蔡思果翻譯生涯鉤沉

Frederick Tsai (1918–2004) was a famous essayist and translator in Hong Kong. He was one of the few local translators who were also translation teachers, literary translation scholars, and literary translation critics. In a translation career spanning over forty years, he translated over twenty books and around sixty poems and short stories published in literary journals. His translations are widely acknowledged as both idiomatically accurate and faithful. In addition to performing translations, Tsai published four books on translation studies, in which he strongly advocated a sense of Chineseness in Chinese translation— to employ the existing Chinese structures, phrases, and so on as far as possible to avoid translationese. His books have been well received and are deemed essential introductory reading in practical translation. As much as Tsai is a luminary in the field of translation, not much academic attention, if any at all, has been paid to him as a person, to his Chinese translations, and to his achievements as a translator. This essay unearths Tsai’s life as a translator, serving as a preliminary step in investigating his translation career and achievements.