I am not Madame Bovary: Felicitous mistranslation

Abstract

The title of Feng Xiaogang’s 2016 film, Wo bu shi Pan Jinlian, which literally means I am not Pan Jilian, was translated as I Am Not Madame Bovary for its international release. The film’s heroine, publicly accused by her ex-husband of being a Pan Jinlian, wages a 10-year fight against the bureaucracy of her county to obtain justice. I re-examine the story of Pan Jinlian and its different versions in Chinese culture, as well as the myth of Madame Bovary and how it was translated in twentieth century China, to discuss how the mistranslation of Pan Jinlian into Madame Bovary becomes a portal for cross-cultural exchange. I am borrowing the concepts of heterotopia, écart, montage and obliqueness from the work of French Sinologist François Jullien – as well as François Cheng’s ethical considerations about a necessary dialogue between Chinese and Western cultures. As Chinese and Western thought use different categories of logic, I argue that, beyond the literal accuracy of a translation, a resonance may be created, through an oblique approach, in the mind of the reader or spectator.