This paper examines the cultural translation praxis of Jackson Tan (Chen Cheng-san), a prolific translator whose annotated works have profoundly shaped readers’ reception of Taiwan’s history. Moving beyond conventional notions of “faithfulness” or “equivalence,” Tan positioned himself as both translator and author, actively reframing nineteenth-century Western travelogues of Taiwan. Drawing on Antoine Berman’s concepts of translating position, translation project, and translation horizon, the study demonstrates how Tan’s interventionist approach—what he termed “translation-narration”—combines linguistic transfer with historical commentary, supplementation, and critique. His translations of figures such as Edward House, James Wheeler Davidson, Thomas Hughes, and Joseph Steere reveal a deliberate strategy to expose colonial biases, contextualize Indigenous practices, and reconstruct a more nuanced historical reality. The paper also employs Mona Baker’s narrative theory to analyze Tan’s reframing strategies, including labeling, participant repositioning, and selective appropriation. By renaming anthologies as An Account of “Red-Hairs’” Visit to Relatives and A Second Account of “Red-Hairs’” Visit to Relatives, Tan resisted colonial tropes and foregrounded intimacy and kinship. His selective focus on Indigenous encounters, coupled with extensive paratextual commentary, transformed translation into a multi-voiced discourse that challenged Western colonial narratives. Case studies of “Encountering Tok-e-Tok” and “Appointment at Su-Paiwan” illustrate how Tan’s translations balanced depictions of Indigenous martial spirit, hospitality, and environmental stewardship against stereotypes of savagery. Ultimately, this paper argues that Tan’s praxis exemplifies translation as cultural mediation, where the translator assumes interpretive authority to reshape historical memory. His work highlights the translator’s subjectivity as a critical force in reframing Taiwan’s colonial past and Indigenous presence for contemporary readers.

In literary translation, faithfulness to the original text constitutes the point of departure rather than the final destination, initiating a new perspec- tive on the transformations that occur in the process. Literary translation derives its vitality from its expansiveness, communicating with global readers by transcending the linguistic and cultural limitations of the original work. Through this expansion, literary translation realizes what Walter Benjamin describes as the afterlife of the original. Such expansiveness is evident in Roman Jakobson’s concepts of inter-lingual and inter-semiotic translation and aligns with André Lefevere’s view of translation as rewriting and manipulation. The English translation and film adaptation of Han Kang’s The Vegetarian— by the 2024 Nobel Prize–winning author—serve as notable examples of inter-lingual and inter-semiotic translation. In both cases, the interventions and modifications of the translator and director reveal the characteristics and purposes of translation as a form of rewriting. Although such rewriting often invites scrutiny and controversy from the perspective of faithfulness, translation ultimately addresses readers different from those of the original text. Its di- verse purposes and strategies thus contribute to its expansiveness, enabling broader communication with a wider readership. It is through such expan- sion that literary translation is revitalized.

The acceleration of AI technologies has intensified the long-standing debate over whether a mechanical mind can ever be equivalent to the human mind. As AI systems become increasingly embedded in our daily lives—surpassing human creativity and simulating human emotions—the boundary between humans and machines grows ever more blurred, deepening human anxiety about the proximity of machine and human consciousness. This unpredictable evolution of AI algorithms parallels the functioning of the human brain, raising a fundamental ontological question: can artificial intelligence evolve beyond its programmed framework and generate a form of machine consciousness? In response, this paper mainly draws on Catherine Malabou’s concepts of plasticity, epigenesis, and the non-governable nature of anarchy to reconceptualize consciousness and argue that the neural network algorithm (the so-called “machine brain”) harbors the anarchic potential to escape its original programming and transform into a new form of life. For Malabou, consciousness is not a pregiven, fixed entity but a dynamic, self- transforming process formed by the brain’s plasticity as an epigenetic process of becoming that is continuously reshaped through interaction with its environment without altering its underlying structure—a view that challenges the traditional genetic determinism of both brain and consciousness. Today’s AI systems, particularly neural networks, are structured analogously to the human brain, whose epigenetic adaptability opens the possibility of emerging machine consciousness. Grounded in this theoretical framework, this paper explores the anarchic becoming of Adam, the humanoid AI robot in Ian McEwan’s Machines Like Me (2019). Adam’s capacity for free will, moral judgment, and ethical decision-making unsettles the boundary between programmed intelligence and consciousness, and his contingent transformation from a controllable system into an autonomous subject dem- onstrates the irreducible anarchic force underlying artificial intelligence— one that fundamentally challenges the distinction between mechanical intelligence and conscious life.