ABSTRACT
Outbound translation, which is initiated by the source culture into the target, has been practiced in a few countries and regions worldwide while receiving relatively little attention in descriptive translation studies. This article uses the concept of gift-giving mentality as a framework to explain why the Panda Books Series, an outbound translation program commenced in 1981 by China’s Foreign Languages Bureau, sustained itself over almost three decades despite not reaching a wide foreign readership. According to this conceptualization, the act of gift-giving presupposes: (1) a perception of self-excellence of one’s own literature and culture; (2) a conviction that gift recipients should appreciate the gifts as much as the gift givers; (3) an act of Givism that denotes an active gift offering to others. This study shows that gift-giving mentality changes its meaning according to the trajectory of political, economic and societal milieus in a specific period. Finally, I argue that the gift-giving model can potentially lead to a practice of translation performed with good will, complementary to the model of conflictual translation, but only if the implicit sinocentrism of the concept is given a serious critique.
