Bloomsbury Academic Western Theory in East Asian Contexts: Translation and Transtextual Rewriting (Literatures, Cultures, Translation)

Literatures, Cultures, Translation presents a new line of books that engage central issues in translation studies such as history, politics, and gender in and of literary translation. Translation studies and adaptation studies are relatively new disciplines. The question of how adaptation should be viewed in relation to translation is still hotly debated. Free Translation, Adaptation, and Imitation is a significant contribution to the debate because it argues, controversially, and via case studies of Chinese and Japanese literature and popular culture, that while the differences between translation and adaptation studies must be recognized, they are not in fact separate fields. Review "Leo Tak-hung Chan's latest book sets bold new parameters for translation studies by showing how this discipline needs to embed practices of adaptation and imitation at the core of its analysis. Taking this expanded field of translation studies as his point of departure, Chan presents richly intriguing case studies from East Asian writing - from free translations of Aesop's fables to adaptations of contemporary manga to imitations of James Joyce - to show how cultural producers in the Sinosphere have creatively remade their source texts in ways that challenge ascendant theories of translation from the global North. This study will be mandatory reading for scholars and students of translation studies everywhere." --Margaret Hillenbrand, Associate Professor of Modern Chinese Literature and Culture, University of Oxford, UK "With a breathtakingly erudite range of examples drawn from trans-textual rewritings in East Asia of the past several centuries, Leo Chan's Western Theory in East Asian Contexts offers a very welcome non-European perspective on longstanding debates over the nature and boundaries of translation. Particularly valuable is its nuanced application to East Asian literatures of current theoretical work covering the spectrum of translation, adaptation, and imitation, inter alia. From contemporary Japanese anime and Taiwanese television dramas to literary classics like Ulysses, Aesop's Fables, and Water Margin, Chan repeatedly demonstrates how a holistic approach to the migration of texts across languages and national or cultural boundaries can yield insights that both corroborate and enrich recent theoretical advances in the field of translation studies." -- Stephen Roddy, Professor of Modern and Classical Languages, University of San Francisco, USA About the Author Leo Tak-hung Chan is Professor of Translation and Head of the Department of Translation at Lingnan University, Hong Kong, China. He began his career as Assistant Inspector of Schools in Hong Kong in the 1980s, and over the years has taught at the City Polytechnic of Hong Kong, Indiana University, Georgetown University and the University of Maryland. His previous publications include Readers, Reading and Reception of Translated Prose Fiction in Chinese (2012) and Twentieth-Century Chinese Translation Theory: Modes, Issues and Debates (2004). Professor Chan is President of the Hong Kong Translation Society; Executive Council Member of the Translators Association of China; Member of the Translation Standards Committee, FIT (2008-2010); Founding Editor of Journal of Modern Literature in Chinese; Advisory Board Member of the journal TTR; Chief Editor of Translation Quarterly; and Chief Moderator of the FDEC (Translation) Examinations of the Institute of Linguists, UK (2000-2004).