Compromises in Translating Wu Ming-Yi's Uncompromising Localism

Compromises in Translating Wu Ming-Yi's Uncompromising Localism

This is a brief meditation by Wu Ming-Yi's English translator on Wu Ming-Yi's approach to writing about his homeland and what it means for translation and world literature. I do not imagine he set out to write world literature, or something that would translate into world literature. As far as I can tell, the international recognition he has gotten since the publication of his The Man with the Compound Eyes in English translation has not had any effect on how he writes about Taiwan in the world. He continues to write about Taiwan in the same way, including, without explanation, details that for a local audience immediately evoke the locality of Taiwan and Taiwan localities but which are impossible or at least very hard to translate. The details he includes do not seem like “local color,” by which I mean relatively superficial images that are supposedly representative of a place, if a place is viewed through the eyes of a tourist. The details he includes are part of an uncompromising localism that a translator has to deal with without making too many compromises. The author who writes to be translated may be a myth, but I imagine we have all heard about him or her (Walkowitz). Such an author writes with an international audience in mind. An international audience is not going to be able to understand the local context, so the local context will have to be processed into local color before it can be presented to the literary sight-seer. The telltale sign of such an author's intent is explanations of things that a local audience would never need explained.