The Translatability of Multilingualism in a Taiwanese Novel: The case of Wu Ming-yi's The Stolen Bicycle

Abstract

This paper focuses on the issue of language use in literature, examining the techniques employed in multilingual literary works and the possibilities of translating such works. The subject of analysis is Taiwanese author Wu Ming-yi’s 2015 novel, The Stolen Bicycle [單車失竊記]. While the novel is primarily written in Mandarin Chinese, it incorporates written representations of over a dozen languages. The study begins with the question of how these languages were blended and integrated into a cohesive work. Through analysis, it became clear that, aside from Mandarin, only four languages—Taiwanese Hokkien, Tsou, Japanese, and English—appear frequently in the text. Other languages make only a single appearance. Among these four, Taiwanese Hokkien appears most frequently, represented in Chinese characters, with romanized pronunciations thoughtfully appended to certain words. In contrast, Tsou in romanized letters, Japanese in kana, and English in the Latin alphabet are translated into or paraphrased in Mandarin, primarily through third-party translations or indirect speech, and are limited to proper nouns and proverbs. By relegating languages other than Taiwanese Hokkien to the background, the novel effectively reveals its multilingual nature, despite being structurally composed of only two dominant languages—Mandarin and Taiwanese Hokkien. After analyzing the original text, the study then compares it with the English translation by Darryl Sterk. One of the most noteworthy findings is that in the English translation, Japanese replaced Taiwanese Hokkien as the primary element representing the novel’s multilingualism. Not only were sections originally written in Japanese retained, but even parts originally written in Chinese characters were rendered in Japanese reading. A similar approach was applied to Tsou. Conversely, Taiwanese Hokkien, which played a central role in the original, was significantly reduced in the English translation, with only a few distinctive words or expressions retained. Additionally, the mixing of Mandarin Chinese and English, discernible in the original text, became harder to identify in the translation. These observations reveal that the language structure of the English translation differs significantly from the original, and the visibility of the text’s multilingualism is diminished. Based on these findings, the paper concludes that the methods of expressing multilingualism in a literary work are influenced by the characteristics of the dominant writing systems and the distances between the languages involved. Similarly, the translation of such works is inevitably subject to these constraints.