Canonisation through Translation and Retranslation

This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the various translations of Journey to the West, including three abridged versions by Arthur Waley, Anthony Yu and Julia Lovell. It examines the translation and retranslation of Journey to the West as a typical case of how literature can be canonised through translation. It also explores how Lovell's retranslation in the contemporary context differs from Waley's and Yu's translations, and why Penguin would include two translations of the same Chinese novel in Penguin Classics. The book provides not only a refreshed understanding of the classic work of literature Journey to the West and its translations, but also new insights into how books can be canonised through translation and retranslation in other languages and cultures. The study utilises a mixed-method approach, including both qualitative and quantitative methods featured by digital humanities based on large-scale corpora, examining style and genre through comparative analyses of the translations and retranslations. This book is of interest to students and scholars in translation studies, language and literature studies, digital humanities, and Chinese studies.

Binhua Wang is a Professor in the Department of Translation at Lingnan University. Previously he was Chair/Professor of interpreting and translation studies at the University of Leeds, UK. His publications include many articles in leading journals and several monographs, such as New Orientations in Interpreting Studies and Interpreter Education (Routledge). He is the editor, with Jeremy Munday, of Advances in Discourse Analysis of Translation and Interpreting (Routledge). Yuan Ping is an Associate Professor of English language and translation in the School of Foreign Languages at Hangzhou Dianzi University and a postdoctoral research fellow in the School of English and International Studies at Beijing Foreign Studies University in China.

1. Translation of Journey to the West: The cross-cultural travel of a Chinese classic to the West, 2. Journey to the West in translation studies: A bibliometric analysis of Chinese and English publications, 3. Arthur Waley's translation and its publication in the Penguin Classics: The canonisation of Journey to the West in another language context, 4. How is retranslation different from previous translation?: A corpus-based stylometric comparison between Julia Lovell's retranslation and Arthur Waley's translation of Journey to the West, 5. Genre changes in translation and retranslation: A corpus-based multidimensional analysis of Arthur Waley's Monkey and Julia Lovell's Monkey King, 6. Locality of the foreign-language translator and the native-language translator: A comparative analysis of Anthony Yu's The Monkey and the Monk and Julia Lovell's Monkey King, 7. Conclusion, Appendix 1. Chapters selected in Julia Lovell's Monkey King and their original chapter titles, Appendix 2. Multidimensional linguistic features of Arthur Waley's Monkey and Julia Lovell's Monkey King, Appendix 3. Chapter titles in Anthony Yu's translation and corresponding chapters in the original, Index