Abstract:
In the present thesis I will translate selected parts of Guo Qiangsheng’s 2015 novel 断代 Duandai (The Division Between Generations) and analyze the novel’s placement in contemporary Taiwanese LGBT literature.
I will begin with a general focus on Taiwan’s contemporary LGBT literature scene and then more specifically analyze Guo Qiangsheng’s role in it, and his works in general. I will follow then by discussing in general what Duandai is about and what parts I have selected and why.
The parts I have decided to translate focus on two very different members of two different generations of Taiwan’s LGBT community: Laoqi, the manager of a gay bar that has been open for over thirty years, and an unnamed teenager who is only just discovering his sexual orientation.
The first chapter of the novel deals with Taiwan’s gay nightlife scene since 1985, and more specifically focuses on a bar called Melody, whose manager is Laoqi. The chapter expounds on Laoqi’s friendships, acquaintances and relationships over the course of the years he has managed Melody, and more specifically on his complicated relationship with his friend Tangge.
The second chapter is a complete break from the story of the first one. It deals with the story of two male high-schoolers (an unnamed first-person narrator and another student called Yao), their burgeoning love story and the self-doubt and self-loathing that homosexuality causes in the narrator.
I will finally discuss what strategies and choices I have made in translating these two chapters and my reasoning behind these choices.
