ABSTRACT
Chapter 4 focuses on analysing the human translation actors/agents acting to publish the translation. Based on a criterion devised to distinguish human actors from numerous humans, this chapter first identifies many human translation actors involved in the translation network of the Monkey project. They mainly include the translator Arthur Waley, the publisher Stanley Unwin, the typographer David Unwin, the designer Duncan Grant, the American publisher Richard Walsh, printing staff, binders, and book reviewers. Of these human actors, the translator, the designer, and publisher are chosen for further discussion, which focuses on investigating how translation actors’ roles and positions are constantly defined and redefined by their translation actions undertaken in very practical, social, historical, and translation conditions. It is argued that in the process of acting and networking to produce the translation, the human translation actors are themselves meanwhile being shaped and re-shaped. Translation actors are therefore variables, changing and developing along translation production. Moreover, the outcome of translation is no longer limited to the ‘target text’ alone, but multiple human actors shouldering multiplied roles and coordinating in multiplied ways. The meaning of translation therefore extends from a process of producing translation text to a social and translational venue where various social and translational human actors and connections are made.
