Translation Processes and Cultural Critique in My Annotated Chinese Translation of Huckleberry Finn

Abstract

My annotated Chinese translation of Huckleberry Finn , 《赫克歷險記》 , published in 2012 by Linkingbooks Taiwan under a governmental grant, is based on the authoritative scholarly edition published by the University of California, Berkeley, with the restored Raftsmen Passage. 1 This new edition is the result of collaborative efforts by many Mark Twain scholars who used the “lost-and-found” manuscripts to revise the 1885 edition. I am grateful to the American Institute in Taiwan for having contacted UC Berkeley Press to give me permission to use both text and illustrations of this new edition. 2 For that reason, I am quite proud to say that my translation of Huckleberry Finn is so far the most complete in the Chinese language, 3 with one hundred and eighty-seven illustrations in total, 4 three hundred and eighty-seven annotated footnotes, and a Critical Introduction to the book’s reception history and scholarship. 5 Mark Twain spent seven years writing the book, and I spent seven years translating and annotating the book. In what follows, I would like to share my experience both of the translation process and strategy and of teaching American literature in Taiwan for more than thirty years; my contribution to Mark Twain studies; and an interpretation of my translation of the book as a cultural critique or Menippean satire. 6 , details in my Critical Introduction and annotations about Mark Twain’s biographical information as well as the book’s cultural/historical backgrounds, geographical environment, plot setting, understated meanings, metaphors and allusions, foreshadowing, etc.