Please join us for the next meeting of the Experiential Translation Online Seminar for a talk by Terry Bradford on Pseudotranslating Renée Vivien: a problematic and problematising practice and Xiaorui Sun on Transmediality, Intersemioticity, and Interepistemicity: The Adaptation and Translation of Xiongnu Ge.

The seminar is hosted by Dr Ricarda Vidal. It is free and open to all.

Abstracts

Pseudotranslating Renée Vivien: a problematic and problematising practice
Terry Bradford, University of Leeds

The practice of pseudotranslation provides material with which to answer Patrick McGuinness’s question (2019: 209): ‘What happens when a translation has no original?’ Brigid Maher (2017: 25) explains that a pseudotranslation is a ‘fictitious translation’ with ‘no single corresponding source text’. For Isabelle Collombat (2003: 145), pseudotranslation serves as a ‘laboratory’. In this experimental light, I have pseudotranslated a number of texts, including one ‘never written by Renée Vivien’. Most scholarly discussion of pseudotranslation deals with its definition, history, and place in literature. Against this background, in contrast, this short paper allows me to describe my method for pseudotranslating non-existent text as well as my particular aims in attempting this. It thereby provides insight into a range of issues at play in the composition of pseudotranslation – this in turn sheds light on questions traductological, including that of translator (in-)visibility. My practice – exploratory, experimental, creative – has led me to reflect critically on the process. It is in this vein that the paper moves on to discuss and problematise the positionality of the pseudotranslator of ‘queer’ fiction.

Transmediality, Intersemioticity, and Interepistemicity: The Adaptation and Translation of Xiongnu Ge
Xiaorui Sun, Chinese University of Hong Kong

Ever since French sinologist Joseph de Guignes attempted to link the Huns and the Xiongnu, it has become increasingly widely accepted that the Xiongnu were a strand of the Huns who started to migrate westward after being defeated by China. This is significant because the Huns lacked a written language and as a result their culture remains obscure and mysterious to modern people. Xiongnu ge, or “Song of the Huns”, a Chinese poem translated from a contemporary Hunnic folk song by Chinese scholar(s) in the Han Dynasty (202BCE-220BC), is generally thought to be the only Hunnic literary work that still survives today. It is a lament for their defeat in the war with Han Dynasty China and the loss of territory. The poem was later adapted in 1986 by the Chinese poet Haizi (1964-1989) in his poems and by Turkish musician Sagucu Tegin as the melody “Gök Dağı” (Sky Mountain) in 2022.

This paper argues that, in spite of a possible loss of “accuracy of the original”, such a transmedial adaptation as an intersemiotic and interepistemic translation process spanning thousands of years of history and multiple cultures—from an unrecorded Hunnic folk song through its contemporary interlingual translation to modern Chinese poetry and Turkish music—allows us to catch a glimpse of the extinct Hunnic culture and share something of the affect of their people.

More information about the Experiential Translation Network: https://experientialtranslation.net/

Speaker's info:

Terry Bradford teaches French, translation, and interpreting at the University of Leeds (GB). Wakefield Press (USA) have published his translations of early Boris Vian and Vulturnus by Léon-Paul Fargue. LUP have published his translation of Clémentine Mélois’ Otherwise I Forget. Recently, he has taken to homophonic translation and pseudotranslation as differently creative sidelines.Xiaorui Sun is currently a Ph.D candidate in Translation Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen. Her research interests lie in post-structuralist / post-foundationalist theories and her most recent articles have appeared in international journals such as Translation Matters and Babel. She is also the co-author of Translation, Pornography, Performativity: Experimenting with That Dangerous Supplement (2025).