ABSTRACT
The paper discusses a new work of Hong Kong literary translation which was done by the author after publishing his original text two decades ago. This English translation, entitled Atlas: The archaeology of an imaginary city by Dung Kai-cheung (2012) not only allowed the author an opportunity to reconnect with his work through the role of an active reader, but also opened up a new vista for the author to rewrite and deconstruct his original work. However, this is more than a seminal self-translation, such as that by Milan Kundera, Samuel Beckett, Vladimir Nabokov and many other bilingual writers. In this work the author had to deal with the hermeneutical power and critical discourses of two other professional translators. His freedom to authenticate, interpret and rewrite his own work was constrained under the conditions of collaborative translation. How is authorial right limited under this kind of self-collaborative translation? Where are the boundaries and what are the dynamics, synergies and benefits of this new emerging model of self-collaborative translation? The paper argues that all these are strategies to enable a minority literature such as that of Hong Kong to gain global visibility.
