一朵綻放他鄉的陰性陽體之花──論《荒人手記》及其英譯本的異托邦意識型態

An Androgynous Flower Blooming in Foreign Lands:A Study on the Heterotopia Ideology in the English Translation of Notes of a Desolate Man

本文挪用傅柯的「異托邦」（heterotopia）概念再脈絡化朱天文創作的後現代經典同志小說《荒人手記》，並分析其英譯本的翻譯策略。論文共分三大部分：首先評述前人文獻，說明本文研究背景和研究動機；第二部分爬梳小說文本根植於陰性書寫的性／別政治，藉由經多重轉譯的傅柯「異托邦」概念，解構第一人稱男同志敘述者「同性戀化烏托邦」（homosexualized utopia）及其織困巢城的「陰界」想像。第三部分審視葛浩文與林麗君夫妻合譯本Notes of a DesolateMan 的翻譯策略，簡要回顧前人研究之局限，分別從「譯者操縱」與「世界文學」（World Literature）視角，剖析英譯本如何處理原作的異托邦意識型態，同時提高《荒人手記》在世界文學視域的能見度。本文結論認為，英譯本採用標準英語翻譯的「歸化譯法」，雖一定程度地提高了譯文的可理解性（intelligibility）與可及性（accessibility），然而原作託寓男同志「陰界」、「陽界」等異質時空想像的酷兒意識型態，卻不可免地喪失了一定程度的意義。

This essay appropriates the “heterotopia” concept elaborated by Michel Foucault to re-contextualize Chu T’ien-wen’s post-modernism queer-fiction classic Notes of a Desolate Man, while analyzing the translators’ strategies deployed in its English version. The first section provides an overview of available literature about the novel and briefly introduces what has motivated this study. The second section investigates the source text’s gender politics with roots in “women’s writing” (écriture feminine). Borrowing Foucault’s multi-translated renditions of “heterotopia,” this essay aims to de-construct the first-person gay narrator’s “homosexualized utopia” and his self-indulgent imaginations of the alienated sphere he dwells in. Based on the “translator’s manipulation” perspective and David Damrosch’s World Literature paradigm, the third section examines the translators’ strategies and identifies the limitations of previous scholarship on the novel’s English translation, elucidating how the English version has dealt with the Chinese original’s heterotopia ideology while enhancing its global visibility in the World Literature terrain. I argue in the concluding remarks that the English version, rendered in sync with the “domestication approach,” employs standardized English to elevate the book’s intelligibility and accessibility for the Anglophone audience, whereas the queered heterotopia allegory in the Chinese original is inescapably subject to a certain level of semantic inadequacy.