Translating Traumatic Memory of Twentieth-Century China: Diasporic Literary Works of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre and Their Translations

我的项目调查翻译和20世纪中国的创伤记忆，具体解决流散文学作品及其翻译如何重建和传递南京大屠杀的记忆跨越国界，文化和几代人。南京大屠杀不仅对中国社会，而且对东亚都产生了巨大而持久的影响。南京大屠杀造成了30多万中国人死亡，幸存者如今已降至61人。相比之下，我的项目提供了翻译，当代中国流亡者文学和南京大屠杀记忆之间相互联系的第一次调查，这不仅将为我们理解创伤写作和记忆形成的语际和跨文化维度提供重要的启示，而且还将对中国历史，记忆和表征的交织进行更多的反思。我将在跨学科框架的基础上进行比较文本分析，该框架以苏珊·巴斯内特的“翻译作为记忆”（2003年、2011年）和贝拉·布罗兹基的“翻译作为一种批判性和动态位移”和“批判性过程翻译”（2007年）的观点为基础。具体来说，我将研究张虹膜的《南京大屠杀》（1998、2005、2007、2013、2015）的不同中文译本，以阐述重新翻译如何在几代人之间重建和传递大屠杀的记忆，并研究其日文和韩文译本，以探索翻译如何在不同的政治、社会和文化背景下重构大屠杀的记忆。我还将比较祁守华的《当紫金山燃烧时》的汉译本和英译本，探讨自我翻译如何影响大屠杀记忆的形成。这项工作将在我的博士二年级（2022/2023）完成。然后，我将通过考察严歌苓《金陵十三钗》的英译和影视改编来探讨跨媒介翻译作为传递创伤记忆的载体。在对翻译文本的研究之外，我将采用翻译的隐喻概念，通过考察哈金的《南京安魂曲》和洪征的《南京不哭》中的文化杂糅和外音写作，来探讨流散文学作为一种翻译形式是如何传递和重构海外大屠杀记忆的。这些任务将在第三年（2023/2024）完成。

My project investigates translation and the traumatic memory of twentieth-century China, specificallyaddressing how diasporic literary works and their translations reconstruct and transmit the memory ofthe Nanjing Massacre across borders, cultures, and generations. The Nanjing Massacre, where over300,000 Chinese people died and whose survivors have decreased to 61 today, has enormous andenduring influence not only on Chinese society, but also on East Asia. Existing studies have examinedthe literary memorialisations of traumatic moments in Chinese history, including the Great Famine,Cultural Revolution, and the Tiananmen Square Protests, in a wide range of works by contemporarywriters from mainland China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong through the theoretical lenses of postmodernism,poststructuralism, and postcolonialism (Yang 2002; Berry 2011, 2016; Feng 2017; Hillenbrand 2017,2020). Comparatively, my project offers the first investigation of the interconnections betweentranslation, contemporary Chinese diasporic literature, and the memory of the Nanjing Massacre, whichwill not only shed important light on our comprehension of the interlingual and cross-cultural dimensionsof trauma writing and memory formation, but also bring greater reflection on the interweaving of Chinesehistory, memory, and representation.I will offer a comparative textual analysis drawing on an interdisciplinary framework underpinned bySusan Bassnett's conception of 'translation as remembering' (2003, 2011) and Bella Brozki's argumentsabout 'translation as a kind of critical and dynamic displacement' and 'critical processual translation'(2007). Specifically, I will examine different Chinese translations of Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking(1998, 2005, 2007, 2013, 2015) to elaborate how retranslation rebuilds and transmits the memory of theMassacre across generations, and examine its Japanese and Korean translations to explore howtranslation reframes the memory of the Massacre in different political, social, and cultural contexts. I willalso compare the Chinese translation of Shouhua Qi's When the Purple Mountain Burns with its Englishoriginal to investigate how self-translation informs the formation of massacre memories. This work will becompleted in the second year of my PhD (2022/2023). Then I will explore trans-medial translation as avector transmitting trauma memory by examining the English translation and film and TV adaptations ofGeling Yan's The Flowers of War. Beyond the study of translated texts, I will adopt the metaphoricalconcept of translation to approach how diasporic literature as a form of translation transmits andreconstructs the memory of the Massacre overseas by examining cultural hybridity and exophonicwriting in Ha Jin's Nanjing Requiem and Hong Zheng's Nanjing Never Cries. These tasks will be finished inthe third year (2023/2024)