Homeward bound translingualism: (Re)translating Dai Sijie’s autonarration

Abstract

Migrant authors writing in foreign languages are one of the most tangible effects of the ongoing globalization of contemporary Chinese literature. Dai Sijie, Chinese émigré writer and film-maker, chose the French language to voice his narration of China. Soon he became an example of how the presence of multiple cultures within an individual can result in self-hybridization. His first novel Balzac et la Petite Tailleuse chinoise (2000) is based on Dai Sijie’s own experience of banishment and tells the story of two youths whose re-education is strongly influenced by Western novels banned in China. But what happens when a literary text born as a translingual and transcultural work is translated “back” into its language (and culture) of origin? Is the mediation performed twice or undone? How does this process affect the author’s representation? This article will answer such questions through a comparative analysis of the novel and its Chinese versions (published in the P.R.C. and Taiwan), by focusing on the linguistic and cultural (re)translations. The “world literature fever” stresses the centrifugal force pushing literature from China to the West, yet globalization is a circular movement that sometimes implies the homecoming of a “Westproof” Chinese literariness.

Keywords

• re-translation
• dai sijie
• hybridization
• translingualism
• autonarration