Cover not available

Article published In: Translation in Society
Vol. 3:2 (2024) ► pp.156–176

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB
authorization required

Translation as retelling

A socio-narrative approach to reframing the narratives of Macao through translator agency

ORCiD logo with link | Beijing Normal University-Hong Kong Baptist University United International College (UIC)
Published online: 5 August 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/tris.23022.wan
Abstract
Taking the perspective that translation is a form of (re)narration that participates in (re)constructing social reality (. 2018. “Narrative Analysis and Translation.” In The Routledge Handbook of Translation Studies and Linguistics, edited by Kirsten Malmkjær, 179–193. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), this article examines how translation is used as a rigorous means for mediating meaning, narrativity and cultural representation. Focusing on a case study of Amores do Céu e da Terra: Contos de Macau (2014), a Portuguese version of the original Chinese prose essay collection Youqing Tiandi (1991), this article examines the Portuguese version as “reconto” (retelling) to see how the public (collective) narratives of Macao are reframed by the translators in the target language and culture. The analysis reveals that the original narratives are reconstructed by the Portuguese translators through their agency at the contextual, textual, intertextual and paratextual levels. Such reframing has resulted in a new version that reconstructs the public narratives and cultural image of Macao for Portuguese readers.
Article outline
  • 1.The historical, cultural and public (collective) narratives of Macao
  • 2.A socio-narrative approach to translation
  • 3.Methodology
  • 4.Analysis and discussion
    • 4.1Recontextualising narratives through temporal and spatial reframing
    • 4.2Reframing narratives through selective appropriation and reformulation of textual material
      • 4.2.1Addition
      • 4.2.2Omission
      • 4.2.3Substitution
      • 4.2.4Paraphrasing
    • 4.3Reframing through intertextual adaptation
    • 4.4Reframing through paratextual mediation
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (56)
References
Baker, Mona. 2006. Translation and Conflict: A Narrative Account. 2nd ed. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2007. “Reframing Conflict in Translation.” Social Semiotics 17 (2): 151–169. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010a. “Narratives of Security and Terrorism: ‘Accurate’ Translations, Suspicious Frames.” Critical Studies on Terrorism 3 (3): 347–364. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010b. “Interpreters and Translators in the War Zone: Narrated and Narrators.” The Translator 16 (2): 197–222. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2014. “Translation as Re-narration.” In Translation: A Multidisciplinary Approach, edited by Juliane House, 158–177. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2018. “Narrative Analysis and Translation.” In The Routledge Handbook of Translation Studies and Linguistics, edited by Kirsten Malmkjær, 179–193. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bal, Mieke. 2017. Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. 4th ed. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bassi, Serena. 2015. “Italy’s Salman Rushdie: The Renarration of ‘Roberto Saviano’ in English for the Post-9/11 Cultural Market.” Translation Studies 8 (1): 48–62. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bennett, W. Lance and Murray Edelman. 1985. “Toward a New Political Narrative.” Journal of Communication 35(4): 156–71.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blakesley, Jacob. 2018. A Sociological Approach to Poetry Translation: Modern European Poet-Translators. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Boéri, Julie. 2008. “A Narrative Account of the Babels vs. Naumann Controversy: Competing Perspectives on Activism in Conference Interpreting.” The Translator 14 (1): 21–50. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Boukhaffa, Abderrahman. 2018. “Narrative Reframing in Translating Modern Orientalism: A Study of the Arabic Translation of Lewis’s The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror.” The Translator 24 (2): 166–182. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Buzelin, Hélène. 2011. “Agents of Translation.” In Handbook of Translation Studies (Volume 2), edited by Yves Gambier, and Luc van Doorslaer, 6–12. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cheng, Christina M. B. 1999. Macau: A Cultural Janus. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Clayton, Cathryn H. 2009. Sovereignty at the Edge: Macau & the Question of Chineseness. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Asia Center.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Constantinou, Maria. 2017. “Mediating Terror through Narratives: A Corpus-based Approach to Media Translation.” Lodz Papers in Pragmatics 13 (1): 25–63. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dias, Fernanda. 2014. “Preface of Fernanda Dias.” In Amores do Céu e da Terra: Contos de Macau, written by Ling Ling, translated by Stella Shuk Yee Lee, and Fernanda Dias, 8–13. Macao: Macao Cultural Affairs Bureau.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Elimam, Ahmed Saleh. 2019. “Media, Translation and the Construction of the Muslim Image: A Narrative Perspective.” International Journal of Comparative Literature & Translation Studies 7 (2): 24–32. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ewick, Patricia and Susan S. Silbey. 1995. “Subversive Stories and Heemonic Tales: Toward a Sociology of Narrative.” Law & Society Review 29(2): 197–226.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Faria, Dominique, Marta Pacheco Pinto, and Joana Moura, eds. 2023. Reframing Translators, Translators as Reframers. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Genette, Gérard. 1997. Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Haddadian-Moghaddam, Esmaeil. 2011. “Agency in the translation and production of The Adventures of Hajji Baba of Ispahan into Persian.” Target 23(2): 206–234.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hao, Zhidong. 2011. Macau: History and Society. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Harding, Sue-Ann. 2011. “Translation and the Circulation of Competing Narratives from the Wars in Chechnya: A Case Study from the 2004 Beslan Hostage Disaster.” Meta: Journal des Traducteurs 56 (1): 42–62. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2012a. Beslan: Six Stories of the Siege. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hatim, Basil, and Ian Mason. 1990. Discourse and the Translator. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Khalifa, Abdel Wahab, ed. 2014. Translators Have Their Say? Translation and the Power of Agency: Selected Papers of the CETRA Research Summer School 2013. Berlin: LIT.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kinnunen, Tuija, and Kaisa Koskinen, eds. 2010. Translator’s Agency. Tampere: Tampere University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lee, Stella Shuk Yee. 2014. “Preface of Stella Lee Shuk Yee.” In Amores do Céu e da Terra: Contos de Macau, written by Ling Ling, translated by Stella Shuk Yee Lee, and Fernanda Dias, 14–17. Macao: Macao Cultural Affairs Bureau.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ling, Ling. 1991. Youqing tiandi. Macao: Starlight Publishing House.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2014. Amores do Céu e da Terra: Contos de Macau, translated by Stella Shuk Yee Lee, and Fernanda Dias. Macao: Macao Cultural Affairs Bureau.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lefevere, André. 1992. Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Milton, John, and Paul Bandia, eds. 2009. Agents of Translation. Amsterdam / Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Morales-Moreno, Mónica. 2011. “Displacing the ‘Slum-line’: A Narrative Approach.” Social Semiotics 21 (1): 1–13. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Munday, Jeremy, and Jacob Blakesley, eds. 2016. “Poetry Translation: Agents, Actors, Networks, Contexts.” Special issue of Translation and Literature 25(1).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pina-Cabral, João de. 2002. Between China and Europe: Person, Culture and Emotion in Macao. London: Continuum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ping, Yuan. 2018. “News Translation in the Representations of Hong Kong: A Critical Narrative Analysis of the Legislative Council Oath-taking Controversy.” Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies 5 (3): 231–249. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pormouzeh, Aliakbar. 2014. “Translation as Renarration: Critical Analysis of Iran’s Cultural and Political News in English Western Media and Press from 2000 to 2012.” Mediterranean Journal of Social Sciences 5 (9): 608–619.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Qin, Binjian, and Meifang Zhang. 2018. “Reframing Translated News for Target Readers: A Narrative Account of News Translation in Snowden’s Discourses.” Perspectives 26 (2): 261–276. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Qin, Binjian, and Limin Huang. 2021. “Reframing Opponents in News Translation: A Case Study of the Sino-Philippine South China Sea Dispute.” Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies 8 (2): 130–147. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sanatifar, M. Saleh, and Ali Jalalian Daghigh. 2018. “Translation as Renarration: A Case of Iran’s Nuclear Program as Circulated in the Western and Iranian Media.” Asia Pacific Translation and Intercultural Studies 5 (1): 3–20. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Somers, Margaret. 1992. “Narrativity, Narrative Identity, and Social Action: Rethinking English Working-Class Formation.” Social Science History 16(4): 591–630.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1997. “Deconstructing and Reconstructing Class Formation Theory: Narrativity, Relational Analysis, and Social Theory.” In Reworking Class, edited by John R. Hall, 73–105. Ithaca NY and London: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Somers, Margaret R. and Gloria D. Gibson. 1994. “Reclaiming the Epistemological ‘Other’: Narrative and the Social Constitution of Identity.” In Social Theory and the Politics of Identity, edited by Craig Calhoun, 37–99. Oxford and Cambridge MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van Doorslaer, Luc. 2012. “National and Cultural Images.” In Handbook of Translation Studies (Volume 3), edited by Yves Gambier and Luc van Doorslaer, 122–127. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
van Doorslaer, Luc, Peter Flynn, and Joep Leerssen, eds. 2016. Interconnecting Translation Studies and Imagology. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Venuti, Lawrence. 2008. The Translator’s Invisibility: A History of Translation. 2nd ed. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wan, Tenglong. 2018. “Literary Translation as Cultural Production: The Production, Participants and Practice of Literary Translation in Contemporary Macao.” In Translating Boundaries: Constraints, Limits, Opportunities, edited by Stefanie Barschdorf, and Dora Renna, 171–201. Stuttgart: ibidem-Verlag.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2019. Macao, Macaoness, Macanese: Literary Translation and Cultural Identity in Contemporary Macao (1980–2018). PhD diss. University of Leeds.
Wong, Katrine K. 2014. “Introduction.” In Macao–Cultural Interaction and Literary Representations, edited by Katrine K. Wong, and George C. X. Wei, xxiii–xxxiv. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wu, Zhiliang, and Yunzhong Yang, eds. 2005. Aomen baike quanshu. Macao: Macao Foundation.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue