Corps de l’article

Translation activities and discourse about translation have existed in China for more than 2000 years, but the academic discipline of translation studies in China only took form in the 1980s. Since then, Chinese translation studies has developed rapidly, and China ranks fourth in the number of papers published in the discipline between 2000 and 2015 (Dong and Chen 2015: 1115). However, Chinese translation studies is still in a state of aphasia in the global arena (Ma 2019: 105). In response to the domestic demand for raising the status of Chinese translation studies and the increasing interest from the West after its four decades of development, this book is devoted to Chinese discourse on translation, both ancient and contemporary, by reviewing traditional Chinese thoughts on translation and the development of modern Chinese translation theory since the 1980s.

This book is composed of seven chapters. The introduction is a meta-analysis of the literature on Western translation studies in the past decades. For this part, Wei uses Chesterman’s work (2017: 316), which observes a lack of “agreed general theory” in translation studies due to the inconsistent use of terms and the proliferation of subfields. However, as translation studies is multifaceted and international in nature, and the Eurocentric translation studies can no longer be relevant to the changes occurring in the modern globalized world (p. 6, 11), it is essential to explore translation behaviours and norms between different language pairs. Therefore, Wei believes that the new input from Chinese discourse on translation studies could enrich the existing translation theory, which is based on the Eurocentric model that dominates the present scene (p. 11).

Chapter 1 and Chapter 2 review the birth and growth of Chinese translation theory. The author first gives a short overview of traditional Chinese thoughts on translation rooted in Chinese philosophy. These traditional thoughts provide guidelines for practicing and researching translation. After reviewing the foundation of Chinese translation theory, the author focuses on the development of Chinese translation theory after the 1980s, when translation studies fully developed in the West. By taking several works produced by Chinese scholars from the 1980s to the 2010s as examples, the author explores the Chinese importation process of translation studies works, which developed from simple introductions with little critical notes to timely absorptions with reflective elements and finally to the integration of Western translation theory into Chinese translation research. The author also summarizes the Chinese achievements of the past 30 years, including establishing the status of translation studies in China, defining the principles and norms of translation, expanding translation studies as an interdisciplinary subject, and making advances in literary translation and applied translation (p. 53).

It is a fact that Chinese discourse about Nida’s dynamic and later functional equivalence in the 1980s has marked the beginning of a new era for the research on Chinese translation theory (p. 67). The author summarizes the three kinds of Chinese translation studies that have followed since then. First, scholars adopted ideas from imported Western theories and applied them to the Chinese context. Second, scholars rediscovered the merits of traditional Chinese translation discourse and produced new and original theories. Third, scholars started to promote research based on theory and practice from China and the West (p. 59). Chapter 2 is devoted to the first category. The author reviews the abundant literature generated by Chinese scholars on the Western translation theories, such as the equivalence theory and systematic functional linguistics. Chinese translation researchers looked into these theories with Chinese examples and initiated discussions to expand or complement them.

In Chapter 3, the author looks into Chinese translation activities from both macro and micro perspectives. From a macro perspective, the author retraces the history of Chinese translation by describing the classification of Chinese translation activities in terms of their intensity and visibility in history. From a micro perspective, the author introduces the critical thinking of many representative Chinese translators, such as Kumārajīva (344-413), Xuan Zang (602-664), Yan Fu (1854-1921), Lu Xun (1881-1936) and Xu Yuanchong (1921-2021). The author also revisits the Chinese translation theory including Huang’s “translation variation theory” (2002) and Hu’s “eco-translatology” (2009).

Chapter 4 and Chapter 5 deal with the intersection between translation, culture, and literature. The author notes that Chinese translation studies generally have four areas of research involved with culture: theoretical discussion, problems and strategies, cultural dissemination, and specific issues in Chinese cultural translation (p. 135). The author first conducts a definitional overview of the word culture to see how it is conceptualized in translation studies. By taking examples of translating culturally specific terms and Chinese neologisms, the author discusses non-equivalence problems in translation caused by cultural differences, and he summarizes several translation strategies proposed by different Chinese scholars. The author then discusses the two directions of Chinese translation: the translated literature in China and the dissemination of Chinese culture via translation.

Chapter 6 deals with the research in translation teaching, a subfield of translation studies. The author points out the significance of associating research findings in translation theory with translation teaching and introduces the current status of research in translation teaching both in the West and in China. In China, the research on translation teaching is closely related to the translation competence of the translator and the teaching of English at the university level (p. 199). Some Chinese scholars introduce translation competence models from the West, and others work out original models from the perspective of cognition, sociology, and application in the fieldwork. Apart from translation curriculum and pedagogy, the author investigates the revolution made by translation technology in translator training.

In the conclusion, the author explores the multiple factors which explain why the Chinese translation theory is not yet fully developed and tries to understand why Chinese translation studies has little visibility in the global arena, using the work of Ma (2019). Some of these reasons include the fact that many Chinese translation studies rely heavily on Western translation theory and that many published papers are short and somewhat superficial (p. 225-226). However, as different schools of thought in translation studies have emerged, the Chinese translation studies has gradually transformed from passive acceptance into active discourse making, with the number of studies on foreign theories decreasing while that of the domestic translation theories is rising (p. 228). The author concludes that the future development of Chinese translation studies needs to achieve a mutual understanding between Chinese translation studies and that of the West by integrating traditional discourse and modern theories.

On the whole, the themes discussed in the book are carefully selected and elaborated, which provides readers with a great deal of information concerning the age-old tradition and lineage of translation activities since ancient China, as well as the substantial efforts made by modern Chinese scholars to establish an academic discipline of translation studies in China. However, the author’s definitions of certain concepts could be re-examined, and some of the views presented in the book might be called into question.

First, we believe that the definition of “Chinese discourse” (p. 12) in the introduction is binding. According to the author, “Chinese discourse on translation studies” is an umbrella term covering Chinese scholarly discussion on English-based translation studies, traditional Chinese discourse about translation, and discourse without explicit reference to English or Chinese works or discourse that combines both approaches (p. 12). In the book, “Chinese discourse” mainly refers to the scholarly output in the form of journal articles written in Chinese and published in China or other Chinese regions such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore (p. 12). However, we find that papers and books written by Chinese scholars in English were also cited in this book. For example, the two books of Anthology of Chinese Discourse on Translation (Cheung 2006; Cheung and Neather 2016) and Cultural Borderlands in China’s Translation History (Hung 2005a) are written in English. Moreover, the vast majority of papers cited in this book are published in Mainland China, while those published in Hong Kong, Taiwan, or Singapore are almost not covered. A more extensive selection would have been helpful to gain a comprehensive overview of the development of Chinese translation studies at the beginning of the 21st century.

Secondly, in Chapter 1, the author could have looked more carefully into the nuance between “discourse” and “theory.” As the traditional Chinese thinking about translation is, according to the book, absent of logical reasoning, systematic outlook, innovative thought, and methodology (p. 15), it is neither based on the cognitive framework set by the word “theory” nor does it follow the same development trajectory as the West (see also Cheung 2004: 6). Therefore, although traditional thoughts are essential and feed translation theory, they should not be regarded as such. Instead, as explains Cheung (2004: 38), this kind of critical thinking is more considered as “occasional discourse” containing elements of theory. Nevertheless, Wei uses “theory” to refer to all the thought traditions in China (p. 30-31) and translates “中国传统译论” to “Chinese traditional translation theory” (p. 31-32). It was not until the importation of Western translation theory in the 1980s that China began to develop systematic translation theories (p. 38). As the word theory has a solid and definite meaning, Cheung (2004) proposes to use “discourse” instead of “theory” to refer to the traditional Chinese thought on translation. Following Cheung, we believe it would be safer for the author to use “discourse” in some parts of this book.

Third and lastly, following Lefevere’s line of thought, the author observes that there is not much research on the power relations, social functions, or ideological changes brought about by the translated literature in China (p. 161, 166). Nevertheless, the reason for the prosperity of literary translation at that time was the demand for social change in Chinese society. As the goal of the translation movement was national self-improvement and reform rooted in patriotism, literary translation has entered the central position of ideology (Hung 2005b: 11). We consider that there are many scholars studying translation from a social or political perspective. For example, Wang (1996) studies Liang Qichao’s translation of a Japanese political novel, whose principal theme was to rouse the patriotic feeling of the Chinese people to fight for independence and freedom from the oppressing powers (p. 10). Hung (1999) notes that the translated fiction can function as a mass educational tool because it caters to the Chinese society’s appeal for incorruptible judges and moral values in the face of a breakdown of the social and political systems (p. 24). Also, Cheung (2003) probes into Lin Shu and Wei Yi’s joint translation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, claiming that translated literature could influence the ideology of the society, as it became a tool of anti-imperialism, of self-strengthening, and of emancipating the mind during the overthrow of the Qing dynasty (p. 19).

Overall, this book is well structured, with each chapter introducing the main content at the beginning and summarising the key points in the end. The references for each chapter are written in English and Chinese, which helps both English and Chinese readers retrace the original papers. As an overview of Chinese translation studies, we believe this book has two merits. This book is an engaging and illuminating work through which researchers with English as their primary or predominant language and Chinese readers unfamiliar with traditional Chinese writings on translation and/or modern translation theory can acquaint themselves with Chinese discourse. The book also contributes to a non-Western perspective to review the general, theoretical and practical issues relating to the emergence and growth of Chinese translation studies, thus helping to promote the status of Chinese translation studies on the global stage.