Introduction

Abstract

Observing the monographs and journal articles published since the late 1990s, there has been a boom in research about the role of the translator. There are numerous articles entitled ‘translators as This phenomenon, on one hand, reflects the multiple roles which translators have played; on the other hand, it reveals the fact of the translators’ ‘fluid’ and ‘transient’ identity. Translation is not recognized as a career in many places and cultures, in the past or present. Translators usually have other jobs to make a living; most of them freelance and work in this occupation only sporadically. The translation field in the Taiwanese book market is neither instituted nor well functioning, assessed by Pierre Bourdieu’s two indices of discerning the constitution of a field: the appearance of a corps of conservators of lives and the trace of the history of the field in the individual work (Bourdieu 1995a: 74). So far, in Taiwan, few scholars are involved in these two activities. There are few conservators of translation practice in Taiwan, considering the lack of translation association, the poor pay translators receive in contrast to local writers, and so on. In addition, there is no established translation history in Taiwan, except as parasitic on Taiwanese literary history, which itself is not yet fully established or legitimized due to the ideology and power struggle over the issue of the unification or independence of Taiwan.