依娃‧霍夫曼的《在翻譯中迷失》、跨文化素養與自傳書寫

Eva Hoffman’s Lost in Translation as a Transcultural Literacy Memoir

依娃‧霍夫曼（Eva Hoffman）於1989 年發表《在翻譯中迷失》（Lost in Translation）。全書共分三部分（天堂、流放、新世界），分別她紀錄她與家人於1959 年由波蘭移民至加拿大，之後再移居至美國的歷程。自從該書於1989 年發表後，頗為學界重視。學界有人認為這又是本美國式的移民故事，莎拉‧菲力普‧卡斯蒂爾（Sarah Philip Casteel）則認為學界討論都聚焦於書中移民前（波蘭）與移民後（美國）的部分，忽略了該書主角移民至加拿大的這段經驗（也就是標題為「流放」的部分）。卡斯蒂爾以「再次移居」的觀點詮釋「流放」這個章節，且指出霍夫曼為了要強化她離開加拿大遷居美國的正當性，必然要「誤讀」加拿大為「流放的場域」。筆者在此文中則由卡斯蒂爾的觀點出發，但筆者認為第一人稱敘事者在書末的宣言，「此刻我在這裡了」，並不宜視為敘事者抵達美國國土的誓詞，而應視為敘事者領悟到她終於得以進入「語言」殿堂的感嘆。由此觀點觀之，「流放」章節與這本回憶錄所擬闡述的主題密不可分。霍夫曼不僅可在這部分毫無忌憚地發洩身為移民的沮喪與憤怒，同時亦可紀錄她的心情起伏與情緒管理。筆者認為霍夫曼的《在翻譯中迷失》提供幾個層次不一的詮釋可能：首先，這本回憶錄凸顯移民主體所經驗的語言與文化的失落，並詳述移民學習第二種語言的歷程，也是種無法言喻的「翻譯苦差」，藉由「翻譯苦差」，移民主體學習新的語言，也進入新的文化象徵體系，從而轉換失落為無法言喻的「文化翻譯」，使得主體得以不斷折衝在生命經驗、經驗的再現與後設的論述之間。《在翻譯中迷失》凸顯，「英語」的學習，不足以讓移民主體獲得跨文化的素養，而跨文化的素養，也無法在「英語」的文字符碼中養成，而是以離散的形式，流動在文字與文字、文化與文化的交會之處、翻譯之間。但是，霍夫曼亦承認英語雖不足以養成文化素養，但對她個人而言，卻是通往跨文化交流的必要媒介與橋樑。

Eva Hoffman’s 1989 Lost in Translation chronicles her family’s emigration from Poland in 1959 to Canada, and her subsequent migration to the United States. Ever since its publication in 1989, Hoffman’s memoir has received quite a lot of attention. While most critics agree to read the book as an American immigrant story, Sarah Philip Casteel deplores the lack of critical attention to the Exile section of the novel which has its setting in Canada. Casteel proposes to read this much discussed memoir as “literature of double emigration” in which Canada has to be (mis) represented as a “site of exile” to facilitate the narrator’s second departure (from Canada) and arrival (at the United States). In this paper, I propose to complicate Casteel’s perceptive argument and read, against the grain, the narrator’s final statement, “I am here now,” more as a testimony to the narrator’s arrival at a “language” than as a declaration of her arrival at the American heartland. I argue that the section on Eva’s exile in Canada is thematically and structurally important for her “exile” in Canada, other than allowing Eva to express her anger and frustrations, registers the psychic efforts she makes in managing separation and the loss of self. I take Hoffman’s Lost in Translation as a tale both of the immigrant self’s loss of linguistic naivety and of the difficult “labor of translation” she deploys so that “loss” may be rearticulated, through the medium of English as a transnational language, into an aporetic understanding of the relation between lived experience, its representation, and theoretical discourse on experience as well as its representation. English perse, however, does not help her gain this aporetic understanding; rather, English is the medium through which she can make her way back to home, which is available to her in writing.