ABSTRACT
Lu Xun (1881–1936) is the pen name of Zhou Shuren, a leading figure in twentieth-century Chinese literature. He is a writer as well as a translator. Lu Xun believed that the translation of foreign literature into Chinese helped promote social change and revolution in China. This chapter explores how Lu Xun, as a translator, uses his pen as a sword all the way through the late Qing Dynasty (1840–1912), the New Culture Movement (1915–1923), the transition period to the New Democratic Revolution (1919–1949), until the end of his life. In the thirty-three years from his first translated work, published in 1903, to his last work, published in 1936, Lu Xun translated 244 works from 110 writers. Lu Xun never engaged in translation for aesthetic reasons alone. He intended to awaken the Chinese people and to motivate the whole nation to seek social changes through cultural revolution. This chapter applies the narrative theory of Mona Baker to expound on Lu Xun’s translation activities and his concept of ‘hard translation [yingyi].’ Lu Xun’s legacy as an activist translator will be examined in order to understand his contribution to revolutionary politics.
