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Wednesday 8 February 2023, 6-7pm Dr Meiyuan Zhao (Affiliate Academic, UCL), ‘Translating Holocaust Testimonies: An Unusual Chinese Case’
Abstract:
The translation of Holocaust testimonies is a worldwide phenomenon that has been increasingly recognized by scholars in both translation and Holocaust studies. My research focuses on the Chinese translation of two Holocaust testimonies, My Stamp on Life, written by the Jewish survivor Max Stern, and Auschwitz to Australia, written by Stern’s cousin Olga Horak. They are both originally written in English and translated into Chinese by the same Chinese translator Shan Gao.
This case is unusual in several aspects. For example, the translator makes substantial adjustments to the original texts in a way that is quite uncommon in the context of what translators usually do in translating Holocaust testimonies across the world. My interpretation of the unusual features of the Chinese translation is based on theoretical ideas and models borrowed from both Holocaust studies and Linguistics. First, I cast the translator Gao as a “secondary witness” in the transmission of the survivors’ memory. Then, I adopt a model of stance triangle to interpret the stances of Gao towards the Russian soldiers as presented in the translated text. Through contextualization and comparative reading of the translations and their originals, I analyze how the translator plays an active role in creating, mediating, and interpreting the two authors’ experiences of the Holocaust in a specific Chinese target circumstance.
Bio Note:
Meiyuan Zhao is a translation studies researcher. Her current project focuses on the translation of Holocaust testimonies. Her interests also include the translator’s affect and the translation of the biographies of American and British writers in China. She has published the articles “An Investigation of the Western Biographies Published in the Modern Chinese Press” on Journal of Modern Life Writing Studies and “History of the Translation of Shakespeare’s Biographies in China: A Study on the translation of shakespeare's biographies published in the Chinese press in the twentieth century” on Shakespeare Criticism. She is also the Chinese translator of three books: Motherhood (autobiographical novel by Sheila Heti), Encyclopaedia Britannica (5th Volume, The Third Chinese Edition) and Elephant Complex (travel memoir by John Gimlette).