Translators in Japanese-colonized Taiwan

Professor Yang Cheng-Shu's talk (楊承淑, 輔仁大學跨文化研究所教授) on Taiwanese and Japanese translators from the Japanese-colonized period in Taiwan (1895-1945) that took place at the Institute of Taiwan History, Academia Sinica today sought to introduce the significance of translators in Japanese-colonized Taiwanese society. Professor Yang took upon Anthony Pym's call to center translators in writing and understanding history (Method in Translation History, 1998). Her work focused on key translators for the famous Taiwanese leader, Lin Hsien-tang 林獻堂, and three Japanese people who stayed in Taiwan for some time who wrote about Taiwanese culture and society.

As a linguist, Professor Yang received many questions on and criticisms for providing descriptions of these translators, and no analysis of the act of and the content of their translations in influencing Taiwanese society or the colonizer-colonized power relations. A member of the audience brought up Lydia Liu's concept of translingual practice for Professor Yang to think about.

In sum, the concept introduced at this talk was not new to me because I am familiar with Lydia Liu, Douglas Holland, and other works on Chinese and Japanese translations of Western concepts from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. Scholars of China and of Japan have worked on how translations provided a window to the political, social, and cultural environments of China and Japan. It is time that scholars of Taiwan do the same for Taiwan.

Although the main concept was not new, what was new to me was learning about how a local elite communicated with the colonial government and other Japanese elites, and how the colonial government and the Japanese interacted with the local populations through translators. This group of translators were proficient in both Japanese and (likely) Taiwanese hoklo. This cultural "interaction" that was induced by Japanese education has given me something to think about during my research.