On scholar translators in literary translation – a case study of Kinkley's translation of ‘Biancheng’

Abstract

In literary translation, scholar translators distinguish themselves by resorting to discernibly different translation strategies. This paper is a case study of the English translation of Shen Congwen's novella ‘Biancheng’ (Border Town) by a scholar translator – Jeffrey C. Kinkley, a renowned American scholar of history and sinology. Compared with the previous translators of ‘Biancheng’, Kinkley demonstrates obvious differences in his choices, which can be analyzed through his two conspicuous translation strategies: the in-text explications and the out-text endnotes. He tries to re-present as much as possible the unique Chinese expressions in the source text (ST) by inserting extra explanations to what is implied in those expressions. He also provides dozens of endnotes to supply background information of historical, cultural, and local significance, and of ST editions and further readings. Drawing on Casanova's framework (Casanova, 2010), this paper discusses the significance of the translation by probing into the positions of the source language (SL) and the target language (TL), of the author, and of the translator. I demonstrate that the choices made by Kinkley betray his structured habitus as a scholar translator. On the basis of this case study, we might hypothesize that once a text is selected for translation, the position of the translator has greater decisive power; that a scholar translator is more visible in the target text (TT); and that the stronger the academic background of the translator, the more ST-oriented the translation.