Xiangzi's American Journey: Post-war Popular Culture and the Transmedia Adaptation of Rickshaw Boy

Abstract

Abstract: Lao She's Rickshaw Boy is not only a classic novel in the history of modern Chinese literature, and its numerous translations have made it an important publication in Sino-American cultural exchange. However, previous scholarship on the English translation of Rickshaw Boy was largely limited to the textual interpretation of the novel, which consequently dismisses the transmission and transformation of this Chinese rickshaw puller's story across different media. In the immediate postwar years of WWII, as this study has discovered, Rickshaw Boy was “tradapated” as a popular novel, a drama script and a screenplay in America, respectively. Each transmedia rendition posed a challenge to the development of the story and provided a new interpretation of the original meaning, demonstrating the force of postwar American popular culture in the shaping of Chinese stories.

Key words: Rickshaw Boy, transmedia, tradaptation, postwar America, popular culture

摘要： 老舍的《骆驼祥子》不仅是中国现代文学史上的经典之作,也因屡经翻译而成为中美文化交流中的重要作品。不过,以往对《骆驼祥子》英译的考察多限于以小说为主要形态的文本解读,忽略了这个中国洋车夫故事在不同媒介之间的传递与演变。本研究发现,在“二战”结束后几年间,《骆驼祥子》以通俗小说、戏剧剧本和电影脚本的形态在美国历经多次编译,每一次跨媒介编译都对故事的演绎提出新的挑战,也对原著的意义提供新的解读,共同展现了战后美国大众文化对中国故事的形塑之力。

关键词: 《骆驼祥子》, 跨媒介, 编译, 战后美国, 大众文化

Huang Ruoze. Xiangzi's American Journey: Post-war Popular Culture and the Transmedia Adaptation of Rickshaw Boy[J]. Comparative Literature in China, 2024, 0(2): 146-163.

黄若泽. 祥子的美国之旅——战后大众文化与《骆驼祥子》的跨媒介编译[J]. 中国比较文学, 2024, 0(2): 146-163.

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