#alas no. 1 siwei st doesnt have a translation. yet... unless....... | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

mxystan · 1 month ago

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taiwan travelogue by yang shuangzi tr. lin king is indeed an award-winning banger and perhaps the first time in my life i've ever felt vindicated for dual-wielding a novel with its english translation because the act of translation itself is such a big theme in the novel. big win for metafiction-obsessed himejin everywhere!!

#i genuinely burst into tears twice just thinking about the ending of this book #read if you enjoy: narratives about colonialism. barriers to understanding formed by language and power dynamics. FOOD AS LOVE #i also just bought the authors most recent book and its also very fun and maybe what id recommend as a lighter entry point into her work #as a yuri thats also very slice-of-life with food-as-love themes but requires less historical/cultural background to access #alas no. 1 siwei st doesnt have a translation. yet... unless.......#txt #spoilers further in tags #i think part of what makes chizuru/chien-ho such an intriguing character is carried by the conceit of translation as interpretation #her role as someone who dreams of translating novels but not one who writes them... delivering others stories to a broader audience #shes very much a character who we only get to see from the outside; most notably from the perspective of the novel's unreliable narrator #which we read as a 2nd ed translation of the original japanese text by an uninvolved third party looking back years after the authors death #but it turns out [spoilers] chizuru herself wrote the 1st ed translation and the first time we hear *her* voice is in her translators note #and her perspective and the negative space between her words are both *infinitely* fascinating #even the concept! of translating a novel where youre a main character who the narrator loves and desperately wants to understand! wtf!!!!!!#rotating her in my mind. 小千妳到底是何方聖神啊...

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