclusively on case studies of self-translated works,and even fewer theses comparing self-translations with regular translations.Self-translation is,however,gradually gaining popularity amongst Western translation scholars,with many case studies performing systematic analyses of Samuel Beckett and Vladimir Nabokov's self-translated works.However,research on self-translation and relevant theoretical discourse remain quite limited amongst Chinese translation scholars.Unlike regular translators,who are often torn between allegiance for two masters-the original author and the target readership,self-translators challenge this traditional notion of fidelity by serving three "masters",namely their own artistic style,the home culture informing the source text and the target readership's aesthetic preferences.Author-translators break down perceived binary barriers between author and translator,original and "derivative" translation,thus solidifying the translation as a text independent from the original.Self-translation thus broadens the goals and standards of translation itself,enabling translation to cast off the stigma of derivative degeneration and reclaim the high status it once enjoyed during the Middle Ages.In the theoretical framework section,the author examines Derrida's deconstructionist perspective,Lefevere's conception of translation as rewriting,Borges'notion of infidelity in translation,and Lin Yutang's conception of fidelity in translation,among other relevant theories,to cement self-translation as a viable branch of study within Translation Studies,while helping to shed new light on fidelity and infidelity in self-translation.The aforementioned theoretical framework gives rise to three basic principles of self-translation:1)transforming,rather than transposing the source text;2)rewriting and reinventing the source text and 3)complementing the source text by virtue of "infidelity",In the case studies section,the author analyzes and compares bilingual Puerto Rican author Rosario Ferre's own English translation of her Spanish-language short story "La Muneca Menor"("The Youngest Doll")(Ferre 1991)with an English-language version completed by the legendary Gregory Rabassa(Ferre and Rabassa 1980),before comparing Eileen Chang's English-language short story "Stale Mates"(1956)with her own Chinese-language version "Wusi Yishi"(1958).In performing these case studies of Spanish-English and English-Chinese self-translations,the author shows how self-translators'creative and unfaithful translation strategies allow them to transform,reinvent and complement the original,in the hopes that such analysis will help inform the practice of translation as a whole.