تويت
The Translator: Studies in Intercultural Communication
Volume 15, Number 2, 2009
Chinese Discourses on Translation
Positions and Perspectives
Volume 15, Number 2, 2009
Chinese Discourses on Translation
Positions and Perspectives
Guest-edited by Martha Cheung, Hong Kong Baptist University
ISBN: 978-1-905763-14-6
Chinese discourse on translation has always been a site for negotiating cultural politics, and for heated debates about the perennial problem of China’s relation with the world. Traditional Chinese discourse on translation has been criticized for being impressionistic, unscientific, anecdotal and unsystematic, and more or less consigned to oblivion, while contemporary Chinese discourse on translation became almost synonymous with Chinese translations, explications and/or application of imported translation theories. In the mid 1980s, however, there was a wave of critical self-reflection on this state of affairs. Alarmed by the loss of ability to tap into the power of discourse and to exercise the right of discourse, and by the muting of the Chinese voice to mere echoes of the voice of the West, there has been, in the field of translation studies as in other fields, a series of movements to rediscover the roots of Chinese culture, to reconstruct a Chinese tradition, to regain a Chinese voice, and to re-establish a Chinese system of learning. A similar process of critical self-reflection has also unfolded in the Anglo-American world. The impact of postcolonial thinking has produced some sharp critiques of Eurocentrism in different academic disciplines, including translation studies, and there have been attempts at borrowing and learning from other discourses on translation in order to produce new models or conduct new theoretical explorations.
Chinese Discourses on Translation sets out to address these issues from the perspectives of Chinese and non-Chinese scholars of translation, and to bring contemporary Chinese discourses on translation to the attention of a wider readership.
Contents
<H1><H1 style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt">Introduction. Chinese Discourses on Translation
Positions and Perspectives
Pages: 223-38
Author: Martha P. Y. Cheung, Hong Kong
Abstract. Chinese discourses on translation have always been a site for negotiating cultural politics, and for heated debates about the perennial problem of China ’s relation with the world. In its most recent form, the debate revolves around whether the import of foreign translation theories and the application of these theories to Chinese materials have resulted in a marginalization of traditional Chinese discourse on translation within the Chinese system of knowledge, and in the muting of Chinese voices to mere echoes of the voice of the West. Also debated vigorously is the related question of the importance of asserting Chineseness in academic discourses on translation. The reasons behind the Chinese preoccupation with issues of national and cultural identity are explored in the broader context of the postcolonial world and the plight of scholars working in non-metropolitan centres. The positions and perspectives of the major participants in this local debate are almost certain to have reverberations not only among the scholars concerned but also among those committed to moving beyond Eurocentric modes of thinking and promoting dialogue between major and non-major translation traditions.
Keywords. Chineseness, Cluster concept, Cultural politics, Discourse, Eurocentrism, Identity, International translation studies, Post-ism.
Theorizing the Politics of Translation in a Global Era: A Chinese Perspective
Pages: 239-259
Author: Guo Yangsheng, P.R. China
Abstract. In an age of globalization that is characterized by pervasive use of various forms of translation within different political contexts, theorizing the politics of translation assumes considerable importance. Such theorization has to move beyond linguistic, textual, cultural and national boundaries - by way of re-examining lived and living experiences of the politics of translation -and must involve reconstructing and rewriting the history of translation. This article seeks to explain, from a Chinese point of view, the political impact of globalization on translation, and to identify the domestic and international challenges that Chinese translation theorists face in theorizing the politics of Chinese translation within a postmodern, postcolonial and globalized context. Finally, it explores whether this Chinese effort to politicize translation can open up a new space for a much-needed intercivilizational dialogue with the West.
Keywords. Cultural values, Globalization, héhé, Identity, Intercivilizational dialogue, Politics of translation
Translating the Other: Discursive Contradictions and New Orientalism in Contemporary Advertising in China
Pages: 261-282
Author: Mao Sihui, Macao
Abstract. This article approaches advertisements not just as a tool for the promotion of goods but also, and largely, as an agent of cultural translation that crosses the boundaries between ‘Self' and the (linguistic and cultural) ‘Other'. That is, advertising is seen as a means of transporting the ways of life, customs, attitudes, mindsets and values of one culture across time and space to another culture. Within the radically changed context of globalization and localization, the author analyzes contemporary advertising in China to show how it reveals the various discursive contradictions existing at the core of the dominant ideology of ‘Socialist Market Economy with Chinese Characteristics' and explores how the relationship between ‘Self' and the ‘Other' is negotiated through cultural translation. In the process of this exploration, the author conducts a cultural critique of the new Orientalism in real estate advertisements from the Guangdong region (bordering on Hong Kong and Macao ) of the Pearl River Delta, one of the most developed areas in China .
Keywords. Chinese advertising, Cultural critique, Cultural translation, Globalization, New Orientalism, Self and Other
The ‘Chineseness’ vs. ‘Non-Chineseness’ of Chinese Translation Theory: An Ethnoconvergent Perspective
Pages: 283-304
Author: Tan Zaixi, Hong Kong
Abstract. Since the early 1980s, when China began to witness an influx of foreign, mainly Western, translation theories as a result of its opening up to the outside world, a number of Chinese scholars have argued that the importation of these theories has been excessive, that the Chinese have always had their own tradition of studying translation, and that this tradition must be preserved and protected from too much outside influence. The author accepts that a Chinese tradition of theorizing translation does exist and attempts to outline the main features of this tradition. He argues, however, that the ‘Chineseness’ of Chinese translation theory is not something to be deliberately designed and manufactured, that Chinese scholarship, like all scholarship, can only benefit from interacting with other traditions and, furthermore, that Sinocentrism can be as damaging to the development of translation studies as Eurocentrism.
Keywords. Chinese translation theory, Chinese tradition, Chineseness, non-Chineseness, Dialectic, Ethnoconvergence
Repertoire Transfer and Resistance: The Westernization of Translation Studies in China
Pages: 305-325
Author: Nam Fung Chang, Hong Kong
Abstract. Modern translation studies has developed in the West and in China along similar routes. The application of linguistic theories to the study of translation has brought attention to this long-neglected field and has shown the possibilities of alignment with a serious academic subject. Linguistic models, however, have proved rather unproductive. Instead, it has been the explorations initiated by polysystem theory and other cultural theories in recent decades that have allowed translation studies to grow into a discipline in its own right in the West. These theories were introduced to China in the 1980s and 1990s. Initially, they met with various forms of resistance because of their intrusion upon an established tradition. Yet because these theories created a new direction for translation discourse and helped gain wider recognition for translation studies as a discipline in China , they gradually took over the centre of the home repertoire. This article views the process of the Westernization of translation studies in China since the 1980s -which is taking place at a time when Chinese culture is particularly receptive to foreign repertoires due to a strong sense of ‘self-insufficiency' - as a case in which a polysystem borrows repertoires from others to fulfil certain self-perceived needs.
Keywords. China, Polysystem, Postcolonialism, Repertoire, Resistance, Transfer
Translation, Manipulation and the Transfer of Negative Cultural Images: A.C. Safford’s Typical Women of China
Pages: 327-349
Author: Fang Lu , USA
Abstract. This article explores the long-ignored yet powerful role played by missionary translation in constructing the images of Chinese women in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Using the missionary Anna Safford’s translation Typical Women of China, it illustrates how images of women from classical Chinese literature were selected and manipulated to meet the translator’s own religious, cultural and political purposes, and how the translation reinforced the existing stereotypes created by other missionary writers. The author examines the historical and cultural contexts in which Safford’s translation was produced and analyzes the problematic relationship between the translated text and its originals. The article identifies the actual sources Safford used and investigates the translational and cultural strategies she developed. Additionally, it discusses the function and significance of missionary translation, as reflected by Safford’s work, in Chinese-American cross-cultural encounters.
Keywords. Anna Safford, Biographies of Chinese women, Cross-cultural adaptation, Ethnographic writings, Images of Chinese women, Missionary translation, Postcolonialism, Translation strategies
Introducing a Chinese Perspective on Translation Shifts: A Comparative Study of Shift Models by Loh and Vinay & Darbelnet
Pages: 351-374
Author: Zhang Meifang and Pan Li, Macao
Abstract. The term translation shifts was first suggested and defined by Catford as “departures from formal correspondence in the process of going from the SL to the TL” (1965:73). However, theories of linguistic changes that are equivalent to translation shifts can be traced back as early as the 1950s, during which period both Western and Chinese scholars proposed taxonomies to describe changes effected in the process of translation. These theories contributed to elaborating the concept of ‘shift’ in translation studies. And yet, only Western scholars’ theories of translation shifts – most notably those elaborated by Vinay & Darbelnet (1958) and Catford (1965) – have been discussed in the literature, with very little mention of the relevant discourse elaborated by Chinese scholars. This study introduces the model of translation shift proposed in 1958 by a Chinese scholar, Loh Dian-yang, and compares his taxonomy with that outlined by Vinay & Darbelnet in the same year. The authors hope that the findings of the research may provide a set of data for enriching shift-based studies with a Chinese perspective.
Keywords. Chinese perspective, Comparison, Equivalence, Shift taxonomies, Translation shifts, Western shift theories
‘God’s Real Name is God’
The Matteo Ricci-Niccolo Longobardi Debate on Theological Terminology as a Case Study in Intersemiotic Sophistication
Pages: 375-400
Author: Seán Golden , Spain
Abstract. In the early 17th century, two Jesuits reached opposite conclusions about the feasibility of ‘domesticating’ or ‘foreignizing’ key theological terms and concepts in classical Chinese. Matteo Ricci proposed cultural equivalents that would allow the use of Chinese terms to translate key Catholic concepts on the basis of his own reading and interpretation of the Confucian canon. Niccolo Longobardi consulted contemporary Chinese scholars in order to understand the orthodox native interpretation of that canon. When he discovered that Neo-Confucian cosmology did not recognize the separation of matter and spirit, he decided that cultural equivalents did not exist, and insisted on transliterating key Catholic terms. The disagreement between Ricci and Longobardi constitutes an early modern laboratory situation for testing approaches to cross-cultural transfer and developing a theoretical model for comparative cultural studies. This model – combining aspects of Karl Popper’s Three World conjecture, Hans Georg Gadamer’s metaphor of a cultural horizon, the concept of a hermeneutic circle initiated by Friedrich Schleiermacher, and Sinological considerations – offers a framework through which to analyze the contrasting approaches and conclusions of Ricci and Longobardi in the contexts of ethnocentrism and of linguistic-cultural relativism.
Keywords. Confucian cosmology, Cross-cultural transfer, Ethnocentrism, Hans Georg Gadamer, Niccolo Longobardi, Karl Popper, Matteo Ricci
Why Translators Should Want to Internationalize Translation Studies
Pages: 401-421
Author: Maria Tymoczko
Abstract. The role of the translator and the conceptualization of translation are both in a period of notable change. Some of this change is happening because the profession of translation is internationalizing rapidly and thus old Eurocentric and other localized ideas no longer fully respond to the demands of the field. Globalization is also exercising transformative pressures on the practices of translation, in part driven by new technologies. Frameworks to interrogate the discourses of translation studies and to develop broader conceptualizations of translation so as to meet the challenges coming from both inside and outside the field are needed by scholars, by teachers of translation, and most of all, by translators themselves. Linking theory and pragmatics, this article explores how consideration of a broad field of ideas about translation from many parts of the world offers new models of practice, greater potential for creativity, enhancement of the translator's agency, new ethical positioning, the ability to assess translational phenomena with greater acuity, and a reservoir of conceptualizations for meeting challenges of the present and the future.
Keywords. Agency, Ethics, Globalization, Internationalization, Paradigm shifts, Translation practice, Translation theory
REVISITING THE CLASSICS
Anthology Compilation as a Purpose-driven Activity: Luo Xinzhang’s Account of Translation Theories in ‘Our Country’
Reviewed by Bai Liping, Hong Kong
BOOK REVIEWS
Leo Tak-hung Chan (ed.): One into Many (Approaches to Translation
Studies 18)
Reviewed by Brian Holton, Hong Kong
Eugene Chen Eoyang: Borrowed Plumage: Polemical Essays on
Translation (Approaches to Translation Studies 19)
Reviewed by Xiulu Wang , UK
Jin Hongyu: 《中国现代长篇小说名著版本校评》(A Bibliographic
Study of the Masterpieces of the Modern Chinese Novel)
Reviewed by Tonglu Li , USA
Wang Ning and Sun Yifeng (eds): Translation, Globalisation and
Localisation: A Chinese Perspective
Reviewed by Yau Wai-ping, Hong Kong
Xu Jianzhong:《翻译生态学》(Translation Ecology)
Reviewed by Wang Hongyin , China
Yang Jianhua:《西方译学理论辑要》(Excerpts from Translation
Studies in the West)
Reviewed by Wang Hongyin , China
Martha Cheung (ed.): An Anthology of Chinese Discourse on
Translation. Volume 1: From Earliest Times to the Buddhist Project
Reviewed by Ting Guo , UK
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