Readings
Before reading Jeremy Tiang's article The World is Not Enough, I read A Fable for Now, which after reading both, really illuminates what I think are several interesting choices that Tiang had made in their translation. The first thing that stands out to me is how the humor is translated, it is very much still delivered in a Taiwanese/Chinese comedy style, that isn't exactly natural in English. Something more typical to this style of humor is a quick sort of absurdity, that is often very short and abrupt. A translator attempting to translate anything like this immediately faces the possibility of alienating readers or viewers that are not used to the style of humor.
In contrast to this more foreign style of humor in the translation, Tiang also chooses to translate with slang curse words like fuck and crappy, words that I'm fairly sure are not literal translations from the original language. In this way the translation sort of diverts from what one could possibly expect from someone who chose to not localize foreign humor, but the decision to do so seems to be made more clear after reading the accompanying articles. In my mind, Tiang brings a translation that is still foreign, and would to many readers, likely not seem like it was written in English to begin with. The structure of the humor, dialogs, are simply too far apart from what English comedy or folktales typically are. The text is in easily readable English, but still it is very much foreign.
Steven
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