Literatures, Cultures, Translation presents a new line of books that
engage central issues in translation studies such as history, politics,
and gender in and of literary translation.
This is a culturally situated study of the interface between three forms
of transtextual rewriting: translation, adaptation and imitation. Two
questions are raised: first, how a broader rubric can be formulated for
the inclusion of the latter two forms within Translation Studies
research, and second, how this enlarged definition of translation
enables us to understand the incompatibilities between contemporary
Western theories of translation and East Asian realities, past and
present. Recent decades have seen a surge of scholarly interest in
adaptations and imitations, due to the flourishing of cinema and fandom
studies, and to the impact of a poststructuralist turn that sheds new
light on derivative literature. Against this backdrop, a plethora of
examples from the East Asian cultural sphere are analyzed to show how
rewriters have freely appropriated, transcreated and recontextualized
their source texts. In particular, Sino-Japanese case studies are
contrasted with Sino-English ones, with both groups read against
evolving traditions of thinking about free forms of translation, East
and West.