ABSTRACT

Focusing on transculturality, this edited volume explores how the role of translation and the idea of (un)translatability in the transformative complementation of different civilizations facilitates the transcultural connection between Chinese and other cultures in the modern era.

Bringing together established international scholars and emerging new voices, this collection explores the linguistic, social, and cultural implications of translation and transculturality. The 13 chapters not only discuss the translation of literature, but also break new ground by addressing the translation of cinema, performance, and the visual arts, which are active bearer of modern and contemporary culture that are often neglected by academics. Our volume is ground-breaking in its trans-disciplinary attention to the study of translation related to China and such a trans-disciplinality should serve as a ground-breaking leverage for other areas of humanities as well. Through an engagement with these diverse fields, the title aims not only to reflect on how translation has reproduced values, concepts, and cultural forms, but also to stimulate the emergence of new possibilities in the dynamic transcultural interplay between China and the diverse national, cultural-linguistic, and contexts of Europe, the Americas, and Asia. It shows how cultures have been appropriated, misunderstood, transformed, and reconstructed through processes of linguistic mediation, as well as how knowledge, understanding, and connections have been generated through transculturality.

The book will be a must read for scholars and students of translation studies, transcultural studies, and Chinese studies.

chapter |7 pages

Introduction

chapter 1|34 pages

Mutual Trans-writings

The Sources of Generative Modernity

chapter 2|14 pages

Changes in the Contemporary Translation of Irish Literature

A Case Study of the Translation of James Joyce

chapter 3|14 pages

Chinese Children's Literature in Translation

A Case Study of Reader Responses in the UK

chapter 4|15 pages

The Politics of Translation

The Rockefeller Foundation and the China Translation Project in the Early Cold War (1947–1952) 1

chapter 5|18 pages

Comparable Diversities

Translating Modern Chinese Literature with a Transcultural Approach

chapter 7|14 pages

Back Translation in Film Restoration

A Case Study of The Romance of the Western Chamber (1927)

chapter 8|15 pages

The Visualized Translation of Classical Chinese Poetry

A Case Study of the BBC Documentary Du Fu: China's Greatest Poet

chapter 11|15 pages

Translating Chinese Culture and History in Museum Exhibitions

Translation as Cultural Interpretation

chapter 13|18 pages

Dis-/Continuing Traditions

Chinese Contemporary Art, Polylogic Translation and the Traces of Confucian-literati Culture

chapter |2 pages

Afterword