ABSTRACT
The act of turning a work of fiction into a successful film is a demanding act of translation: a translation from one medium to another, one that is more often than not impossible to pull off. “Translators: traitors!” the old maxim tells us, fortuitously translated from the Italian. Certain Eileen Chang fans might agree. But translation takes on an ever-increasing role in our globalized world today and with the proliferation of visual culture, from films to soaps, texts will constantly be translated and transformed. Eileen Chang herself was involved in just this sort of work in the 1960s, when she adapted works of fiction into screenplays. But one director has repeatedly proven a master of this unlikely endeavor. I am referring, of course, to Ang Lee and his six very different films: Sense and Sensibility (1995); The Ice Storm (1997); Ride With the Devil (1999); Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000); Brokeback Mountain (2005); and Lust/Caution (2007). Of these, Lust/Caution is, as the director has remarked, deeply “Chinese” in terms of its historical frame and setting, but not, as I intend to argue here, in terms of its primary concerns and theme. In that sense, Ang Lee has transformed a localized and somewhat idiosyncratic story into an artistic product of global significance. 1
