Translating Psychological Space in Autobiographical Writing

This article proposes an approach to understanding the translation of psychological space inhabited by the ‘I’ in autobiographical writing. It first investigates features of remembering in autobiographical writing as manifested in multiple temporalities, multiple selves, and narrative situatedness. It then suggests that changes introduced through translation tend to reshape the psychological space of a narrative of memory. Finally, the Chinese translation of Martin Amis's memoir Experience is used as a case study. Amis’ writerly awareness and stylistic demonstration of time, self, and narrative situatedness provide an example to explain psychological space in autobiographical writing, and how this can change in translation. The overall aim is to cast light on how memory might travel between languages, and register how psychological reality is reconstructed rather than transferred intact in translation.