





































Education, Language and Sociology Research 

ISSN 2690-3644 (Print) ISSN 2690-3652 (Online) 

Vol. 6, No. 3, 2025 

www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/elsr 

130 
 

Original Paper 

Multisource Transwriting Study on the Chinese Female 

Characters in Ha Jin’s Waiting 

Hanchao Liu1 

1 School of English Studies, Xi’an International Studies University, Xi’an, China  

 

Received: July 19, 2025        Accepted: August 1, 2025       Online Published: August 27, 2025 

doi:10.22158/elsr.v6n3p130    URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.22158/elsr.v6n3p130 

 

Abstract 

Multisource Transwriting refers to cross-linguistic and cross-cultural practices involving fragmented 

sources, where translating and writing are interwoven. Based on his military life on the northeastern 

border and his deep interaction with a military doctor’s family, Chinese-American writer Ha Jin 

intricately transwrote Chinese famale’s imagery in Waiting through the story of a military doctor, Kong 

Lin, struggling in eighteen-year emotional marriage. The misalignment between the signifiers of English 

symbols and the signifieds of Chinese culture in this text gives rise to translation, laying the foundation 

for discussions from the perspective of multisource transwriting. This paper takes Waiting as its research 

object and, relying on the theory of Multisource Transwriting, traces Ha Jin’s fragmented sources for 

transwriting traditional Chinese women images and analyzes the transwriting relationships within them. 

The study finds that Ha Jin’s creation was not based on a specific Chinese literary text but on multisource 

materials; translating and writing are interwoven, mutually interpreting and constructing each other as 

a gradient continuum of mutual expansion. 

Keywords  

Waiting, Ha Jin, multisource transwriting, Chinese famale image 

 

1. Introduction 

Ha Jin served for five and a half years in an artillery unit in the northeastern border region, and his 

military life provided rich material for his novel writing. Ha Jin created a series of China-themed short 

stories, including Ocean of Words: Army Stories, Under the Red Flag, Waiting, The Bridegroom, In the 

Pond, Quiet Desperate, and Wreckage. In 1996, Ha Jin won the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short 

Fiction for Under the Red Flag; in 1997, he received the PEN/Hemingway Award for Ocean of Words; 

in 1998, In the Pond was named Best Book of the Year by the Chicago Tribune; and in 1999, Waiting 

won the National Book Award, followed by the PEN/Faulkner Award in 2000. Ha Jin’s awards not caused 



www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/elsr              Education, Language and Sociology Research              Vol. 6, No. 3, 2025 

131 
Published by SCHOLINK INC. 

a sensation at the award ceremony in Manhattan, New York but also throughout the United States. His 

200,000-word short story Waiting made it onto the New York Times bestseller list and was translated into 

18 languages and distributed in 25 countries. 

Ha Jin is the first Chinese international student writer to receive this honor in the 50-year history of the 

National Book Award. Before him, Maxine Hong Kingston was the only Asian American writer to have 

won this major award (Guo, 2001). The difference is that Kingston wrote about the lives of Chinese 

immigrants in the United States, while Ha Jin writes about people and events in China. He is also the 

third immigrant writer whose native language is not English to win this award in its 50-year history, the 

other two being Isaac Bashevis Singer and Jerzy Kosinski. The reaction of European and American critics, 

especially in the United States, to Ha Jin’s winning the National Book Award for Waiting was first one 

of surprise. They found it incredible that a Chinese person who had only been studying and living in the 

United States for 15 years and was not yet fluent in spoken English could produce such a work. 

Subsequently, they praised the work extremely highly. They believed that Waiting transcended cultural 

boundaries, telling a story that felt like it was about a neighbor, making it increasingly engaging and one 

of the best novels they had read in a long time. Lisa See, author of On Gold Mountain, commented that 

it is an outstanding love novel. Ha Jin’s understanding of the human heart and the human living 

environment transcends national boundaries and time. Waiting is an outstanding literary achievement. 

Kirkus Reviews described it as a seemingly simple story, told with exquisite precision and beauty. Ha Jin 

has established himself as a steadfast and great realist writer who continues to write in the postmodern 

era. Some critics even compared Ha Jin to Russian writers Anton Chekhov and Isaac Babel, while others 

believed that the language in Ha Jin’s novels could rival the best prose of Henry James. 

Zhao Yiheng, a Chinese scholar who graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and now 

teaches at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, remarked that the 

outstanding achievements of Ha Jin and François Cheng have been recognized by mainstream critics in 

the English and French literary worlds. Chinese culture has unmistakably extended into foreign 

languages: the intelligence and talent of the Chinese people, along with their ability to write in foreign 

languages, have flourished in this border area, becoming too dazzling to take in all at once. Ha Jin’s 

awards indicate that the works of Chinese American writers have garnered attention from the American 

literary community, and behind these writers lies an increasingly powerful China. However, not all 

European and American critics praised Ha Jin for winning the National Book Award, and few domestic 

readers in China have read Waiting. 

Research on Ha Jin in China began in 2000. Professor Liu Yiqing from Peking University launched severe 

criticisms against Ha Jin and his novel Waiting. Over the five years from 2000 to 2004, only 11 articles 

related to Ha Jin’s works were published in China. Among them, there were zero papers in 2002, and 

most of these were introductory articles about Ha Jin and his works published in newspapers. It was not 

until 2005 that academic papers with dedicated chapters discussing Ha Jin’s works emerged in China 

(Xu, 2015). Subsequently, Ha Jin and his works gradually gained attention from domestic scholars, with 



www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/elsr              Education, Language and Sociology Research              Vol. 6, No. 3, 2025 

132 
Published by SCHOLINK INC. 

the number of relevant journal papers and dissertations showing an annual growth trend. From 2011 to 

2012 alone, there were as many as 45 journal papers directly focusing on Ha Jin. Researchers have 

interpreted and analyzed the content and artistic characteristics of Ha Jin’s works from multiple 

perspectives, mainly focusing on Orientalism, historicism, language, and narrative style. 

This study holds that the relationship between translating and writing in Ha Jin’s creative process, as an 

author with dual Sino-US cultural backgrounds, has not received sufficient attention. The specificity of 

Ha Jin’s writing Chinese stories in English and his creative mode of foreign in form but Chinese in 

essence have brought about unique translation research issues. According to the theory of multi-source 

trans-writing proposed by Liu Xiaofeng (Liu, 2023), Waiting falls into the typical category of multi-

source trans-writing. Starting from the perspective of multi-source trans-writing, this paper will explore 

the characteristics and relationship of translating and writing in the text by tracing the multi-source 

fragmented sources of Chinese female images in Ha Jin’s Waiting, aiming to promote the international 

dissemination of Chinese culture and provide useful insights for the construction of China’s image in the 

international community. 

 

2. Origins of Multisource Transwriting 

Li Defeng (2007, p. 4) pointed out in his introduction to translation studies that translation studies became 

an independent discipline starting with James S. Holmes’ The Name and Nature of Translation Studies. 

However, this work only became known in 1988 and is regarded as the founding manifesto of translation 

studies. Although translation practice has a long history, translation studies is a relatively new research 

field. The study of multisource transwriting, a field long neglected in translation studies, was formally 

proposed by Liu Xiaofeng in 2023. Multisource transwriting refers to a language activity involving 

transwriting without a fixed original source text, in contrast to source-based translation, traditionally 

referring to translation from a specific original text to a target text (Liu Xiaofeng, 2023: 88). At present, 

research on multisource transwriting is still in its infancy, with relatively few studies available. Shi 

Chunrang (Shi, 2024) explored the theoretical basis of multisource transwriting from both diachronic and 

synchronic dimensions; studies on the relationship between translating and writing, such as Yang Qian 

(Yang, 2024), examined the translating-writing gradient continuum through the theme of hermitage in 

Road to Heaven: Encounters with Chinese Hermits; research on translator subjectivity includes Liu 

Yutong (Liu, 2024), who analyzed Naitō Konan’s subjectivity in transwriting Yanshan Chushui using a 

thick translation strategy, as well as Li Chunxiao and Zang Zimo (Li & Zang, 2024), who studied ethnic 

translation and explored Shapiro’s subjectivity in transwriting The Gesar Epic from the three dimensions 

of language, style, and layout. 

Xu Jun (Xu, 2003, p. 9) argued that to understand translation, it is necessary to first discuss the issue of 

signs. From the perspective of translation semiotics, Feng Quangong (Feng, 2022, p. 13) proposed that 

the most essential feature of translation is the conversion of signs. Liu Xiaofeng further pointed out that 

the cognitive framework of traditional translation studies is often limited to a single fixed source text, 



www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/elsr              Education, Language and Sociology Research              Vol. 6, No. 3, 2025 

133 
Published by SCHOLINK INC. 

whereas multisource transwriting breaks through this limitation. In some works, authors directly convert 

their thoughts about a certain culture into a language that does not belong to that culture. This conversion 

involves transforming intangible thought signs in the mind into tangible linguistic signs, with the source 

text not being a single fixed text but presenting dynamic and diverse characteristics of textual sources. 

However, multisource transwriting is not a new phenomenon; its history can be traced back to the 

dissemination and translation of ancient literary works. For example, ancient Greek literary works were 

translated into Latin via Arabic during the Middle Ages, even though their original Greek manuscripts 

no longer existed at that time. Lin Yutang wrote works such as My Country and My People and The 

Importance of Living in English. In the process of writing, he did not translate based on a specific Chinese 

text but directly expressed his understanding and insights into Chinese culture in English. That writing 

within translation and translation within writing is a typical example of multisource transwriting. Against 

this background, multisource transwriting, as a special translation phenomenon, has gradually come into 

people’s view. 

Building on this, Liu Xiaofeng (Liu, 2023, p. 90) further proposes that the series of studies focusing on 

the activities, results, and impacts of the research object multisource transwriting can be termed 

multisource transwriting studies or multisource transwritology in a disciplinary sense. The source texts 

of multisource transwriting may involve relationships such as multiple texts to a single text, fragmented 

texts to a single text, or synthesized texts, processed through mental activity, from multimodal texts to a 

single text. Multisource transwritin, exists as a transitional zone between source-based transwriting and 

pure writing. 

Waiting, set in 1970s China, transwrites in English the love-hate entanglements between Kong Lin, an 

internist, his wife Liu Shuyu, and his lover Wu Manna, a nurse. Essentially, this work is not a traditional 

translation based on a Chinese original; rather, it is an English multisource transwriting by Ha Jin, 

integrating his own life experiences, knowledge of Northeast China’s folk customs, and insights into 

Chinese local culture. Ha Jin’s father was a soldier, and he himself had extensive exposure to military 

life. From his wife, he heard a story about a military doctor who waited 18 years to divorce his wife, only 

to marry a female nurse, yet their married life turned out to be unhappy. The military doctor and nurse in 

the story were colleagues of Ha Jin’s wife’s parents at the hospital, and this story became the prototype 

for Ha Jin’s Waiting. Ha Jin’s upbringing, background, experiences in China, and observations in the 

United States laid the foundation for his creation. 

At that time, western perceptions of Chinese women were still riddled with stereotypes, feudal and 

ignorant, such as foot-binding, lacking freedom and self-awareness, polygamy, husband-centeredness, 

arranged marriages, and embodying a meek temperament. Waiting objectively reflects the lives and fates 

of Chinese women, creating vivid female images that are both brave, free, and resilient—rather than 

merely enduring hardship passively or conforming to the stereotype of being gentle, courteous, and 

yielding. Based on this realistic portrayal of Chinese women, Waiting achieved success, earning Ha Jin 



www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/elsr              Education, Language and Sociology Research              Vol. 6, No. 3, 2025 

134 
Published by SCHOLINK INC. 

recognition and affirmation from mainstream American literature, who regarded him as one of the great 

writers who persist a realist path in the alienated postmodern era. 

Ha Jin’s Waiting can indeed be considered a typical case of multisource transwriting. This study focuses 

on the female images in Waiting, tracing the multiple fragmented source texts within the work, and 

explores the mutually explanatory and constructive gradient continuum relationship between translating 

and writing in Waiting by examining Ha Jin’s multisource transwriting practices based on sources such 

as Confucian thought, folk customs, and traditional values in China. The following sections will trace 

and discuss the fragmented source texts of female images in Waiting. 

 

3. Tracing the Source Texts of Multisource Transwriting for Female Images in Waiting 

Liu Xiaofeng (2023, p. 89) points out that the scope of multisource transwriting includes specific or 

abstract wholes or parts of humanistic elements such as the image, language, culture, customs, ideology, 

and values of the target country, as well as natural elements such as mountains, rivers, clear skies, 

organisms, vegetation, and seasonal climates that have been written in the local language. During his life 

in China, Ha Jin accumulated a profound understanding of Chinese culture, and Waiting contains rich 

transwritings of Chinese cultural materials, with numerous multisource transwriting source texts a 

Waiting tracing and exploration. This paper will excavate these source texts from Ha Jin’s personal 

experiences, folk customs, and traditional values. 

3.1 Multisource Transwriting of Personal Military Experiences 

Ha Jin served for five and a half years in an artillery unit in the northeastern border region. His military 

life provided abundant material for his novel writing, and he was well-acquainted with the military’s 

moral constraints and institutional discipline. These personal experiences became an important source 

for Ha Jin’s transwriting of the personal image of the female protagonist, Manna Wu. 

For example, when describing good girls in the eyes of men in the story, they are defined as virgins, and 

those with a broken hymen would be eliminated during the physical examination: “since every young 

woman recruited had to go through a physical exam that eliminated those with a broken hymen.” Manna 

Wu did not fiercely resist the rules; she remained within the framework of systems, abiding by regulations 

such as the ban on romance and obedience to the collective. On one hand, she was a conformist; on the 

other hand, her image transcended mere compliance. While being disciplined, Manna secretly kept 

collected badges and love letters from young men in a sandalwood box, guarding her simple pursuit of 

beauty and cherished memories of past emotions through instinctive means. These fragmented 

descriptions of women, though trivial in the grand narrative, form the core of her image as an individual 

with self-awareness. 

In Ha Jin’s transwriting of the 1970s, he constructed the female protagonist’s sense of rules and self-

awareness, revealing that even in oppression, individual women persist in asserting their selves through 

subtle means. Manna Wu’s image is precisely a microcosm of the struggle between survival environment 

and individual women. 



www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/elsr              Education, Language and Sociology Research              Vol. 6, No. 3, 2025 

135 
Published by SCHOLINK INC. 

3.2 Multisource Transwriting of Folk Customs and Traditions 

China’s indigenous traditional ethics, cultural norms, and values also serve as a source of inspiration for 

Ha Jin’s love novels. For instance, the inclusion of discussions gender relations in the book constitutes 

Ha Jin’s critical multisource transwriting of Chinese love morality and ethics, constructing images of 

Chinese women who are both forbearing and resilient. A case in point is Ran Su’s statement in the scene 

depicting the rape of the female protagonist Manna Wu: 

Example 1 (Original Text): 

“Manna, I think it may be too late now. It will be very hard to prove that you didn’t have a date with him 

unless Geng Yang admits the crime himself. You know a date rape is rarely treated as a rape.” 

In traditional culture, a woman’s body symbolizes family honor and moral order, and loss of chastity is 

regarded as a heavy stain. This perception was further reinforced in this context. As a nurse, Manna’s 

purity was not merely a reflection of personal morality but was also tied to the purity of the overall. Thus, 

public opinion tilted toward the assumption that a woman’s improper words or actions were the cause of 

the incident, rather than the perpetrator’s guilt. Ran Su’s remark that it would be “very hard to prove” 

essentially acquiesces to this underlying logic: under the cognition of “guilty until proven innocent,” a 

woman who had any private contact with a man could be automatically labeled as “indecent,” and the 

violence she endured was seen as “deserved retribution.” 

In the highly organized, male-dominated space, women’s voices were already faint. The premise that 

“only if Yang Geng confesses himself” places Manna’s pursuit of justice entirely at the mercy of the 

perpetrator’s conscience, with no effective channels for appeal provided. This instantly solidifies 

Manna’s image of “forbearance.” 

Through this plot, Ha Jin accomplishes a critical multisource transwriting of love morality and ethics. 

Instead of directly replicating the dogmas of traditional ethics, he exposes how these ethical norms are 

weaponized to oppress women through specific dialogues and events. In traditional love ethics, 

constraints such as feeling arises from affection, yet stays within ritual are often imposed more heavily 

on women. When Manna mustered the courage to pursue love, she already broke free from the norm that 

women should passively wait. The subsequent predicament of being unable to prove innocence after the 

rape further underscores this tension. 

Example 2 (Original Text): 

He even apologized to her for having considered their relationship only from his point of view. Despite 

being torn between Manna and his family, he assured her he would try to divorce Shuyu again in the 

future. But he needed time and could not rush. She agreed to wait with patience. 

In the Northeast Region of 1970s China, love and marriage often required organizational approval, and 

personal emotions had to submit to collective interests. Against this backdrop, her love for Lin became 

the brightest and most significant part of Manna’s life—the most concrete manifestation of her longing 

for happiness. Clinging to this relationship was, in essence, her way of seizing hope for escaping 



www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/elsr              Education, Language and Sociology Research              Vol. 6, No. 3, 2025 

136 
Published by SCHOLINK INC. 

oppression and realizing her personal worth. Her optimism served as a spiritual weapon against the 

stifling reality. 

Her close relationship with a married man carried enormous risks in the hospital where she worked at the 

time, risking gossip and even jeopardizing her chances of promotion. Maintaining open contact with 

Lin—dining together, walking, attending meetings—required extraordinary courage and determination. 

She was not pursuing a secret affair but, in a way, “semi-publicly” challenging unwritten social norms to 

defend her right to love. 

Waiting defined the era, and Manna’s patience was a survival wisdom honed by her generation through 

long years of hardship. Yet she channeled this era-specific resilience into pursuing personal feeling，

highlighting the uniqueness of her character. Under the circumstances of the time, a woman could hardly 

overturn an organizationally approved marriage through her own efforts. Manna’s initiative did not lie in 

directly confronting the system but in maximizing her persistence within the narrow space allowed by 

the system: maintaining her relationship with Lin and Waiting for an opportunity. 

In the specific context of this novel—where individualism suppressed, discipline strict, and life 

monotonous—Manna’s image stands out as particularly moving and full of tension. She is not merely a 

homewrecker or a love-obsessed woman. Through Manna, Ha Jin not only portrays a love story but also 

profoundly reveals how an ordinary woman, in an era of disempowered personal fates, strives to claim a 

modicum of happiness and dignity with all her passion, courage, and resilience. Her Waiting is a silent 

yet powerful indictment of the era and a testament to the indomitability of human nature. 

3.3 Multisource Transwriting of Confucian Classics 

In transwriting the image of Liu Shuyu, a traditional rural woman, Ha Jin repeatedly translates and 

references Confucian thought and family values from traditional Chinese culture, transcribing how 

Chinese cultural concepts construct and shape the image of Chinese women. In depicting Liu Shuyu, Ha 

Jin translates and interprets the custom of foot-binding and the Confucian philosophy of “the mean” 

(zhongyong), as exemplified in the following: 

Example 3 (Original Text): 

In addition, she had bound feet and sometimes wore black puttees. 

Example 4 (Original Text): 

“Shuyu, can we talk about the divorce?” Lin asked his wife after dinner. 

“All right,” his wife said calmly. 

“Can we go to town tomorrow?” 

“All right.” 

“You always say ‘all right,’ but you’ll change your mind afterward. Can you keep your word this time?” 

Ha Jin’s inclusion of foot-binding is far more than an exotic detail. Its transwriting function is multi-

layered: he translates and writes foot-binding from its Chinese cultural context into the English narrative, 

turning it into a culturally charged symbol with striking impact. These mutilated feet are an indelible 

cultural inscription on Liu Shuyu’s body, silently speaking to her origins, the old rural world she 



www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/elsr              Education, Language and Sociology Research              Vol. 6, No. 3, 2025 

137 
Published by SCHOLINK INC. 

represents, and the patriarchal aesthetics and discipline she endures. Her body itself is a carrier and 

product of traditional culture. 

Foot-binding symbolizes fragility and suffering, yet Liu Shuyu endures it daily, wrapping and supporting 

her feet with black puttees. This hints at the core of her image: a resilience forged in extreme vulnerability. 

Her strength lies not in denying this inherent fragility but in acknowledging and bearing it. 

Liu Shuyu’s response to the divorce request perfectly embodies how Confucian “zhongyong” (the mean) 

manifests in the behaviors and daily lives of ordinary people, especially traditional women. What Ha Jin 

transwrites is not a philosophical concept but the behavioral patterns governed by it. In Confucian thought, 

“zhongyong” emphasizes achieving harmony—maintaining balance, avoiding extremes, and restraining 

intense emotions. Faced with her husband’s sharp, pressured questions, Liu Shuyu’s reply is always the 

calm “All right.” This is not genuine agreement but a form of extreme emotional management and tactical 

silence. She defuses direct conflict and maintains superficial “harmony” with the most neutral, non-

confrontational words. 

Her “zhongyong” is not cowardice but a profound, defensive form of resistance. As Confucius stated, 

The noble person does not contend, and Laozi urged, Softness overcomes hardness. Liu Shuyu 

understands this well. She does not argue, accuse, or directly refuse; instead, she resists through her 

persistent, unchanging presence and compliance. She makes each of Kong Lin’s advances feel like hitting 

cotton—with no force to land. Kong Lin’s frustration “You always say ‘all right,’ but you’ll change your 

mind afterward” precisely confirms the effectiveness of her “zhongyong-style” resistance: she 

successfully traps his divorce plans in endless Waiting. 

Confucianism values “rectifying names” (ming zheng yan shun) and “restraining oneself to return to 

ritual” (ke ji fu li). For Liu Shuyu, the title of wife is her most vital identity and source of dignity. All her 

actions—serving her in-laws, caring for her children, and guarding her marriage with silence—fulfill the 

rituals Confucian culture assigns to her. Her resistance is within the system; by becoming its most 

extreme model, she defends her position, putting Kong Lin who seeks to disrupt the system by demanding 

a divorce in a moral and public opinion bind. 

Yet Ha Jin does not reduce her to a mere victim. He successfully translates and rewrites the core of 

traditional Chinese culture he understands—not just its special customs, but its deeper philosophy and 

behavioral patterns—into a vivid, credible, and unforgettable literary figure. Western readers do not 

merely see a spectacle in foot-binding; through her behavioral logic of “zhongyong,” they grasp the 

cultural depth and complexity behind this spectacle. 

By transwriting foot-binding, Ha Jin defines Liu Shuyu’s cultural identity and historical coordinates; by 

transwriting “zhongyong,” he reveals the core behavioral patterns and values rooted in that identity. 

Together, they depict Liu Shuyu as a complex female figure—both a product of traditional culture and a 

bearer of remarkable vitality and resistance within it. She is not a flat symbol of the old era but an 

individual with dignity and strength, operating within her own cultural logic. 

 



www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/elsr              Education, Language and Sociology Research              Vol. 6, No. 3, 2025 

138 
Published by SCHOLINK INC. 

4. Analysis of the Relationship between Translating and Writing and the Translator’s Subjectivity 

in Waiting 

In multisource transwriting, translating and writing may manifest as two sides of the same coin, 

interpenetrate, or even form a gradual continuum of mutual interpretation, mutual construction, and 

mutual expansion (Liu, 2023, p. 89). In Waiting, Ha Jin’s portrayal of the northeast living environment 

fully embodies this complex transwriting relationship. In constructing the triangular romance between 

Kong Lin, Wu Manna, and Liu Shuyu, Ha Jin translates elements such as Chinese regulations, customs, 

ethics, and values to shape and interpret the image of Chinese women pursuing love and adhering to their 

selves. 

Drawing on his years of in-depth observation and understanding of Chinese military life, Ha Jin deeply 

integrates observations and understandings of Chinese culture (translating) with literary creation of love 

stories (writing) in the text-generating process, forming a distinct Ha Jin-style transwriter subjectivity. 

When creating characters and plots, Ha Jin purposefully translates a large number of representative 

Chinese elements into the narrative, which are intertwined with and inseparable from the novel’s plot 

creation. For example, he incorporates Chinese social elements such as foot-binding, arranged marriage, 

filial piety, the mean (zhongyong), institutional constraints, and local customs to transcribe the image of 

Chinese women in the 1970s, demonstrating the interweaving, mutual interpretation, and mutual 

construction between Ha Jin’s translating and writing. Here, it is argued that the multisource transwriting 

process of Ha Jin’s Waiting involves not only language conversion but also an interweaving of culture, 

history, and the trans-writer’s subjectivity. Furthermore, Ha Jin’s translating and writing are intertwined 

and inseparable, forming a gradual continuum of mutual interpretation, mutual construction, and mutual 

expansion. Their mutual expansion helps Western readers gain an in-depth understanding of the customs 

and changes in 1970s Chinese life and rural society. 

Despite Ha Jin’s efforts to present a real China, since multisource transwriting is not based on a single 

fixed source text, information distortion is inevitable in Ha Jin’s creation and the back-translation of 

Chinese versions. This leads to the simplification or neglect of subtle understandings when converted 

into English, making it difficult for back-translated Chinese versions to fully restore the original context. 

Such information loss may weaken the cultural connotations of the work and affect Western readers’ 

comprehensive understanding of Chinese culture. 

 

5. Discussion and Conclusion 

By tracing the fragmented source texts related to the female images of Wu Manna and Liu Shuyu in the 

multisource transwriting text Waiting, this paper interprets how Ha Jin integrates Chinese cultural 

elements, Confucian thought, local customs, social norms, and philosophical ethics into a Western 

narrative framework, conveying an Eastern love story through Western language. It is hoped that this 

study will provide new cases for research on the mutually interpretive and constructive relationship 



www.scholink.org/ojs/index.php/elsr              Education, Language and Sociology Research              Vol. 6, No. 3, 2025 

139 
Published by SCHOLINK INC. 

between translating and writing in multisource transwriting, as well as for multisource transwriting 

studies and translation studies. 

 

References 

Bassnett, S. (2014). Translation studies (4th ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203488232 

Feng, Q. G. (2022). Translation as semiotic transformation: Reflections on the definition of translation. 

Chinese Translators Journal, 43(3), 11-19. 

Ha, J. (1999). Waiting. Random House. 

Holmes, J. S. (1988). The name and nature of translation studies. In Translated! Papers on literary 

translation and translation studies (pp. 67-80). Rodopi. 

https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004486669_008 

Jakobson, R. (1959). On linguistic aspects of translation. In R. A. Brower (Ed.), On translation (pp. 232-

239). Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674731615.c18 

Li, C. X., & Zang, Z. M. (2024). Textless translation in Shapiro’s English version of the epic Gesar: 

Practice and contemporary value. Ethnic Translation, 4, 23-30. 

Liu, X. F. (2023). Textless translation: An urgent field to be developed in translation studies. Foreign 

Language Education, 44(5), 88-93. 

Liu, X. F., & Liu, Y. T. (2025). On the subjectivity of the textless translator in Naitō Konan’s Yanshan 

Chushui. Translation Horizons, 1, 32-47. 

Luo, Y. H. (2010). Moral issues in Waiting and Ha Jin’s critical orientation. Foreign Literature Studies, 

6. 

Munday, J. (2007). Introducing translation studies: Theories and applications (D. F. Li, Trans.). The 

Commercial Press. (Original work published 2001) 

Ouyang, T. (2014). Diasporic writer Ha Jin’s imagination of China. Journal of Central South University 

(Social Sciences Edition), (6). 

Shi, C. R., & Zhang, J. (2025). Textless translation: A historical review and its contemporary significance. 

Translation Horizons, 1, 2-17. 

Sun, D. (2016). On the liminal space of immigrant writers: A review of Ha Jin’s The Writer as Migrant. 

Jiangsu Social Sciences, (6). 

Xu, J. (2003). On translation. Hubei Education Press. 

Xu, T. (2015). An analysis of the domestic research status on Ha Jin’s novels. Journal of Jiangsu Second 

Normal University, 31(1), 91-97. 

 


