ABSTRACT
By analyzing a stage work entitled Who Am I? Think Again performed by Hetain Patel and his “translator” Yuyu Rau at the Edinburgh Festival in 2013, this chapter investigates the practice of translation to develop a strategy of what Hui calls translational resonance, which can be deployed effectively in cross-ethnic encounters and intercultural exchanges. The chapter begins with unpacking the notion of translation in recent theory, approaching it as a practice that involves a politics of its own that one needs to work through and against and as a strategic platform for critical engagement that one can work with. Patel and Rau’s performance, at first sight, conveys a familiar scene of translation. Gradually it reveals that Patel, the artist who speaks to the English audience in Mandarin and has Rau translate for him, can actually speak English. This chapter interprets the disjunction between the original and translation and the “failure” to address the audience directly as a strategy consciously employed by the artists in search of translational resonance with the spectators. By “failure,” Hui does not refer to a piece of translation badly done due to the incompetence of the translator. Both Patel and Rau draw upon the notion of failure to lay bare the discursive frameworks that decide how a translation is made and received, and to expose translation as an inconsistent and almost impossible practice, particularly in postcolonial contexts.
