Overview

This book explores the processes, aesthetics, and politics of literary self-translation and transmediation in the Sinophone world. This volume will be of interest to scholars in literary translation, translation studies, Sinophone studies, and world literature. Self-translation is the process through which the authors translate their own writing into other languages, with transmediation taking this a step further by adapting works from one medium to another. This volume features longitudinal case studies of multicultural Sinophone writers’ practices of self-translation and transmediation, charting seminal authors’ lifelong adaption projects across language, media, and culture to elucidate processes of cultural transcreation. Friedman examines the works of eminent émigré Sinophone authors—Eileen Chang, Kenneth Pai, Ha Jin, and Regina Kanyu Wang—to better understand how they defamiliarize their own texts and memories through the acts of translating and revising their own writing, and how they write themselves into the historical trajectories of world literature. This book reveals fresh insights into the ways in which Sinophone self-translators and transmediators have mapped China onto the world and vice versa, creating cosmopolitan palimpsests in dialogue with diverse cultural traditions and expanding our understanding of the Sinophone.

Full Product Details

Author:   Ursula Deser Friedman
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
Weight:   0.580kg
ISBN:  

9781041165767

ISBN 10:   1041165765
Pages:   212
Publication Date:   05 May 2026
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  College/higher education ,  Professional & Vocational ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Table of Contents

Preface: Where Am I When I Self-Translate? Introduction: A Reparative (Self-)Translation Zone: Sinophone Self-Translation Enters the World Republic of Letters Chapter One: Transwriting as Method: Eileen Chang’s “She Said Smiling” (Xiangjian huan) Chapter Two: (Self-)Translating Nostalgia: Three Versions of “Winter Nights” Chapter Three: From “Sinful Sons” to “Sons of Humanity”: The Crystal Boys Journey from Page to Stage Chapter Four: From Traduttore, Traditore to Traduttore, Creatore: Ha Jin’s “Good Fall” into Bad English Chapter Five: Exiled in Her Mother Tongue: Regina Kanyu Wang’s Multilingual Speculative Fiction Coda: Lost and Found in (Self-)Translation: Towards a Reparative Translanguaging Praxis References Index

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Author Information

Ursula Deser Friedman is a College Fellow in Translation Studies in the Department of Comparative Literature at Harvard University, United States.

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