When Multiple Sinophone Literatures Meet Entanglements between Taiwan and the Sinophone World

In recent years, Sinophone studies has drawn increasing attention among scholars all over the world. Taiwan's scholars are concerned most of all with the theoretical breakthroughs made by such a U.S.-based theory that may have an impact on Taiwan's academic studies. Why do Taiwan scholars need to engage "Sinophone" as a theoretical concept? This paper seeks to point out that the notion of Sinophone may help to enhance our understanding of the cross-cultural encounters between Taiwan and the Sinophone world. it conducts an in-depth analysis of the complex issues raised by the encounters of multiple Sinophone literatures in the Taiwanese cultural field of production. Via the case studies of Taiwan indigenous literature and Sinophone Malaysian literature in the field of Taiwan literary award, this paper calls attention to the difference between the translational practices adopted by the two Sinophone literatures to gain recognition in the Sinophone world. The idea of "complicated entanglement" as defined by Ten Ang may serve as a more useful theoretical concept than the notion of "ethnic identity" for understanding the relationship among various Sinophone literatures within the Sinophone network and help shed light on some critical issues of cross-cultural encounters.