Chinese Translation Discourse—Traditional and Contemporary Features of Development

Abstract

Chinese discourse on translation, or the Chinese way of theoretical thinking about translation, can be justifiably conceived as ‘a system of its own’ or ‘a self-sufficient system’ in the study of translation. Often times, such ‘a system of own’ has been confined to referring to the traditional part of Chinese translation scholarship, with its modern, contemporary part of development virtually excluded from such a ‘system’. Most probably, this is because in contemporary times, especially since the end of the 1970s and early 1980s when China was opened up to the outside world, Chinese discourse on translation has been rather heavily influenced by incoming, non-Chinese features. This chapter, however, pertains to a different view, different in the sense that it believes that, ‘as a system of its own’, Chinese translation discourse (Chinese translation theory as well for that matter) should not be thought just to refer to what has happened in the past, but it should also cover what has been happening in the contemporary times, even though what has been happening now may not seem ‘characteristically Chinese’ in the ‘traditionalist’ sense. Starting from such logic, the chapter offers a discussion of some of the most important features of Chinese discourse on translation in both its traditional and contemporary phases of development. It is in the hopes of the discussion to throw insight into a more comprehensive understanding of Chinese discourse on translation as ‘a system of its own’, of the dialectic relationship between what is traditional and what is contemporary, and of the true ‘Chineseness’ of the study of translation in the Chinese context.