The translator's voice embodied: Translating the "New Northeast Chinese Writers Group" from text to audio

译者声音的体现：将“新东北作家群”从文字翻译成音频

• 批准号: 2750393
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Warwick
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2022 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2750393
• 关键词: translator; voice; embodied; Translating; New

Anxieties about the fidelity of translation to the work in its original language are still widespread in Chinaand beyond, evinced by the unabating "translation wars" (Remnick 2005) on book review platforms. Inrecent years, the rise of audiobooks across the globe has, in a similar vein, brought about "narratorwars" (Knox 2011:137), where alternative recordings of canonical works trigger listeners' debates overwhich narrator captures "the authorial voice" most precisely. Yet there is an alarming difference betweenthe status of the audiobook narrator and the translator: "the narrator voicing a commercial audiobook isa palpable presence" (ibid:133), while the literary translator is "a self-effacing and distant presence"(ibid).My project will address the following questions: (1) what do audiobook narrators tell us about "voice" intranslated narratives? Do we need to base a translation's success on the distance between the so-called"translator's voice" and the "authorial voice" if mimetic reading (performed not only by audiobooknarrators but occasionally and intermittently, by translators and general readers) inevitably leads toclashing voices-that is, when the written "voice" is confronted with the reading voice? And (2) whatabout the "voice" in literature that is no longer merely a textual presence but an embodiment and a"giving voice to" that is no longer a metaphor but an audial reality? -how might literary translatorsoccupy the role of narrator, giving voice to themselves and making themselves heard by many?To answer these questions, I propose to weave my voice as a literary translator through a two-stagetranslation project, using literary examples from the writings of the "New Northeast Chinese Writers'Group" (Huang 2020) that includes Shuang Xuetao, Zheng Zhi, and Ban Yu. Thematically and formallyshaped by the post-industrial soundscapes of northeast China since the country's market transition,these novels address the lost futures of the region's laid-off industrial workers, whose voices remainedunheeded until the recent renaissance of rust-belt fiction and audio storytelling in China. I will translateat least 1 story from each of the 3 writers from Chinese to English before embodying my translating"voice" by voice-narrating the resultant translations. At the textual translation stage (Stage One: year 1),I will work on the linguistic, literary, and cultural dimensions of these writings by adding footnotes toillustrate how the sounds and voices registered in these stories capture, import, or converge with theextra-textual soundscapes they are embedded in. When turning the translated texts into audiobooks(Stage Two: year 2-3), I will employ Monika Fludernik's reformulations of reader-oriented narratology(1996) and recent scholarship on audio-narratology (Kuzmicová 2016) to offer a hermeneutics of theliterary translator's "self-envoicement". In this way, I aim to produce "literary" translations that not onlyreflect changes in the way translated literature is received and consumed but also improve thepalpability of the literary translator's presence. By re-mediating one's own translation into an audiobookthrough "self-envoicement", the literary translator will finally gain a voice that is audible and intimate toher readers, and genuinely true to herself.

在中国和其他地方，关于翻译是否忠实于原文的争论仍然很普遍，书评平台上持续不断的“翻译战”（Remnick 2005）就是明证。近年来，有声读物在地球仪上的兴起也带来了类似的“叙述者战争”（Knox 2011：137），其中经典作品的替代录音引发了听众的争论，即叙述者最准确地捕捉到了“作者的声音”。然而，有声读物叙述者和译者之间的地位存在着惊人的差异：“商业有声读物中的叙述者伊萨一个明显的存在”（同上：133），而文学译者是“一个谦逊而遥远的存在”（同上）。如果模仿的阅读（不仅由有声读物的叙述者进行，而且偶尔和间歇地由译者和普通读者进行）不可避免地导致冲突，也就是说，当书面的“声音”与阅读的声音相遇时，我们是否需要将翻译的成功建立在所谓的“译者的声音”和“作者的声音”之间的距离上？（2）文学中的“声音”不再仅仅是文本的存在，而是一种具体化，“发声”不再是一种隐喻，而是一种听觉的现实。- 文学翻译家如何扮演叙述者的角色，为自己发声，让许多人听到自己的声音？为了回答这些问题，我建议通过一个两阶段的翻译项目来编织我作为文学翻译的声音，使用包括双雪涛，郑智和班瑜在内的“新东北作家群”（黄2020）的作品中的文学例子。这些小说在主题和形式上都受到了中国东北市场转型以来后工业社会的影响，讲述了该地区下岗工人失去的未来，他们的声音一直被忽视，直到最近锈带小说和有声故事在中国的复兴。我将从这三位作家的每一个故事中翻译出至少一个故事，然后通过语音叙述来体现我翻译的“声音”。在文本翻译阶段（第一阶段：第一年），我将通过添加脚注来说明这些故事中记录的声音和声音如何捕捉，导入或与它们嵌入的文本外音景融合，从而研究这些作品的语言，文学和文化维度。在将翻译文本转化为有声读物时（第二阶段：2-3年），我将采用Monika Fludernik的读者导向叙事学（1996）和最近的有声叙事学研究（Kuzmicová 2016）来提供一个文学译者“自我强化”的解释学。通过这种方式，我的目标是产生“文学”翻译，不仅反映了翻译文学接受和消费方式的变化，而且还提高了文学译者在场的可感知性。通过“自我强化”，将自己的译文重新转化为有声读物，文学译者最终将获得一种读者听得见的、亲近的、真正忠于自己的声音。