Fetishism, metaphor, and queer translation

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Abstract This article looks at Ta-wei Chi’s short stories “Yinwei wo zhuang” 因為我壯 (“Because I am strong,” 1995) and “Xiang zao” 香皂 (“Soap,” 1996) and their English translations by Fran Martin, “I’m Not Stupid” and “The Scent of HIV” in a 1998 issue of AntiThesis: A Transdisciplinary Postgraduate Journal by the University of Melbourne. These texts provide a unique example of Chi’s challenging of the presuppositions about what cultures hold unacceptable or unspeakable within the context of cultural prejudices or taboos in 1990s Taiwan. Through a close reading of the two short stories in both Chinese and in their English translations, this article demonstrates that the translations indicate a complex, hybrid process that engages questions of contesting heteronormative, hegemonic values of the target culture while at the same time negotiating the challenges of the source texts within the larger context of translating queer literary texts from Chinese into English. Drawing on Marc Démont’s three modes of translating queer texts, I argue that Martin’s translations index an amalgam of minoritising translation and queering translation. This article proposes that a queer critique of an existing translation helps expose the hidden (re)workings of cultural, linguistic and sexual hegemony in a queer literary text that can be potentially explored or exploited. Furthermore, by shedding light on the production of readings, this article argues that queer translation draws attention to multiple potentials to undo the binaries that have authenticated and naturalised our language, knowledge and ways of thinking about sex and sexuality.