Translating Nonhuman Agency

A Posthumanist Reading of The Zhuang Zi and its Three English Translations

Abstract

This article explores the translation of nonhuman agency in The Zhuang Zi from two perspectives. Zhuang Zi wrote this Taoist classic on nature in the late 4th BC and accentuated the agency of things. From the perspective of intersemiotic translation, Zhuang Zi proposes four interconnected approaches to facilitate species communication: anthropocentric relinquishment, nonhuman agents, equality of things, and cross-species becoming. He often examines the world from nonhuman angles and creates an aura of Taoist mystery in his work. From the perspective of interlingual translation , translators have intervened in this process with different strategies. For example, Zhuang Zi often examines the world from nonhuman angles and creates an aura of Taoist mystery in his work. Burton Watson’s anthropocentric translation demystifies nonhuman agents and popularizes the Chinese classic among English speakers. The “translation disparation,” to borrow the term from Michael Cronin, of (de)mystifying nonhuman agency generates creative responses from translators. A.C. Graham acknowledges the mysterious quality but aligns it with literary sections, so his paratext of thematic reorganization is a reinforced version of anthropocentrism. In contrast, Victor H. Mair presents a more accurate Taoist account of species relationships and recreates the mysterious aura in his translation.