Translator’s posture or imposture? Leveraging epitextual communication affordances to legitimise one’s work and worth

This paper examines how translators leverage epitextual material as communication affordances to self-mediate and legitimise not only their work, but also themselves as translators. Drawing on existing literature, the analysis establishes a distinction between communication affordances and translation affordances, with the latter arising textually from a conscious prioritization of possible candidates for translation. Given the recent events celebrating Jin Yong’s centennial memorial in Hong Kong, grouped under the evocative name “A Path to Glory,” the paper places, Gigi Chang and Anna Holmwood, the anglophone translators of ‘Condor Trilogy’ under the spotlight. It observes how they carved their own ‘path to glory’ through the tactful use of epitextual material, including their participation in interviews, book launches, and podcast-articles. This analysis showcases how translation, as a literary and sociological activity, extends beyond the text itself, and how translators deploy specific self-representations to strengthen their posture (or obfuscate their imposture). The concept of “posture,” as a term and a framework for analysing such translatorial behaviour, both textually and sociologically, will also be briefly explored. (“Or imposture?” is the first thing Douglas Robinson told me as soon as I told him about posture. I must thank him for this witty remark).