The translator as an observant reader in the Story of the Stone from the perspective of aesthetic illusion and habitus

ABSTRACT

The classic Chinese novel Hong Lou Meng is renowned for portraying a verifiable world with various characters. Previous scholars of translation studies demonstrated a lopsided interest towards the translated Hong Lou Meng texts without highly considering the translator’s experience in perusing the original fiction. The current study endeavours to integrate narratology and sociological theory with translation studies by referring to The Story of the Stone: A Translator’s Notebooks, which aims to examine the translator David Hawkes’s mental state of aesthetic illusion as an observer before translating Hong Lou Meng. Specifically, Hawkes was postulated to be both the translator and reader immersed in the imaginary setting of Hong Lou Meng to observe the personas. Simultaneously, Hawkes remained a certain distance from the fictional world to enable pinpointing of the author’s inconsistencies through professional habitus, which is critical to resolving the source text inconsistencies while translating.

KEYWORDS:

• Aesthetic illusion
• the Story of the Stone
• narratology
• habitus
• observer

Acknowledgements

The authors extend their gratitude to Prof. John Minford for providing The Story of the Stone: A Translator’s Notebooks and Dr. Christina Chau for her doctoral dissertation entitled Translators in the Making: The Work of David Hawkes in the Making of the Hawkes-Minford Translation of The Story of the Stone, with specific reference to Hawkes’s Translator’s Notebooks for the current research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Yun Wang

Yun Wang is a PhD student in Translation Studies at the Translation Studies and Interpreting Section at the School of Humanities, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang. Her research interests include literary translation and Chinese translation.

Haslina Haroon

Haslina Haroon is an Associate Professor in Translation Studies at the Translation Studies and Interpreting Section at the School of Humanities, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang. Her research interests include literary translation and translation history.

Yean Fun Chow

Yean Fun Chow is a senior lecturer at the Translation and Interpreting Studies Section, School of Humanities, Universiti Sains Malaysia. Her research interests include media translation, multimodality, Japanese translation, Chinese translation, and Cantonese translation.