清初經典小說《聊齋誌異》不僅是「鬼狐」的誌怪，更是作者蒲松齡評論社會以及表達個人「孤憤」的平台，因內容發人深省，堪稱中國古典文言小說的鉅作。西方人早在十九世紀將《聊齋誌異》一部份譯出為外文，但就英語譯文而言，一百多年的文筆和風格皆大同小異，尤其是一代又一代的譯者將作者蒲松齡的重要角色從中刪除的大工程。

清朝的評論者早期探討的是《聊齋誌異》的怪「異」現象，後來的學者卻將焦點移到蒲松齡本身，誇獎他無與倫比的文筆。西方來的學者亦同，對蒲松齡的獨特風格也讚不絕口，一百多年來的譯者就因此努力地模仿原文的風格，產生表面上絕多數相似的譯文。

因為文筆相似，譯者只好另外想辦法由眾脫穎而出，手段可分為「刪除法」、「添加法」、「調整法」三個大策略。各個譯者透過「刪除法」選出代表心目中《聊齋誌異》的幾篇，從原文的近五百個短篇故事，剔除不符合翻譯目的的篇章，再大量「添加」註解，讓自己的聲音大過於蒲松齡，最後透過「調整」讀者對蒲松齡的印象，順利搶走異史氏的位子，讓譯者成為《聊齋誌異》的中心。

Much more than just spooky tales, the stories of the Strange collected in Liaozhai Zhiyi offer compelling social commentary and deep insight into the personality and contexts of author Pu Songling; the role it plays in Chinese literature is hard to understate. Commentators, both historic and contemporary, have argued for a deeper reading of Liaozhai Zhiyi than just the monsters and strange occurrences on its pages. An early struggle to define the Strange was eventually made irrelevant by later scholars’ focus on the personal nature of the work. The classic has been repeatedly translated into English since the first isolated stories showed up in a missionary’s textbook for learning Chinese in 1848, yet over a century and a half later, the style and general strategies of Liaozhai’s English translators have barely changed. They have focused predominantly on the writing itself, aiming to emulate Pu’s genre and style so much so that the different translations read almost identically despite each translator’s diverse aims. Where they differentiate themselves is selecting which stories to anthologize. No English-language edition to date features all 494 of the original stories, instead selectively translating but a small portion of the tales that fit neatly within each translator-editor’s interpretation of what Liaozhai means to him. This process of subtraction is combined with addition of the translator’s own commentaries and notes and the posthumous repositioning of Pu Songling’s biography to allow each translator to successfully usurp the central role in the stories for himself.

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