James St. Andre applies the perspective of cross-identity
performance to the translation of a wide variety of Chinese texts
into English and French from the eighteenth to the twentieth
centuries. Drawing on scholarship in cultural studies, queer
studies, and anthropology, the author argues that many
cross-identity performance techniques, including blackface,
passing, drag, mimicry, and masquerade, provide insights into the
history of translation practice. He makes a strong case for
situating translation in its historical, social, and cultural
milieu, reading translated texts alongside a wide variety of other
materials that helped shape the image of "John Chinaman". A reading
of the life and works of George Psalmanazar, whose cross-identity
performance as a native of Formosa enlivened early
eighteenth-century salons, opens the volume and provides a bridge
between the book's theoretical framework and its examination of
Chinese-European interactions. The core of the book consists of a
chronological series of cases, each of which illustrates the use of
a different type of cross-identity performance to better understand
translation practice. St. Andre provides close readings of early
pseudotranslations, including Marana's Turkish Spy (1691) and
Goldsmith's Citizen of the World (1762), as well as adaptations of
Hatchett's The Chinese Orphan (1741) and Voltaire's Orphelin de la
Chine (1756). Later chapters explore Davis's translation of Sorrows
of Han (1829) and genuine translations of nonfictional material
mainly by employees of the East India Company. The focus then
shifts to oral/aural aspects of early translation practice in the
nineteenth century using the concept of mimicry to examine
interactions between Pidgin English and translation in the popular
press. Finally, the work of two early modern Chinese translators,
Gu Hongming and Lin Yutang, is examined as masquerade. Offering an
original and innovative study of genres of writing that are
traditionally examined in isolation, St. Andre's work provides a
fascinating examination of the way three cultures interacted
through the shifting encounters of fiction, translation, and
nonfiction and in the process helped establish and shape the way
Chinese were represented. The book represents a major contribution
to translation studies, Chinese cultural studies, postcolonial
studies, and gender criticism.
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