Translation in Context
By Jiang Tianmin,
Sichuan International Studies University,
China
jtimmmy@hotmail.com
Get the List of 5,400+ Translation Agencies Now! No Recurring Membership Fees!
Abstract:
Translation,
seen as a mode of being in the world, should not be
regarded per se but should be contextualized
as a social system. Infidelity is built in translation
because it inevitably describes domestic scenes that
are loaded not only linguistically and culturally,
but also socially and politically. Translation is
simultaneous decontextualization and recontextualization,
hence is productive rather than reproductive.
Keywords:
mode of being; social system; infidelity; decontextualization
and recontextualization
1
Introduction
Nord
(1997:1) posits,
communication takes place through
a medium and in situations that are limited in time
and place. Each specific situation determines what
and how people communicate, and it is changed by people
communicating. Situations are not universal but are
embedded in a cultural habitat, which in turn conditions
the situation. Language is thus to be regarded as
part of culture. And communication is conditioned
by the constraints of the situation-in-culture.
So is translation as a form of cross-cultural
communication. The complexity of translation, one
of the most complex things in human history, lies
in the multitude of and the delicate relationship
among its relevant factors. Translation is never innocent.
There is always a context in which translation takes
place, always a history from which a text emerges
and into which a text is transposed. The situation-in-culture
has been given much emphasis. In translation, Gentzler
says:
Subjects of a given culture communicate
in translated messages primarily determined by local
culture constraints. Inescapable infidelity is presumed
as a condition of the process; translators do not
work in ideal and abstract situations or desire to
be innocent, but have vested literary and cultural
interests of their own, and want their work
to be accepted within another culture. Thus they manipulate
the source text to inform as well as conform with
existing cultural constraints. (1993: 134, emphasis
in the original)
Thus emerges an approach to translation
that is descriptive, target-oriented, functional and
systemic; and an interest in the norms and constraints
that govern the production and reception of translation.
According to Lefevere and Bassnett (1990), the study
of translation practices has moved on from a formalist
approach and turned instead to the larger issues of
context, history and convention. Translation cannot
be defined a priori, once and for all. What translation
means has to be established in certain context. Contextulization
of translation brings first culture and then politics
and power into the picture.
2
Translational norms
Culture-oriented translation scholars
would define "culture" as
a complex "system of systems" composed
of various subsystems such as literature, science,
and technology. Within this general system, extraliterary
phenomena relate to literature not in a piecemeal
fashion but as an interplay among subsystems determined
by the logic of the culture to which they belong.
(Steiner 1984:112)
Seen in this light, culture refers
to all socially conditioned aspects of human life.
Translation can and should be recognized as a social
phenomenon, a cultural practice. We bring to translation
both cognitive and normative expectations, which are
continually being negotiated, confirmed, adjusted,
and modified by practicing translators and by all
who deal with translation. These expectations result
from the communication within the translation system,
for instance, between actual translations and statements
about translation, and between the translation system
and other social systems (Hermans 1999:142).
These expectations have gelled into
translational norms. Borrowed from sociology, the
term "norm" refers to "a regularity in behavior, together
with the common knowledge about and the mutual expectations
concerning the way in which members of a group or
community ought to behave in certain types of situation"(Hermans
1999:163). People in a given community inevitably
share ideas about the "correctness" of a particular
act of behavior. There is a degree of agreement as
to whether the act is "correct" in some sense, which
constitutes the content of the norm. What guides the
behavior of individuals so as to secure the content
of the norm is the directive force of a norm, a psychological
and social entity, which mediates between the individual
and the collective, between the individual's intention,
choices and actions, and collectively held beliefs,
values and preferences. Norm thus defined, is both
cognitive and normative. With a degree of social and
psychological pressure, norms act as constraints on
behavior by foreclosing certain options and choices,
which nevertheless remain available in principle.
Applied to translation:
It is part of the meaning of a translation
that a particular original was selected from among
a range of candidates, that it was selected for translation
and not for some other form of importation, recycling
or rewriting, and that a particular translating style
was selected, one mode of representing the original
against other more or less likely, more or less permissible
modes. (ibid., 141)
Behind the choices are translational
norms expounded by Toury (1995), Chesterman (1997),
Nord (1991) and Lefevere (1992,1998,1999). For Nord,
what determines what a particular culture community
accepts as a translation are constitutive conventions,
which constitute the general concept of translation
prevailing in a particular culture community, i.e.
what the users of translations expect from a text
which is marked as a translation. Embedded within
the constitutive conventions are regulative conventions,
which govern the generally accepted forms of handling
certain translation problems below the text level.
Andre Lefevere's main interest lies
in literary translation, not only the internal dynamic
of preservation and change within the literary system,
but also its mechanisms. For him, embedded in the
conglomerate of systems known as society, a literary
system possesses a double control mechanism: one governs
it largely from the outside and secures the relation
between literature and its environment, the other
keeps order within it.
As for the former, the key words are
patronage and ideology. Patronage refers
to "the powers (persons, institutions) that can further
or hinder the reading, writing, and rewriting of literature"
(1992: 15). As a regulatory body such as individuals,
groups, institutions, a social class, a political
party, publishers, the media, etc., patronage sees
to it that the literary system does not fall out of
step with the rest of the society. It consists three
components, namely, the ideological component determining
what the relation between literature and other social
systems is supposed to be, the economic component
enabling the patron to assure the writer's livelihood,
and the status component enabling the patron to confer
prestige and recognition. Patronage is largely related
to ideology, which he early described as the dominant
concept of what society should [be allowed to be]
(1992:14), and later as "the conceptual grid that
consists of opinions and attitudes deemed acceptable
in a certain society at a certain time, and through
which readers and translators approach texts"(1998:
48).
As for the latter, the operative terms
are poetics and a loosely defined group referred
to variously as "expert," "specialists," "professionals,"
and also "rewriters." Patronage rarely intervenes
directly in the literary system, but delegates control
of the system to the group operating within it, such
as "experts," "specialists," "professionals," and
also "rewriters," so as to secure the system's ideology
and poetics. Poetics consists of an inventory component
and a functional component, in Lefevere's words, "an
inventory of literary devices, genres, motifs, prototypical
characters and situations, and symbols" plus "a concept
of what the role of literature is, or should be, in
the social system as a whole"(1992:26).
Patrons and literary experts, ideology
and poetics control the literary system, and hence
the production and distribution of literature. Not
only literary texts are produced under these constraints,
but also translations, which Lefevere puts under the
umbrella of "rewriting" referring to any text produced
on the basis of another with the intention of adapting
that other text to a certain ideology or to a certain
poetics. In addition to these constraints, Lefevere
lists two more, that is, the universe of discourse
referring to the subject matter of the source text,
the objects, customs and beliefs it describes, which
may be offensive or unacceptable to the target readership;
the source and target languages themselves,
and the differences between them, which he demonstratively
puts at the bottom of the list.
Lefevere
stresses that constraints are conditioning factors,
not absolutes. Individuals can choose to go with or
against them. Here he refers to the translator's
ideology, namely, the translator's personal set
of values and attitudes, including his/her attitudes
to the other constraints. For him, translation is
a language game, embedded in norms which are implied
in the game itself but not reducible to them. It is
at the same time norm-following, norm-changing, norm-building
and norm-creating, which in turn adds to the entanglements
within and without its territory.
3
Translation as discourse: E-C translations in the
Late Qing period
Looked at from this perspective, translation
can be treated as discourse, manipulated and manipulatingin
the Foucaultian sense of being speech and/or writingsomething
that is not innocent and unmediated, but is shot through
and through with ideology (the assumptions, values
and beliefs which are collectively held and which
govern the way people live, think, and organize or
represent their experience, whether the they are conscious
of their operation or not), and that relies for its
circulation and proliferation on the support of institutions
(universities and schools, publishers, newspapers,
libraries, etc.), and that is regulated by certain
rules and conventions in its production. During the
late Qing period which saw the overthrow of the Qing
Dynasty, translation (especially of Western literary
works) was discourse pure and simple (Cheung 1998:
141).
Translation was then grounded in ideologythe
ideology of anti-imperialism, of self-strengthening
through reforms, of learning from the West. How China
should learn from the West cast a splendid spectrum
corresponding to social changes in Modern China. However,
what remained functioning as a touchstone all along
was the guideline of "Chinese learning for the essential
principles; Western learning for the practical applications."
This guideline meant to preserve traditional values
while adopting Western science and technology, which
was expressed in terms of the traditional Neo-Confucian
dichotomy of "ti" (substance) and "yong" (function):
Western means for Chinese ends (Yu Yuhe 1997: 165).
Translation therefore received institutional
backing, as witnessed in the setting up of government-run
translation bureaus and training college for translators
in different parts of the country, the publication
of translation works, and the incorporation of knowledge
and ideas imported via translation into the curriculum.
In 1861, the Zongli Yamen, a kind of ministry of foreign
affairs was established to deal with the foreign powers
and related matters. In 1862, the Tong Wen Guan (School
of Combined Learning) was set up for foreign languages
and other nontraditional subjects. From then on, more
translation institutions were set up either by the
missionaries or the Chinese or the combined endeavor
of both. There also sprung up organizations, consisting
of the missionary societies (for instance, the London
Mission Press, the School and Textbook Series Committee),
the Chinese government agencies, and privately owned
Chinese publishing houses (for instance, the Tong
Wen Guan, the Jiangnan Arsenal Translation Bureau,
and the Guang Xue Hui), which translated and published
Western publications. Classical studies were replaced
by a mixed Sino-Western curriculum. "The intellectual
content of the new education, as in Japan, now contained
some of the West" (Fairbank 1989: 394). The establishment
of the Tong Wen Guan in the capital, followed by that
of other schools at Shanghai, Guangzhou, etc., made
available the offer of a curriculum including both
the classical studies required for success in the
examination system and the new subjects based on knowledge
and ideas imported via translation. A typical example
of how discourse proliferated via institutional support
is the way the notions of "natural selection" and
"survival of the fittest" spread in China: soon after
the publication of Yan Fu's translation of T. H. Huxley's
"Evolution and Ethics" in 1898, they became the most
talked about topics because intellectuals immediately
wrote newspaper articles on them and because even
teenage schoolchildren were asked to write essays
on the these topics.
The production of translation at that
time was regulated by certain conventions, rules,
or norms. The norms which governed translation also
defined it: they delineated and policed the boundaries
of what counted as translation. However, the notions
of correctness defined by norms were not neutral but
cultural: the correct translation was a translation
which agreed with the expectations of what a good
translation should be, but these expectations were
ideologically loaded. The ideological slant embedded
in the norms provided us with an index of cultural
self-definition. This pointed to the constraints embedded
in the very purpose and activity of translation: the
reconstitution of the foreign text in accordance with
values, beliefs and representations that preexisted
in China was always subjected to hierarchies of dominance
and marginality. Translation in the late Qing period
never communicated in a straightforward fashion, because
the translator negotiated the linguistic and cultural
idiosyncrasies of the foreign text by reducing them
and supplying another, basically domestic, set of
idiosyncrasies drawn from the Chinese language and
culture to enable the foreign to be received. The
foreign texts were not so much communicated as inscribed
with domestic intelligibilities and interests. The
inscription began with the very choice of a text for
translation, always a very selective, highly motivated
choice, and continued in the development of discursive
strategies to translate it, always a choice of certain
domestic discourses over others.
3.1
The choice of a text
3.1.1 The upsurge of literary translation
As the following figure indicates,
modern translation history witnessed shifts of focus
in different periods: from the rise of natural sciences
in the latter half of the 19th-century
to the popularity of social science at the turn of
the 20th-century, and then to the flourishing
of fiction in the early 20th-century.
|
Natural
sciences |
Social
Science |
Literature |
| Approx.
1850-1890 |
29.8% |
8.1% |
0.5% |
| Approx.
1902-1904 |
21.1% |
25.5% |
4.8% |
| Approx.
1912-1940 |
14.6% |
25.5% |
27.6% |
(Wang Kefei
1997; pp. 181-183)
This
shift was triggered by the social changes in the late
Qing period. The complete defeat in the Opium War
made China aware of the advancedness of the Western
countries and backwardness of its own technology,
hence a domestic motive to catch up with the opponents
by learning natural sciences, as Wei Yuan advocated,
"learning the foe's advanced technology to curb the
foe." (Chen Fukang 1998: 82-84). However, while China
employed a guideline to justify its preference for
Western technology, the guideline was in itself a
proof of its inadequacy since Western techniques (function)
and ideas (substance) were also closely tied together.
As the disastrous defeat in the Sino-Japanese War
of 1894-1895 proved, China had failed to gain full
understanding and make a good use of Western knowledge
without its own foundation of natural and social sciences
by just taking the practical part while remaining
unattached by Western ideas and values. The subtle
working-together of the failures made it possible
for intellectuals to turn to social science, noticing
that the prosperity of the Western countries did not
only result from advances in natural sciences but
also in social science. Thus came the mushrooming
of translated works in this field, introducing advanced
Western social sciences in China. The drastic change
of priority indicates "a shift in the introduction
into China of Western learning from the material culture
of apparatus and technology to the spiritual culture
of thought and scholarship" (Pollard 1998: 33).
It
was in the late 19th century that China
took up the translation of Western literary works
on a large scale. From 1850 to 1899, only three literary
works were translated into Chinese, or 0.5% of the
total. Translation of Western literary works started
to flourish around 1890; the translation entitled
Chahuanu Yishi of La Dame aux Camilias by
Lin Shu was the milestone of the importation of European
literary works. Ever since, plenty of literary works
were rendered, including those translated via Japanese
versions. However, only during the two years from
1902 to 1904, there was an evident increase of the
number26 Western literary works were translated,
making up 4.8 percent of the total. This increase
continued, and finally the translation of Western
literary works outnumbered that of those of sciences
(including natural and social sciences) in the previous
300 years (Guo Yanli 1998:11).
The
upsurge in literary translation came due to the reformers'
political motives and their conviction of the assumed
social function of translation of literary works,
especially fiction, as I will discuss below. What
might also be revealing here is why it came last.
On the one hand, although the social function of literature
was never neglected, yet modern China, facing desperate
conditions, certainly gave priority to what it deemed
to bring immediate results. On the other hand, as
far as Chinese literature is concerned, there was
a prevalent sense of superiority over Western literature.
Intellectuals considered useful only Western works
on social and natural sciences (Guo Yanli 1998:12-14).
3.1.2
The upsurge in fiction translation
In
the late Qing period novel became the most often translated
literary form. According to A Ying, the leading authority
of the late Qing period literature, among the 1007
works published from 1875 to 1911, there were 587
translated works, or 58% of the total (Tarumoto 1998:
38). There were seven kinds of novel, including the
love story novel, the historical novel, the social
novel, the political novel, the educational novel,
the science novel, and the detective novel, among
which the latter four were non-existent as genres
in the previous Chinese history of the novel (GuoYanli
1998: 497). At the end of the Qing Dynasty, thanks
largely to Liang Qichao, who declared that the novel
was the best among all forms of literature, the novel,
previously regarded as a popular and vulgar literary
form only for pastime pleasure in the Western literary
hierarchy, rose drastically at the expense of poetry
and other forms of prose.
Fiction
gained its new standing largely because the new norms
propagated by the late Qing period reformist elite
gave priority to the educational (i.e. social) rather
than the literary value of the genre. The impetus
for fiction translation in the late Qing period was
non-literary, and the fact that the instrument happened
to be literary was initially coincidental. Liang Qichao's
advocacy of revolution in fiction, creation of new
fiction, and introduction of political novels was
not as much for literature or fiction itself, as part
of his political agenda. The reformers wished to convince
the conservative government of the need for reform,
and to mobilize the entire society to carry out such
reform. As the reform movement progressed from the
late nineteen century to the early twentieth century,
especially after the failure of the "Hundred-Day Reforms,"
Liang and his allies turned their attention from winning
over the governing elite to winning over the citizenry.
The problem was how to reach the citizenry which could
not read the classical language which the elite used
to communicate with each other, and would not read
political tracts. That is where fiction came in: ordinary
people did read novels, which were customarily written
in a stylized form of the common spoken language.
As Kang Youwei wrote:
Those
who can barely read may not read the Classics, but
they all read fiction. Hence, the Classics may not
affect them, but fiction will. Orthodox history may
not affect them, but fiction will. The works of philosophers
may not enlighten them, but fiction will. The laws
may not regulate them, but fiction will. (qtd. in
Wang Wong-chi 1998: 106)
Their
choice of fiction was further justified by the reformists'
conviction that fiction helped greatly the political
development of Europe, America, and Japan. They claimed
that in the Western philosophers and statesmen gave
their time to writing novels in the line of duty,
to guide, inform and educateand their success
was easy to see as Europeans and Americans had colonized
the world. As Lin Shu wrote in the preface to his
translated version of Dicken's Oliver Twist:
One hundred years ago, English misrule was no better
than Chinese today, except for the fact that the English
had a powerful navy. In his novels Dickens did his
best to expose social abuses in the underworld to
call the government's attention to them, so that reforms
might be introduced-then, English authorities
listened to advice and carried out reforms. That is
why England has become strong. It would not be difficult
for China to follow her example. Much to our regret,
however, we have no Dickens in our midst, no one who
can write a novel to make the authorities aware of
the social abuses in our country. (qtd. in Wang Zuoliang
1981:11)
Zohar
outlines three social circumstances in which translation
may maintain a primary position: (1) when a literature
is at its developing stage; (2) when a literature
is marginal or feeble or both; (3) when a literature
contains a vacuum or finds itself in a state of crisis
or at a turning point (Gentzler 1993:116). As for
the novel, three condition emerged in the late Qing
period: it was marginal: the traditional novel was
ranked low in the Western literary system; it also
contained a vacuum when utterly debased by the reformers
who advocated revolution in fiction; it was at its
developing stage since the reformers advocated the
formulation of the "new fiction."
3.2
The discursive strategy in translation
An
ideal translation is traditionally viewed as a perfect
integration of two different texts in two cultures.
According to Qian Zhongshu's notion of sublimation
(huajing), it brings about a transparent foreignness
without any strangeness when there disappears the
mist of alien modes of thinking, speaking, and feeling
associated with the source text. However, due to the
asymmetry in cross-cultural communication, the translator
"either leaves the author in peace, as much as possible,
and moves the reader towards him; or leaves the reader
in peace, as much as possible, and moves the author
towards him" (qtd. in Venuti, 1995:18). Venuti would
define these as (1) a domesticating method, namely,
an ethnocentric reduction of the foreign text to target-language
cultural values, bringing foreign culture closer to
the reader in the target culture, making the text
recognizable and familiar; and (2) a foreignizing
one, an ethnodeviant pressure on those values to register
the linguistic and cultural difference of the foreign
text, taking the reader over to the foreign culture,
making him or her see the difference.
"Domesticating"
and "foreignizing" here are two relative terms which
can only be defined by referring to the formation
of target cultural context. Using the foreignizing
method cannot basically change the permanent trend
of domestication in translation since
the
"foreign" in foreignizing translation is not a transparent
representation of an essence that resides in the foreign
text and is valuable in itself, but a strategic construction
whose value is contingent on the current target-language
situation. Foreignizing translation signifies the
difference of the foreign text, yet only by disrupting
the cultural codes that prevail in the target language.
(ibid., 20)
The
scale from foreignization to domestication indicates
a discursive stance, always loaded with ideological
factors which bear on self-image and self-perception.
Robyns distinguishes four basic stances, depending
on whether or not the "otherness" of the foreign (and
hence the identity of the self) is viewed as irreducible,
and on whether or not the receptor culture adapts
the intrusive elements to its own norms: (1) "transdiscursive"
stance, assumed when one culture sees another as compatible
and translation is not a cause for concern or alarm;
(2) defective stance, assumed when a culture reckons
it lacks something which is available elsewhere and
can be imported; (3) defensive stance, assumed when
a culture wards off imports and tries to contain their
impact because it feels they may threaten its identity;
and (4) imperialist stance, assumed when a culture
only allows imports if they are thoroughly naturalized
because it takes the value of its own models for granted
(Hermans 1999: 89).
Translation
in the late Qing period featured the frequent use
of domesticating strategy, yet went to foreignizing
strategy at its end. Behind this is the dazzling spectrum
reflecting the functioning of a variety of factors
within and without China: the change of power differentials
(patrons), the focus of learning from the West, and
the aggregation of invasions inflicted on the country.
Translation during that time is truly an index. The
hybridity of fiction translation incarnates multi-faceted
confrontation: quality vs. quantity, the aim of the
elite vs. the taste of the mass, wenyan vs.
baihua, canonized literature vs. marginal literature,
the influence from outside vs. the Chinese tradition,
reform vs. convention, and entertainment vs. enlightenment.
According
to Lefevere (1998:13-14), cultures are not likely
to deal much with Others, unless they are forced to
do so, and even when they do, they do it in ways of
acculturation if (1) they see themselves as central
in the world they inhabit, and (2) they are relatively
homogeneous. Both conditions fit China in the late
Qing period quite well.
As
for the former, several millenniums of self-sufficiency
had bred in intellectuals' deep-seated self-esteem,
which even survived the deep crisis: internal political
and cultural deterioration on the one hand and the
imperialistic incursions of European powers on the
other. China's eventual domination in the world represented
the prevalent futuristic vision. Kang Youwei even
composed a "Patriotic Song" with twelve stanzas, the
eleventh of which runs as follows:
Only
our country has the resources to achieve domination;
Who
in the world is there to compete with us?
Fortunate
am I to have born in such a great nation;
May
our spirit and our Emperor reign long over us!
The
last stanza concludes thus:
We'll
span all the five continents
And
see the Yellow Dragon fly on every flag. (qtd. in
Wang Xiaoming 46-47)
As
for the latter, throughout Chinese history, up to
the beginning of the 1820's, the number of those who
really participated in the literate culture was small:
the Qing government limited both the producers and
readers of literature to a relatively small coterie
dominated by the court and the mandarins, and it also
imposed its ideology and its poetics by making them
part of the requirements to be met by those who wanted
to belong to that coterie.
These
factors, plus the emphasis on translation's educational
function, justify the current translators' domesticating
strategy, that is, "bringing the foreign culture closer
to the reader in the target culture, making the text
recognizable and familiar" (Schaffmer 1995: 4). The
special attention given to the readers of the target
texts is obvious and well-grounded:
Translating
novels is different from translating science. Science
deals with universals, and literal translation may
be welcomed by the academics interested. The happenings
in novels are semi-imaginary, being designed to move
the feelings of the community. If a translation sticks
to the surface features of the original which have
no connection with our country's politics or customs,
so making it as dull as ditch-water, what value will
it have, and why should the reader spend his energy
reading it? (qtd. in Pollard 1998:12)
This
explains why the practice of translation in the late
Qing period was such a loosely defined vocation, including
paraphrasing, rewriting, truncating, translation relays,
and restyling. By so doing, translations are made
compatible with the current ideology and poetics.
The wenyan and Confucianism of the translations
in the late Qing period show that translators were
supposed to strengthen the imperial culture just as
its authority was being severely eroded by political
and institutional developments. Most importantly,
they continued translating long after 1905, when the
abolition of the civil service examination removed
the main institutional support for using classical
Chinese in official and educated discourse. They considered
their role to be "that of a guardian of the language
rather than simply a contributor to the classical
language and by extension, therefore, a guardian of
classical civilization" (qtd. in Venuti 1998:180).
Furthermore, this activity of translation was, of
course, in no way independent of the supervision by
its institutional backers.
Let
us just look at two Chinese versions of Rider Haggard's
Joan Haste, a fall-in-love-at-the-first-sight
story between Joan Haste, a girl from an average family
and Henry, a boy from a noble one. The first translation,
made by Pan Xizi and Tian Xiaoshen, only kept half
of the story, cutting the part in which Joan became
pregnant before marriage, and the one describing Henry's
love for Joan despite the severe objection of his
father, (Guo Yanli 1998: 282), making the self-sacrificing
Joan a fairy-like chaste girl. It was an immediate
success, partly owing to its compatibility with traditional
Chinese morality. In his translation named jiayinxiaozhuan
(1905), Lin also deleted much of the material that
would be morally offensive. For instance, the description
of the sexual relations between the protagonists is
discarded in his translation and consequently the
illegitimate child appears unexpected. However, he
did keep more of the plot: the hero rejecting his
father's death-bed wish that he marry Emma, and Joan,
the heroine, confronting her father directly, demanding
she not be abandoned; these lovers disobeyed their
parents by having a secret child; abandoned by her
father, Joan turns the criticism around and makes
her father the accused. Joan thus made into a slap
on the face of traditional Chinese morality, which
emphasized filial loyalty as superior to all other
virtues. It is no surprise that Lin was open to criticism
not only by conservatives but also by reformers. For
example, Jin Tianhe, a vehement advocate of
women's rights, attacked Lin saying, "Men can now
justify whoring by saying 'I am Armans Daval.' Young
women with erotic feelings can now justify breaking
the code of charity saying 'I am Joan Haste'." He
was worried that holding hands and kissing in public
would become prevalent in China and suggested that
the ancient taboos should rather be revived than such
laxity condoned. Zhong Junwen, another reformer,
compared Lin's translation with that by Pan Xizi and
said: "where Pan Xizi tried his best to gloss over
Joan's errors, Lin had to expose her shame to the
fullWhere is the propriety in this?"(Yuan Jin
1998:26).
What
is significant in the above example is that translation
can create stereotypes for the Other that reflects
domestic cultural and political values and can be
instrumental in shaping domestic attitudes towards
the Other. Pan Xizi's translation created such a stereotype,
compatible to traditional Chinese morality. The ferocious
criticism on Lin's translation indicates the politically
and ideologically loaded wish to maintain that stereotype
with some degree of coherence and homogeneity. However,
Lin's translation itself suggests
the
identity-forming power of translation always threatens
to embarrass cultural and political institutions because
it reveals the shaky foundations of their social authority.
The truth of their representations and the subjective
integrity of the agents are founded not on the inherent
value of authoritative texts and institutional practices,
but on the contingencies that arise in the translation,
publication, and reception of those texts. The authority
of any institution that relies on translation is susceptible
to scandal because their somewhat unpredictable effects
exceed the institutional controls that normally regulate
textual interpretation, such as judgments of canonicity.
(Venuti 1998:68)
This
constitutes a delicate situation: translation was
torn by the pulls and pushes between the Classical
Chinese system and the emerging vernacular system,
and it in turn added to the pulls and pushes. The
pulls, namely, the domestic cultural and political
agenda that guided the work of these translators,
did not entirely efface the differences of the foreign
texts. On the contrary, the drive to domesticate was
also intended to introduce different Western ideas
and forms into China so that it would be able to compete
internationally and struggle against the imperialistic
countries. As a result, the recurrent analogies between
classical Chinese culture and modern Western values
usually involved a transformation of both, transformation
foreshadowed by the built-in paradox in the guideline
of "Chinese learning for the essential principles,
Western learning for the practical applications."
The
importation of new concepts and paradigms, as indicated
above, had a potential to set going the transition
from ancient traditions, whether oral or literary,
to modern notions of time and space, of self and nation.
In fact, China at the turn of the 20th
century presented a rich instance of the translator's
intent on building a national culture by importing
foreign literatures. The classical Chinese system
could continue if the environment was itself relatively
homogeneous and secure. It could keep producing works
of literature in a language no longer spoken by the
majority of the population and with little or no bearing
on what was actually happening in the environment.
However, when that environment came under increasing
pressure from outside and when new groups, such as
the emerging bourgeoisie, capable of offering alternative
sources of patronage, began to appear inside it, it
was likely to crumble.
The
pushes became more obvious when translation was enlisted
in a nationalist cultural politics, aiming to build
a vernacular literature that was modern, not simply
Westernized; for instance, Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren
would use literary translation as a means of changing
China's subordinate position. Their anthology of translation,
published in 1909, registered, rather than removed,
the linguistic and cultural differences of foreign
fiction. Their translations were written in wenyan
combined with Europeanized lexical and syntactical
features, transliterations of Western names, and Japanese
loan word. However, the pushes also had a domestic
source, since the foreign, i.e., differing from dominant
translation practices, was a response to the current
Chinese situation. In opposition to the comforting
Confucian familiarity offered by many late Qing period
translations, Lu Xun and Zhou Zuoren's foreignizing
strategies were designed to convey the unsettling
strangeness of modern ideas and forms. This embodied
an idea of change, and a hope of modernization. The
heterogeneous construction in their translation was
an excellent trope for change, trope of equivalence
created in the middle zone between West and China.
Its presence points to a much more widely based and
deep-seated revolutionary process that has fundamentally
changed the linguistic landscape of China. Their anthology
was joined by such other translation projects as the
Union Version of the Bible (1919) in fostering the
development of a literary discourse in baihua,
which subsequently evolved into the national language
of China.
4
Conclusion
Humans
are social, rather than solitary beings. They constantly
interact with their environment. Their modes of being
are about their emergent attunement with their constantly-changing
context. Translation, if seen as such a mode of being
in the world, cannot be considered per se,
but should be contextualized as a social system. It
exists in a situation that includes a network of elements
involving others, the objective economic conditions,
cultural and political institutions and ideologies,
and so on. Since the translator cannot avoid being
faithful to his/her own circumstances and perspective,
she/he cannot be really faithful to the text he/she
translates. Infidelity is built into translation because
it inevitably describes domestic scenes that are loaded
not only linguistically and culturally, but also socially
and politically. The source text does not reach the
target society unscathed, but refracted. Communication
in translation is simultaneous decontexualization
and recontextualization; hence is productive, rather
than reproductive. Translation as a product communicates
more and at the same time less than the source text
intended to. Translation as a process communicates
different modes of being, or at least leads to intended
understanding or/and misunderstanding of different
modes of being in the world. This constitutes the
predicament and the dynamo of cross-cultural communication,
and points to that of communication in general.
Bibliography
Chen
Fukang (1998). Chinese Translation Studies: A History
Book. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education
Press.
Chesterman, Andrew (1997). Memes
of Translation. The Spread of Ideas in Translation
Theory. Amsterdam ad Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Cheung, Martha P. Y. (1998) "The Discourse
of Occidentalism? Wei Yi and Lin Shu's Treatment of
Religious Material in Their Translation of Uncle
Tom's Cabin." In Translation and Creation:
Readings of Western literature in Early Modern China,
1840-1918. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing
Company.
Fairbank, John K., and Edwin O. Reischauer.
China: Tradition and Transformation. Rev. ed.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1989.
Gentzler, Edwin (1993). Contemporary
Translation Theories.. London and New York:
Routledge.
Hermans, Theo (1999). Translation
in systems: Descriptive and System-oriented
Approaches Explained. Manchester:
St. Jerome.
Lefevere, Andre (1999). "Composing
the Other." In Susan bassnett and Harish Trivedi eds.
Post-colonial Translation. Theory and Practice. London
and New York: Routledge.
Lefevere, Andre (1998). "Translation
Practice(s) and the Circulation of Cultural Capital.
Some Aeneids in English." In Susan Bassnett ed.
Constructing Cultures: Essays on Literary Translation,
Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Lefevere, Andre (1992). Translation,
Rewriting, and the manipulation of literary fame.
London: Routledge.
Nord, Chistiane (1997). Translation as a Purposeful
Activity. UK: St. Jerome.
Pollard, David (1998). "Introduction." In Translation
and Creation: Readings of Western literature in Early
Modern China, 1840-1918. Amsterdam: John Benjamins
Publishing Company.
Schaffner, Christina (1995). "Editorial." In Christina
Schaffner and Helly-Holmes eds. Cultural Functions
of Translation. Clevedon, Philadelphia and Adelaide:
Multilingual Matters Ltd.
Steiner, Peter (1984). Russian Formalism.
Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
Tarumoto, Teruo. "A statistical survey of translated
fiction 1840-1920." In Translation and Creation:
Readings of Western literature in Early Modern China,
1840-1918. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing
Company, 1998.
Toury, Gideon (1995). Descriptive Translation
Studies and Beyond. Amsterdam and Philadelphia:
Benjamins, 1995.
Wang Kefei (1997). Translation and culture: A
History Book. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language
Education Press.
Wang Wong-chi, Lawrence (1998). "The Sole Purpose
Is to Express My Political Views: Liang Qichao and
the translation and writing of political novels in
the late Qing period." In Translation and Creation:
Readings of Western literature in Early Modern China,
1840-1918. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing
Company.
Wang Xiaoming (1998). "From Petition to Fiction:
Visions of the Future Propagated in Early Modern China."
In Translation and Creation: Readings of Western
literature in Early Modern China, 1840-1918. Amsterdam:
John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Wang Zuoliang (1981). "Two Early Translators Reconsidered."
Foreign Language Teaching and Research, 1,
3.
Venuti, Lawrence (1998). The Scandals of Translation:
Towards an Ethics of Difference. London
and New York: Routledge.
Venuti, Lawrence (1995). The Translator's Invisibility:
A History of Translation. London: Routledge.
Yuan, Jin (1998). "The Influence of Translated Fiction
on Chinese Romantic Fiction." In Translation and
Creation: Readings of Western literature in Early
Modern China, 1840-1918. Amsterdam: John Benjamins
Publishing Company.
Yu Yuhe ed. (1997). A History Book of Cultural
Communications between Modern China and the West.
Taiyuan: Shanxi Education Press.
Guo
yanli (1998). An Overview on Translated Literary
Works in Modern China. Hubei: Hubei Education
Press.
Read
more articles - Free!
E-mail
this article to your colleague!
Need
more translation jobs? Click here!
Translation
agencies are welcome to register here - Free!
Freelance
translators are welcome to register here - Free!
Subscribe
to TranslationDirectory.com newsletter - Free!
Take
part in TranslationDirectory.com poll - your voice counts!
|