HUMANS, NONHUMANS, ENVIRONMENT, AND TECHNOLOGY IN A POST-NATURAL WORLD: Translation and Commentary of a Story from Where Rain Falls Amiss (Kuyu zhi di 苦雨之地) by Wu Ming-yi 吳明益

As climate change in the Anthropocene rises to prominence in public discussions, literature and translation that engage with ecological issues are also gaining attention in Anglophone academia and the book market. This dissertation seeks to analyse Taiwanese author Wu Ming-yi 吳明益’s most recent short story collection, Where Rain Falls Amiss (Kuyu zhi di 苦雨之地, 2019), and discuss my translation process of one of the short stories, Here Lie Clouds, Two Thousand Metres Up (Yun zai liangqianmi 雲在兩千米). Drawing on ecocriticism and posthumanist theories, my analysis and interpretation of Where Rain Falls Amiss illustrates how it explores the interconnection between human beings, nonhuman organisms, physical landscapes, and technological environments, in a way that incorporates local environmental history and indigenous traditions as well as influences from Anglophone environmental writing and scientific research. Turning to the translation, I contextualised my understanding by interviewing the author Wu Ming-yi and the translator Darryl Sterk, who has translated two books by Wu into English, and I drew inspiration from ecotranslation theories and techniques advocated by Michael Cronin and Darryl Sterk. The commentary presents detailed examples to discuss how I approached the translation of bionyms and descriptions of flora and fauna as well as culture-specific content such as indigenous beliefs and localisms. Overall, I sought to negotiate a balance between terminological precision, cultural specificity, and textual fluency on a case-by-case basis, hoping to produce a translated text that is both instructive and engaging for the target reader. My translation and the source text of Here Lie Clouds, Two Thousand Metres Up can be found at the end of the dissertation.