Abstract
The postcolonial writer and the translator of literary works possess similar literary challenges. Both are required to explicate unfamiliar elements from an original cultural source or text in a way that is comprehensible to a contemporary global audience. However, for the postcolonial writer this can amount to a certain didactic quality to the literary work, which is a devalued aesthetic within contemporary literary standards. As such, the writer incorporates translative elements in his creative process to get around the problem. To demonstrate this, I analyze and compare the works of two authors, Raja Rao and Eileen Chang. I argue that Rao’s incorporation of the Kannada language into Kanthapura strategically resists prevailing standards of cultural explication, while Eileen Chang’s initial draft of Lust, Caution, written in English as The Spyring, engages in overt cultural explication that fails to capture the nuances of its translated version. The intentional construct of linguistic and aesthetic permutations in both works can be characterized as an act of translation.
Highlights
The postcolonial writer and the translator of literary works possess similar literary challenges
The challenge here is for the author to achieve this without compromising on the literary quality of the work, especially in its empirical standards of narrative traditions coming from writing in the English language. This is especially problematic for the postcolonial writer, since unlike literature produced by and for a literary sphere, where cultural knowledge is presupposed and implicit, writing for an unfamiliar audience necessitates explication and foregrounding of cultural materials, which can amount to an instructional and didactic quality in the writing
In essence the current climate of literary standards places the postcolonial writer in a self-defeating circumstance, requiring engagement in explication, while simultaneously forbidding it
Summary
This awareness of a non-familiar audience is something that permeates the draft of “The Spyring”, which, in contrast to Lovell’s translation, exposes the difficulties of the bilingual author’s decision-making process in creating fiction in English. One of the elements that Li notes is that “When (Chang) writes for an English-speaking audience, she consciously elaborates upon Chinese cultural elements in order to enable these readers to understand the cultural context” (101) This is especially evident in “The Spyring”, which contains express explication of elements that Lovell’s translation merely assumes or embeds within the text. While he is summarily executed in “The Spyring,” in Lust, Caution he only considers his bleak future while privately gloating at his triumph over his lover: But that he had enjoyed the love of a beautiful woman, he could die happy – without regret He possessed her utterly, primitively – as a hunter does his quarry, a tiger his kill. The vast differences in “The Spyring” and Lust, Caution testify to this pressure on the postcolonial author to simplify, given the cultural gulf between the two audiences
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