Asymmetry in translating heterolingualism: A Singapore case study

Using two plays and their translations as texts, this article explores how heterolingualism is treated in Chinese–English and English–Chinese literary translation in Singapore. It is observed that the ways in which heterolingualism is negotiated between source and target texts are asymmetric between the two translation directions. Specifically, while traces of code-switching tend to be effaced in Chinese–English translation, such traces tend to be increased in the reverse translation direction. By locating this finding within the reception contexts of the original and translated plays, and on the basis of Bakhtin's conceptualisation of linguistic varieties in discourse as social voices, it is hypothesised that the treatment of heterolingualism in literary translation is contingent on the extent to which one language lends itself to code-switching in another language, which is in turn indexical of the relative power of these languages. Textual choices in translation are thus subject to the influence of language ideological factors

Linguistic human rights and mobility

10.2167/jmmd492.0Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development284325-33

Singapore English

Singapore English is one of the best‐researched varieties of English in Asia, given Low’s (2014) calculation that – at that time – there were over 200 studies of various aspects of Singapore English, and many more have been published since then. It is not the aim of this chapter to rehash well‐rehearsed arguments or repeat wellestablished facts about Singapore English, though we will provide details and summaries where necessary. It is timely, and even crucial, however, to now look at Singapore English in this new language world of Singapore, in which Singapore English is not merely a curiosity in an environment of multilingual diversity, but a variety that has taken root and taken over the linguistic psyche of the society and the people. We will begin by providing a snapshot of what Singapore English is. We will then give a description of Singapore’s past around the turn of the twentyfirst century, which is characterized by the type of superdiversity reported by present‐ day scholars working on Europe (Vertovec, 2007; Blommaert & Rampton, 2016), to show a form of “reverse‐superdiversity” at work in the past five decades which has resulted in transforming present‐day Singapore into a country where English holds the predominant place in the linguistic repertoire of all Singaporeans