On the Dominant Fiction Emotion of the Literary Translator: With Gladys Yang’s Translation of “Love Must Not Be Forgotten” as an Example

LIU Jing, XU Minhui

University of Macau

Page 096-110

Abstract: While studies exploring the emotions experienced by translators have recently proliferated, few of these have focused on literary translators’ emotions by taking into account the defining features of literary texts, and examinations of the influence of the translator’s emotions on the translated text and its reception are rare. The present study focuses on literary translators’ emotions, taking as a case study Gladys Yang and her translation of the Chinese short story “Love Must Not Be Forgotten.” It draws on the distinction between fiction emotion and artefact emotion proposed by the film scholar Ed Tan and subsequently developed by literary scholars. This paper explores the emotions that Gladys Yang experienced most strongly as a translator-cum-reader and their influence on her translation and the work’s subsequent reception. It emerges that Yang’s response to the source text is dominated by fiction emotion rather than artefact emotion, in contrast to findings reported in previous scholarship on common literary readers. The dominant fiction emotion, on the one hand, manifests in the translated text as the highlighted thematic idea via the translator’s rewriting of characters’ speech and repetition of the thematic concept. On the other hand, it leads to the underrepresentation of formal features, such as metaphor, particularly those that are offensive. This study also finds that the translator’s dominant fiction emotion, in both translation and paratext, may influence the work’s reception among its target readers, who exhibit emotional responses that are similar to those of the translator upon reading the work.

Keywords: fiction emotion, artefact emotion, literary translator, Gladys Yang, “Love Must Not Be Forgotten”

DOI: 10.53397/hunnu.jflc.202502008

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