台美文學的折射──以張欣明《虎靈寓言》為例

Refractions in Taiwanese American Literature: An Example in K-Ming Chang’s Bestiary

台美二代英語語系作家張欣明以外省與泰雅族混血族裔設定於《虎靈寓言》刻畫台美人三代女性敘事。此作納入魔幻寫實風格，將性別議題、華語圈故事、南島語系原住民族傳說、二二八事件等國族創傷進行折射/改寫，其語言使用挑戰英語文學場域規則，標示秀異。
本文框定域外台灣文學一支──台美文學──的跨境跨語性質，繼而探討《虎靈寓言》的多陰敘事策略，並以「返鄉出版」觀察華語譯本的側文本策略。本文探討文化翻譯的折射以及語言的異化跨境兩個面向，檢視《虎靈寓言》的魔幻寫實、南島語系口傳文學特色、翻譯模式的後設敘事以及民間故事的變形。在語言層面檢視本作蘊含的翻譯元素、語音中心主義、特異英語語法等議題，發現本作特有的「返鄉語言」特色。

Taiwanese American second-generation Anglophone writer K-Ming Chang constructs a mixed Mainlander-Atayal heritage in Bestiary to stage a three-generation narrative of Taiwanese American women. Bestiary adopts a mode of magical realism that refracts and rewrites gender politics, Sinophone stories, Austronesian Indigenous lore, and national traumas such as the February 28th Incident. Its linguistic practices challenge the rules of the Anglophone literary field, thereby marking the text’s distinction.
This essay situates Taiwanese American literature as a branch of overseas Taiwanese literary writing and foregrounds its transborder and translingual character. It then examines the polyphonic female narrative strategies of Bestiary and, under the concept of“return publications,”analyzes the paratextual strategies of its translated Chinese version. Focusing on two dimensions—the refraction of cultural translation and the transborder estrangement effected by language—the discussion investigates Bestiary’s deployment of magical realism, Austronesian oral literary tradition, metanarratives of translational modes, and the transformations of folktales. At the linguistic level, it considers Bestiary’s embedded translation elements, phonocentrism, and idiosyncratic English syntax, identifying what may be termed a distinctive feature of“return languages.”