Chinese Discourse on Translation: Views and Issues

Abstract

This paper discusses the theoretical thinking about translation in the Chinese tradition. Taking on from where I left in a previous paper on the ‘Chineseness’ and ‘non-Chineseness’ of Chinese translation theory published in The Translator (2009 [2]), the research examines how Chinese thinking on translation evolved down the centuries, what major ideas and theoretical points were produced that were deemed to carry a ‘Chineseness’, and how Chinese discourse on translation (in the sense of Chinese translation theory) has been developing in the globalizing contemporary times. The paper begins with a discussion of the concepts of ‘Chinese translation theory’ and ‘Chinese translation discourse’. The discussion duly allows me to position myself on how ‘translation theory’ distinguishes from as well as relates to ‘translation discourse’ from the perspective of the ‘Chinese’ context. The paper then turns to discuss what I consider to be the defining features of Chinese thinking on translation through history. Whilst it is not my intention nor is it possible, given the immensity of history, to include everything important in the paper, I will nonetheless zero in on the ways in which Chinese thinkers perceive translation that may be regarded as most characteristically ‘Chinese’. Three such perceptions are identified, i.e. those of the activity/phenomenon of translating/interpreting; the requirements of/prerequisites for the translator/interpreter; and the fundamental principle of Xin (translational faithfulness). The paper also examines how Chinese translation scholarship has been progressing in the contemporary, ‘non-traditional’ period from the mid-1940s up to the present. The main argument is built on my 2009 position, a position describable as ‘ethnoconvergent’ in the sense that it sees the ‘Chineseness’ of Chinese translation discourse/theory as but a reflection of translational reality, not something to be deliberately designed or planned by translators or translation theorists. The paper concludes with reflections on the dynamics of Chinese TS development under the new conditions of today.