OUTSIDE LINKS   Translingual Practice San Francisco Chinatown Information touristique de Montréal LAYERS IN TRANSLATION: a discussion in search of transcultural equivalence Waverly Place, Chinatown, San Francisco The inadvertent translator (or, tour guide) will simply say Yes, this street is called Waverly Place in English, but in Cantonese, it is called Tin Hau Meo Kai, meaning "Street of the Temple of Heavenly Queen" because, as you can see, the Temple of Heavenly Queen is right here. Rather than using the direct transliteration of the English name Waverly, as is usually the case for the streets nearby, the residents of Chinatown came up with their own name. The readers (or, tourists), having been amazed by the clever adaptation of the local residents, then move on to the next site. The playful translator tries to improve upon this invention by associating the exotic Tin Hau with the slightly more familiar (to her readership), but still mystically ambiguous, Cassiopeia. She crosses out her previous effort rue du temple de la reine du ciel, and supplies rue Cassiopie. She defends her choice, as if before a tribunal of cultural equivalence, On one hand, I am trying to preserve some of the exoticism in this cultural enclave by using a language foreign yet respectfully familiar to my audience. On the other hand, I am trying to salvage some of the mystic connotation of the Queen of Heaven that may be otherwise lost in translation by evoking the familiar Greek mythology -- for goodness' sake, how can one keep any of the mysticism while chanting the mantra "street of the temple of the queen of heaven"! I am merely trying to fire the right neurons in my reader's brain. Well, up to the best approximation, at least. It is impossible to tell whether the careful translator admires Umberto Eco's precision in observing the organic interaction of the city and the resident, or whether she is simply possessed by a pathological Confucian obsession for literary references. Either way, she rightfully notices that this is the same Waverly Place where the largely autobiographical character Waverly Jong in Amy Tan's novel The Joy Luck Club spent her childhood. The same Waverly Place where Waverly got her name. Where her family had a neat two-story apartment. This is such a find that she decides to write a whole article exploring whether Amy Tan was conscious in naming her character -- the one that's largely autobiographical, mind you -- after one of the few streets in Chinatown where the English and Cantonese names do not correspond to each other. Throwing in a few comments about colonialism will probably be a good idea too, she thinks. Well, with such blatant postmodernism, she can't be a follower of Eco -- that's for sure. *  *  * Parc Sun Yat-sen, angle rue de la Gauchetière et rue Clark, quartier chinois, Montréal The inadvertent translator drops her jaw. The playful one bursts into tears. The careful one gets a seizure as she tries to run to the library.

--Kai-hsu Tai