Series | Translating Wor(l)ds
Review | Between Texts, Beyond Words
Chapter | Another Type of ‘Old Tales Retold’
Another Type of ‘Old Tales Retold’
Translation and Self-Translation, Intertextuality and Self-Intertextuality in Zhang Ailing’s Works
Abstract
This papers deals with Zhang Ailing’s (1920-1995) posthumous novel, Xiao tuanyuan 小团圆 (Little Reunions), written in the ’70s of the last century but completed just before her death, finally published only in 2009, which is an example of the continuous manipulation of the same narrative materials used in previous works, and re-presented here through a politics of self-translation and self-intertextuality. In translating this novel one is confronted with a complex “mosaic of quotations” as Kristeva says, and self-quotations, and is dragged into a forest of meanings derived from the juxtaposition of a variety of external ‘voices’ that mix up with the internal voice of the author. This Bachtinian or babelian quality of the novel, in other words its pluri- and interdiscursivity, challenges the translator, who is called not only to reconstruct the original sources of the allusions, but is also caught between the need of disambiguation and the respect of the intertextual connections implied by the text; he/she has also to cope with the deliberate narrative fragmentation adopted by Zhang.
Submitted: July 30, 2018 | Accepted: Aug. 27, 2018 | Published Dec. 31, 2018 | Language: en
Keywords Translation • Zhang Ailing’s novels • Pluridiscursivity • Self-translation • Intertextuality
Copyright © 2018 Nicoletta Pesaro. This is an open-access work distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction is permitted, provided that the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. The license allows for commercial use. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Permalink http://doi.org/10.30687/978-88-6969-311-3/005
