ABSTRACT
Increased and increasing cross-cultural contacts, aided by cultural diaspora in the current age of globalization, have added new dimensions to the issue of translatability and untranslatability. This chapter revisits the notion of untranslatability in the wider context of cross-cultural communication and examines how the fear of untranslatability deriving from foreign otherness intersects with a pragmatic concern for readability. In his autobiography, the veteran Chinese translator Yang Xianyi reminisced about his brief encounter with the Chinese paramount leader Chairman Mao Zedong in the 1950s. Untranslatability has been a perennial issue for debate since the eighteenth century in Europe. An idiomatic cultural form poses a challenge to translation. However, the consistent concern of the translator has been lack of readability of translation spawned by untranslatability, revealing an obsession with the extreme version of a target-oriented translation strategy. The primary functional purpose of foregrounding readability in translation is to make unimpeded reading possible.
