如同許多東方國家一樣，台灣文學／文化的發展與「翻譯」實踐同時進行。「文化翻譯」其實構成台灣「文化」的內涵，所謂的「根」（roots）其實已是「路徑」（routes）。然而，在這不斷進行的文化翻譯當中，如果「根」的形成過程已佈滿文化流動的「路徑」，那麼，「根」到底如何產生？「在地」性格如何可能？本文以台灣六○年代「西化」的現代派小說為例，探討文化翻譯過程中「在地性」如何產生。

This paper examines the dialectic between roots and routes via the example of Taiwan modernist fiction. Of all literary movements in the hsitory of Taiwan literature, the modernist literary movement from the late 1950s to the early 1970s illustrates best the translation desire that accompanies the development of Taiwan literature. This study discusses the historical material conditions that gave rise to Taiwan modernist fiction and helped to shape its distinguished features. It argues that Taiwan modernism, rather than a mindless imitation of Western modernism, had a trajectory and agenda of its own. The special configuration of Taiwan modernist writing cannot be fully appreciated without an in-depth exploration of the material conditions of Taiwan in the 1960s as a specific site of literary production in a particular historical conjuncture. This study argues that it was the radical transformation of time-space experience under the audio-visual impact of large cultural flows and demographic change in post-war Taiwan that worked as the momentum of Taiwan’s modernist movement. The disruption of the homogeneous time/space scheme in a very significant number of Taiwan modernist fictional works not only reflects the writers’ penchant for “Westernization” but also speaks of the writers’ excitement and anxiety in a time of radical change. The attention to the materiality of literary production may help us see how Taiwan modernist fiction is shot through with a peculiar Taiwanese sensibility and how “roots” grow out of mobile routes of cultural translation.