Language

Readers will notice that the English chapter titles in the original Chinese Source Text have been amended slightly in the English translation. As shown in Table 8.1, amendments in TT (underlined by me) have been made as a result of pragmatics, common usages or simply to improve consistency.

As we can see, changes are bound to be made in the translation because of the differences in grammatical structures and word choices between the source languages and the target languages, which are variants of Chinese and English respectively. There ar e plenty of examples hr The Atlas. For instance, hr [ S2 ] ’’Gordon’s Gaol” has been amended to [T2] "Gordon’s Jail.” We can thus safely conclude that this change is made for the American market as the term "gaol” is archaic and parochial. Whereas for the expression in [ S7 ] "the idea,” now changes to [ T7 ] “idea,” the determiner is removed to improve the function of

Table 8.1 Textual comparison between ST (1997) and TT (2012)

grammatical accuracy. It would be underestimating self-translating to describe it as a mechanical transfer, and collaborative translation is more than just a grammar check. Self-translating allows authors to slide between the axis of writing and rewriting between two languages and two cultures or to expose themselves to the respective readership. It sometimes forces the author to re-read, re-examine or re-assess their work from a reader's perspective. A prominent example was Milan Kundera’s self-translation of his works from Czech to French after he moved to France in 1975, in which the content was also altered to a large extent (Woods. 2006). In Dung’s case, he found the original title in his 1997 version in the section of “The city,” lYjrH'Bi A government house with a view” problematic only when producing the collaborative translation. This title was later amended into “The view from Government House” in the English version of 2012. This implies that although Dung self-translated his work in 1998, selftranslation did not necessarily propel him to reflect on the good and bad qualities of his original work.

Historical content

Self-collaborative translation provided Dung a valuable opportunity to reexamine the text and to amend content that might not have been historically accurate. For instance, in the chapter titled "Mr. Smith’s One-day Trip” (The atlas, 1997, p. 91), the source text indicates ... [Brit

ish colonies including Jakarta . . .]” (my translation because The Atlas deleted this sentence). In the translation of 2012, it is replaced with “The ocean liner SS Sunrise sailed from England by way of [the] Mediterranean to the British colonies of India and Singapore . . . (Mr. Smith’s one-day trip. The Atlas, p. 64).” Jakarta was obviously not a British colony; the error had to be dealt with, and this clause was hence deleted.