| Summary: | This thesis explores the role of translators in shaping historical, political and cultural narratives of Japanese colonial rule in Taiwan (1895-1945). It focuses on the translation into Mandarin Chinese of Japanese-language texts written by Taiwanese women between 1934 and 1943, drawing on a corpus of short stories and literary essays with themes ranging from infertility and free love to the choice between a life of work and life as a housewife. The circumstances of their publication gives these texts great political significance. Written under intensified assimilation policies that saw Japanese enforced as the language of Taiwan’s textual culture from the mid-1930s, their language of composition was a direct consequence of Japan’s imperial presence in Taiwan. Then, after 1945, laws enforced by Taiwan’s Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) government subjected these stories and essays to censorship and cultural erasure on account of their symbolic relationship with the former regime. This thesis shows how translation has played a central part in the recovery and repositioning of these texts, providing a medium of mediation on the significance of Taiwan’s colonial history to more contemporary times. Through close analysis of translation, retranslation and adaptation carried out by Taiwanese literary scholars, as well as relatives of the women authors concerned, this study shows how translated text is used to comment on linguistic politics in colonial society, as well as on Taiwanese femininity and its history. It finds that rather than engaging in sweeping interventions that wholly alter the content of texts at the level of plot, translators instead employ subtle reframing devices to reshape the political significance of a text in their care. This analysis showcases literature’s significant contribution to Taiwan-centric histories of the twentieth century, whilst characterising translation as a history-making force in the context of Taiwan’s Japanese-language literature. By taking as its foci both source text and translation, this thesis considers the linguistic designs of the Japanese colonial project both during and after the imperial moment, showing how works written in its throes possess a cultural influence that stretches beyond 1945, expressed through the medium of translation.
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