TRANSCRIPT- SARAH MAITLAND & KATE CHAN IN DISCUSSION

Kate: So if you could introduce yourself?

Sarah: My name is Sarah Maitland. I'm a Senior Lecturer in translation studies within the department of English and Comparative literature, so translation theory and the practice of translation, these are my research and teaching areas and in particular interested in the philosophical approaches to translation questioning what it means to be a translator and what that says what that does on an intercultural level, that's where I'm coming from today (yeah).

Kate: So to recap, I basically got in contract with you and I presented this Frankenstein text. The original text of Frankenstein written by Mary Shelley in the 1800s in England is about a scientist who creates a monster, and the scientist is continually chased by the monster, and I reviewed that book in order to reflect various cultures and how they could be made to represent people in between the cultures. And so I’d like to know what was your first impression on reading the text?

Sarah: Oh it was very interesting. In the text, it was called frankentext and I thought that was really clever because what you've done, you asked me to compare the sample copies with the P.D.F. I can see the relationship really nicely between the text that you sent me and the samples that we discussed a few weeks ago. The samples you showed me a portion of Mary Shelley's texts and you had re-written part of that, you had translated part of that into Australian, into Hong Kong Chinese, and Mainland China. I could see that the frankentext had been teased by a lot more detail in the main text, but the fact you called it frankentext- I thought that was really clever because Frankenstein's Monster is a mash up of (multiple bodies)- exactly the monster is the original mash up. We think of mash ups night as bringing together different songs and songs styles, and creating you know, really fun piece and form amalgamation and that's what is said to be monstrous in the original text. So, what you've done and by calling your ….nothing backward to that. You're recognizing that link and by having part of Shelly's text in the story - Part from China and part from Hong Kong. So, what you're doing is creating a mash ups, so you're creating a monstrous text, not monstrous in a negative sense but monstrous in the Mary Shelley's sense because so many different body parts brought together.

Kate: And carrying on that from that sense of being monstrous and Mary Shelley, speaking as a translation expert how do you feel, like what's your view about the text in general because I realize that the text is not particularly readable for most people if anyone because of the frankensteining of it and make it a monstrous text.

Sarah: It's a really good question, but what this means from a translation studies perspective… There are some big questions being pointed to, I think in your piece of work and these are questions that, as a field, translation studies is really interested in and very much trying to examine. Those questions are who's the author? Do we even need an author anymore? If you come along and translate something do we still need an author? And if we still need an author, what kind of authors do we need? Do we need only living authors? Can we make whatever translations we want if the author is dead, so is it only living authors that we need to get we need to show respect to? If the author is long since dead hundreds of years ago, can we come along and make lots of mash ups and lots of changes? And is that any less destructive? We don't know, and when translation comes along, what happens to the author- does the author disappear? Is what the author wanted in the text; does it not matter anymore? So no one really has the answer to these questions but we just have a lot of different opinions on them, so what I think your piece of work is doing is, it's casting up all of these very relevant, very urgent question, so your work is asking does it matter to have new fixed Sense of all this because in your texts in your frankentext the authorial voice is gone, Shelly's authorial voice that was present in the original text, you've got this new orator and you're very clear that it's the doctor and you know where the doctors is coming from and in the frankentext. It jumps all over the place. So it's constantly changing.

Kate: And coming from the point of frankentext and like respecting the author in the translation, what about, like the representation of culture because I feel like that's the main reason why the text is no longer Mary Shelley's text because I've changed all her... 1800s in a cultural references into cultural references in different times - like Crocodile Dundee of Australia while the China text is based upon more of Communist China, Mao, the Hong Kong text is time wise, a Modern Hong Kong with texting and all of that. So, how does the use of that culture help to make a book maybe more or less as opposed to people like in-between a culture because that's the biggest thing I'm trying to examine here, with this dialogue, is that tour view as against a translation expert versus my view of linking between cultures and how you know the act of translating may enable or disable people from like being able to access those links in-between our cultures.

Sarah: I think… So I think in your texts because you have these three very distinct voices coming from three very distinct geographies, and like you've just said they're coming from three very distinct perspectives- the kind of Crocodile Dundee, Australian perspective and modern day Hong Kong perspective and communist China perspective, so you've got three very different approaches having three different identities, three different histories, three different languages, so what definitely has been displaced is that kind of gothic historical context of the original text- it has gone, and that's been replaced with these three very unique very new voices.

And what I think really comes across is that sensitive between us and translations studies that is where we're talk about the translator being positioned in the place of in between us because the translator is standing in between the text that's already being written that they are translating, the audience that they are translating for and somewhere in between the two, the translator is standing and they know both cultures, they know both perspectives but really their loyalty is towards only one- and then we theorize translated texts also as in between texts, because translation fundamentally is in between- because it has been influenced by the source texts. It's not a text that’s completely new, it's not a text that’s completely original and as a re-write, it's not original because it's being influenced by the text that went before it. and yet at the same time, it's a total transformation of the previous text and therefore it's neither one nor the other. It's something else so it's something in between two times, two places, two cultures, or more than two.

So by having these multiple voices and multiple perspectives you're enshrining in-betweener culture even at the level of the text. So you have the Crocodile Dundee style of discussions talking about things, and the Australian perspective, then we have the Hong Kong perspective talking about street names, street places and I noticed different food and different cultural practices, and then in the China voice; I felt there was almost a sense of- it was quite poetic. It was almost of a great sense of grand and great history. So to the reader, we don't really know which one is the truth because there is no singular trait in the frankentext, you've created three traits that are melted together. And which means that the reader's appropriation of this text is being constantly refused.

It's challenging me and my desire to understand this text. I want to read it. I want to know what it's about I want to occupy it and I feel like know it and understanding and it's constantly presenting me with things I don't know, places I don't understand, streets in Hong Kong that I'm not familiar with, terminology from Australia that I've heard on T.V. but sounds humorous when I read it on a page so it's constantly refusing my desire to get to the bottom of this text which places me in a position in between them both.

Kate: In terms of like- my being able to read that text and understanding it, does that mean the text is more of a functional or decorative item? Is this text meant to be of a discussion like we are discussing it now, or is it something that can actually be read and enjoyed by people in-between the culture?

Sarah: And that's a really good question! I'm scared to present a definitive answer for that, because you know, because I think to answer that we would need to decide what is the text for, and what is a novel for- if a Frankenstein is a novel that is, that one in ten has to be read, understood, contain messages then perhaps, perhaps this fulfills a different purpose because I don't think that I'm able to as the reader fully understand what's going on in this text I don't know enough.

I know Australia quite well so I feel quite comfortable reading the green highlights, and then Hong Kong a lot less and China even less so I feel really challenged by the text I feel that because I am already familiar with Frankenstein in its original form and that helps me, but as a reader I'm really displaced here I don't really know what's going on. So if the goal of the translated book is to facilitate understanding, then I don't think it's meeting that goal, but I actually think there's a different and much more interesting goal- and it's the one that I've been talking about. It's what you describe- does it work as a discussion piece? And I think that's what this really serves us, it's a point reminding us that we can tell stories in many different ways, why should there be one author's voice? Why can't there be several different ways of getting out some universal messages, and we don't only need to reach a fame or a message or a moral by the same journey, we can reach that journey we can achieve that journey in many different ways and perhaps all of these different voices are driving at things that can be useful for eliminating the human condition but in a way which reminds us that understanding is not necessarily an easy path maybe it should be really hard to understand things and maybe that's not the discussion piece that's here not that you have lots of different cultures placing this text and intercultural position in-between us and doing the same to me as a reader.

Kate: You talk about culture… When you feel like going through like this text or even just skimming it? Do you feel like it helps you to understand what people of the in-between cultures feel like would be more cultural representation like is it more faithful in between their cultures, which are not necessarily of like say Australia, Hong Kong and China that make up maybe a mix or a combination of all three as they can try to put on and raise it to us. Do you think that they might help you to understand how they might feel about the representation?

Sarah: Yes absolutely, and I think as the piece progresses this becomes more and more clear if you like the visible level you can see at the beginning and you have mostly one color block, whereas towards the end of the novel or at the end of the piece, we can see that the different color blocks are merged together, and because an intercultural person someone who is living as everybody does, and who's living with multiple identities, that we all perform in different ways and different times according to the experiences that we tend to hide that's what identity looks like and so it's this messy frankenculture and it's a fusion- and I'm not sure there's any such thing as a singular color block, a singular way of conceiving of the world, I think- I think we all see the world in this place. So I think you having China, Australia, and Hong Kong represented in this way suggests that the writer of this translation is someone who is speaking from an intercultural perspective, that we're seeing that at different times and different places- these three different experiences are these three different areas of knowledge or life experience, these are coming at different times and that's what an intercultural person experiences at any moment- where we're always displacing ourselves at different moments, at a different times on different pieces of familiarity, different experiences will come to our mind at different moments and then other pieces of familiarity and experience will come to our mind at other moments so we experience this multicultural world so I think at the textual level you've represented that really successfully.

Kate: Thank you! Is it my duty because I'm the one who is taking over this text? Is it my duty to remain faithful to Mary Shelley's idea of what Frankenstein was or is it my duty to make clear I mean in a cultural reference. Will the text be a better text, if I sat down to say I went through the text using a video, and I explained each of the intercultural references they didn't understand to them, will that help them to understand the text better in the way that I intended it to be understood?

Sarah: I think that that once again goes to a central question in translation studies. And you can't really answer it with by ascertaining what is the purpose of your translation I think if you as a translator if your purpose is to ensure that someone in 2017 could read your translation and understand Shelly's world, could understand Shelly's perspective, and what was going on in the historical moment in which the Doctor was living. If that was the purpose, then your loyalty is towards Shelley and towards ensuring that people in 2017 can understand Shelly's world in the past, and can understand that historical moment that the Doctor was narrating the story.

But if you have a different purpose, if your purpose is to you have a challenge the primacy of authorial meaning, to challenge the ease with which we might try to understand the world around us, until we promote the idea that identity is messy- and it's a fusion of all of the experiences that we've had, as a fusion of the different upbringings that we have, the different places that we lived as we grew up and the different experiences; the different educations that we've all had, and why they created this messy blended Lego block, fusion of perspective and if your perspective- if your objective is to represent that then the only loyalty you have is to yourself.

Kate: If you talk about this messy loyalty representing and being true to myself then what about if I wanted to you the same process to Frankenstein it. Let's say, if you like took a historical text how would that work in perspective of history, because in a sense history is often told by the winners and is a very biased perspective on how much work, it may not be quite literature based it's more of a historical text. I'm just curious, what's your thought?

Sarah: Well, you could take history as your text so. You could take one person's way of representing history like you say history is often told by the winners so you could take one winner's way of representing history and you could imagine that as your texts and you translate that So you write a different history you create a different translation that looks at history in a slightly different way than the way in which it was originally looked at. So history we can see as a text, are simply different authorial ways of describing the world, of viewing the world at a particular time and place, at a particular moment in history. So, history itself is not unusual because as soon as something talks about what happened in the past you become an author. There is no known authorial way of talking about history, because history is always conceived from a different perspective, and it's those perspectives that you, as the translator could come along and adopt and transform.

Kate: So we talk of history the past the present and in the future so what could this text that I contribute to the dialogue that could happen in the future, considering that this controversial, political, multicultural world we live in with- America and those who don't know what's happening- does this text, is, this text a representation of what could happen to translation moving forward, or is it just a piece that does not have any future?

Sarah: In the sense, every text that is written is a comment on the future and in the sense that it's written from an author or as a translator, it's written by a translator and it's perspective on the world and everyone sees the world differently and it could be one worldview among many that could come to pass, and you people talk about speculative fiction for texts in which those authors are writing a deliberately specifically about the future and they're speculating about what the future might look like but in a sense that text is a speculation about the future and the sense that any text is one world's view- it's one way of conceiving of the world so it has a future perspective already written into a text.

Kate: So taking the stuff you've talked about, what do you think of the text? Have you got anything to point out that I haven't yet talked about, about the text?

Sarah: Well, what I think would be, it is really interesting and I've been saying this along the way, is that you know, I think you have a real objective here, you have a purpose as the translator. This is not translation for the sake of it. In my opinion, this is not translation for the sake of facilitating understanding, this is purposeful translation where the idea is to start some sort of change on my part as a reader to challenge me, or to encourage me to see the world differently as a result of seeing these different representations here on the page. I think because that's your purpose. What I think is missing is you as the translator, so I can see your work all the way through it and I can see, like I say, you can see at the visual level. You can see at the visual level the way in which, you know as the translator are represented here, in your three different perspectives, three different experiences, three different careers of knowledge.
So I think you come right in this everywhere but actually what I think is missing is to have you frame everything and to tell me as a reader about your purpose. Translators do not appear a lot in literary translation, and they do that by providing at the beginning of the translation the translator's note or translator's preface. It's where the translator is saying ‘look at me for a minute you're about to read Mary Shelley's text in translation. But for a moment before you start reading Shelley in translation just listen to me because I have a message that I want to tell you.’
It would be really quite interesting for the reader of this, because it's a discussion piece, because it's designed to challenge and then be really useful for you to put out some sort of statement- perhaps at the beginning or perhaps at the end, after the reader's already gotten through it and I think, I think that might be a really interesting way of ensuring that the reader's expectations are along the lines that tend to be so because, I think a reader could read this- and they could be seeking the first kind of translation I was talking about, the kind of translation that is oriented towards facilitating understanding, and if they come into this looking to understand Shelly's world and understand the historical moment in which the doctor was narrating in the text then the reader might be frustrated; because this is a text that refuses understanding but perhaps if you frame it, they’ll understand it better.

Kate: When I first presented you with this text as a translation expert, what was your first thought- did you feel fascinated? Or found it difficult to use in general? I realize that those translations and maybe the purpose to the intent to facilitate understanding, but as you consistently said this text is not easily understood- rather it refuses to be understood and it really forces like, actively forces you to be constantly trying to understand something new or make something confusing- what's your take on that?

Sarah: Yeah when you first discussed the project with me, my first thought was fascination and curiosity and excitement, and because like I said it's a project that that goes to the heart to answer some of the most important questions in my field, questions of who is the author? Or do we need an author who is the translator? What should the translator's voice be? Should there even be such a thing? All of those things are so interesting for me, coming from a translation research perspective. What this represents for me is translation studies research and practice so all of these journal articles and academic monograph that have been written questioning the idea of the author, questioning the loyalty of the translator, and all these big things that I've been talking about all that academic scholarship. You have done it in this text, so my first thoughts were this is the sort of text- sort of translation I would like to show my translation students, I would love to tell them about what you have done I would love to show them what you've done.

I would love you to come and talk to us about how you approach this, and why, because this is a physical manifestation of the academic discussions that we have in academic scholarship, so we talk a lot in our journal articles and our monographs about what you have physically done- and next thing I see - that I think is really exciting is that this is the practice of a lot of research that has gone on.

Kate: So you think like this as a practical application of all the academic ideology and that important questions of translation. Would this be able to help to change the field of translation and how my culture, and like the authorship and people who are of franken-cultures are represented in those texts, and how assessable those texts are to other people? Because as a translator I am able to read the entire text with no problem, and I'm assuming that people with a similar cultural background to me, say they were born in Hong Kong, raised in Australia and have some family relationship to China, they would be able to understand the text as much as I am. Do you think that's a valid representation of us and how could that affect the validity of the translation?

Sarah: I think in terms of questioning the validity of the translation, they would need people here who are qualified to validate it, people who had similar experiences to you and even then they're not really able to validate it either because this is your perspective, these are- this is your experience and no one else's, it's your identity and no one else's.

So in a way no one is qualified to talk- certainly not me because I haven't had the similar kind of experience, as to what's coming up here so a lot of what you're discussing- and you're talking about- the five finger mountain, and talking about traveling in a jungle, and you're talking about Mao and talking about different streets in Hong Kong for example- and different places in Australia I'm not familiar with, so for me there is no automatic understanding of what's being said at every given moment but that's okay.
That just reminds me as the reader that understanding is not a given and that understanding must be worked out, and that's a life message- that's a human message. So I think for me this text is… I'm not too interested in questioning the validity in this text, because in my opinion that's not the point. It's not how successfully you have represented Hong Kong in here, the point is that by attempting to represent Hong Kong in some way, you're showing a reader like me a different perspective, different experiences, different knowledge, different histories, and by presenting all of the differences to me you're shaping me- and you're displacing me from the surety in which I might come to this text.

You're putting me in an unsure position, and it’s a really healthy thing to do, because it reminds me of a lot- that's what we do in life every day and it's really quite a healthy message to remember that your perspective on the world is only one perspective of among many. This as a project reminds the reader not take understanding for granted, not to take your perspective and your opinion for granted because there are plenty of other perspectives and plenty of other opinions there are equally valid, and equally as comprehensible, or incomprehensible as yours.

So it sort of has the effect of reminding us that as I say understanding in life as in texts should not be a given so for me there is a pedagogical application here and which is why as I say I think it would serve to put translation studies knowledge into practice so I think pedagogically it is by introducing the text by showing others how you have approached it and why and then by asking them to reflect on what it says and about meaning, understanding and identity then it has a teaching application.

Kate: You just mentioned reflection and that's something I haven't achieved a lot as a translator like- I haven't really thought about what would my readers think and then how do I make them to think further? How would I engage them in further dialogue, maybe?

Sarah: Yeah, I think I think that reflection is well encouraged through dialogue. So I think that if it were me, what I'd be doing is, I'd be interested in replicating this sort of format with others, where you provide the texts- perhaps as I've recommended framing the text in some way is speaking from the perspective of the translator, and where you're practicing why you've done this. But then maybe three people? Some sort of round table big club style discussion, so in a big club format, people get a text, read it on their own then they come together for an evening drink. Some wine, and eat some food and they have a really good chat about their perspectives on the text, and I think if you were following a pedagogical purpose with this, then I would follow a very similar method, I would provide the text and preface it, frame it and present it and then you would want some form of cultural discussion and it's that discussion that is interesting, and perhaps broadening people's minds- changing people's minds and enabling them to see things differently.

But the only way you, as the trainer, and as a teacher, as the person with a pedagogical purpose, the only way you can gauge a change in hearts and minds is to talk to those hearts and minds and see if those changes has happened. So I think that I'm going back now into the two purposes of translations that is in the facilitating understanding; you go to a bookshop, you buy the translation, you read it- you understand it. The end or is it? A translation aimed at changing people's minds or expanding people's minds and I think because it is a second kind of translation you can't see this as a text that sits on a bookshelf in a bookshop where you simply go into the bookshop, pick it up, pay your money, leave.

This is a text that needs to be engaged with and it's a living discussion project, and therefore to have its pedagogical purpose there needs to be some form of discussion, the discussion could be online or can be face to face. There are many different ways you can have a discussion, but I think there should be some reflection on dialogue between translator and the people you're trying to impact.

Kate: That is really making an impact on my perceptions. The aftermath is almost as important, if not more important than the actual act of interacting with the text. And speaking of the aftermath, after presenting you with this what do you think the aftermath of this text- would be on your perspective of my translation studies, has it changed your perspective of translation and culture? Could you see it somewhere in the future?

Sarah: I think where this will really work is on translator training programs. And I run, a master's in translation here in the department of English and Comparative Literature. We train people who speak English and any number of other languages on the act of translation and just for some form of professional purpose.

So it could be translating literature, it could be translating for the news media, could be translating for the world of marketing, and World of Business- finance anything that you name it. Anything where transisition between languages is a core component of everyday business; that's where translators are needed. Something like this I think would be ideal in terms of educating, informing and expanding the mindset of training translators and students here studying to be translators, because it would show them in this very visual way, some of the things that we're studying in translations studies from an academic perspective. So people who teach these training programs; we are familiar with a lot of the discussions that we're having here by training translators. For them, these are exciting and totally new discussions and it's like it's about presenting students with a new way of thinking, and a new way of approaching what is the text; who owns the text, what should the text look like? What is identity and how do we represent identity? What is meaning? All of these things are coming right through in your Frankentexts and I think that would do a good job of really expanding hearts and minds at the student level.

Kate: You were talking about the students but I'm also interested to know what’s your personal opinion like overall? Like throughout this whole project, from when I first contacted you through Matt Ward, and just like in general? Just wrapping up- basically like anything you want to say or like to think about this project?

Sarah: Yeah as I've said for me what's the most exciting thing about this project is that it puts into practice what has been talked about a lot from a philosophical- from an academic scholarly perspective, to translation studies. Academics spend a lot of time theorizing but all these things that are coming out here- what you've done, is you put those things into practice so it takes many, many, many years of printed scholarship in the translation studies field, where it's talking at the theoretical level and here you're putting all of that into practice. So I think that's really exciting, so I think what you've what you've achieved is as I say that, that physical representation, that physical teasing out of of some of the most urgent things in translation studies today.

Kate: That's interesting to hear and I just want to say thank you so much for coming in to talk to me and I really did enjoy translating a text and I hope that you've enjoyed it but you seem to have enjoyed it very well from an academic perspective too!

Sarah: Thank you yes, thank you.

Kate: And also I can send to you another copy if possible.

Sarah: That would be really good!