A Journey to Another World:The Relay Translation of <i>Iron World</i>

CHEN, Hung-Shu

doi:2016.3.1.111

The Journal of Japanese Language Literature Studies > Volume 3(1); 2016 > Article

Article

Border Crossings: The Journal of Japanese-Language Literature Studies 2016;3(1): 111-130.
doi: https://doi.org/10.22628/bcjjl.2016.3.1.111

A Journey to Another World:The Relay Translation of Iron World

『鉄世界』の重訳史

Hung-Shu CHEN

台北市立大学

ヴェルヌから包天笑まで

陳宏淑

Correspondence Hung-Shu CHEN ,Email: redyamchen@gmail.com

Published online: 30 June 2016.

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

ABSTRACT

Bao Tianxiao (1876-1973) is often discussed as a translator and as a sensation novel writer. Regarding his translations, researchers have mostly focused on his education fiction. However, he also translated several science fiction (SF) novels in his early career. In fact, the first novel he translated was Iron World, an SF novel indirectly translated from Jules Verne’s Les Cinq Cents Millions de la Bégum. Iron World is the focus of this study for several reasons. It is the first book that Bao translated independently, without help from his colleague, and marks the start of his SF translations, which led to him writing his own SF stories a few years later. Next, the source text of his translation is a Japanese version of the novel, which initiated him into the world of Japanese novels in which he started to search for materials to translate. Finally, the details of this relay process have remained unknown, and after my investigation of the publication information and careful comparison of several texts, I have verified that Bao’s Chinese Iron World was translated from the Japanese Iron World by Morita Shiken (1861-1897) and that the Japanese rendition was in turn derived from The Begum’s Fortune, W. H. G. Kingston’s direct English translation of Verne’s French original. This relay process became the first model for Bao’s relay translation pattern. Investigating the journey of the text from Europe to America and then to Asia, as well as his strategies and influences, would help to further the studies on Bao Tianxiao and to attract more researchers to value his contribution to SF translation in late Qing China.

Keywords: Bao Tianxiao, science fiction, translation history, Iron World, Jules Verne

キ―ワ―ド: 包天笑, 科学小説, 翻訳史, 鉄世界, ジュールヴェルヌ