Su Manshu's Adaptation of Les Misérables: The Manipulation of a Bridging Text in an Activist Translation

The past two decades have seen a growing ‘activist’ turn in Translation Studies, whereby the translator is not considered a subservient mediator of the source text, but rather an engaged agent whose translation activity promotes particular political and social ends. The translation and adaptation into Chinese of an English version of Victor Hugo's Les Misérables in 1903 by a Buddhist monk, Su Manshu, illustrates the complex range of social and cultural factors that must be taken into account when considering a text of activist translation. Su Manshu radically edited a portion of Charles E. Wilbour's English translation of Hugo's novel, freely adding new elements, for serialization in a Chinese revolutionary newspaper. The present article traces the nature and impact of the changes made to the English bridging text by Su Manshu in the process of creating a polemical adaptation that would reframe Hugo's representation of the volatile events leading to the 1832 Paris Uprising as a work designed to encourage a contemporary Chinese audience to rise up against its rulers.