“Creative Treason” as a Key to Medio-Translatology: Circulation and Controversies

Abstract

“Creative Treason”, a key concept in Medio-translatology, has been widely disseminated and caused multiple controversies among Chinese academia. It was first raised by the famous French literary sociologist Robert Escarpit in his article, “‘Creative Treason’ as a Key to Literature” (1961) and was then fully expounded and systematized by Tianzhen Xie in his series as a term fundamental to the modern understanding of the nature of literary translation. As a subject of long-running debate, “Creative Treason” has raised misunderstanding and caused confusion where there are conceptual and methodological differences between the contexts of production and reception. Yet, the circulation of the theory in China has not been thematized as an issue worthy of investigation up until today. This article clarifies the circulation of “Creative Treason” in China, the traveling of the concept across disciplines and conceptual paradigms, and subsequent enrichments of the concept. To this end, this article investigates the travels of “Creative Treason” from comparative literature to translation studies, from literary theory to translation practice, from literary translation to non-literary translation, and between different philosophical schools in translation studies. The intention of the author is not so much to portray the set of its travels as it is to analyze the transformations, displacements, and possible incommensurability between the old and new concepts in translation studies.KeywordsMedio-translatologyCreative TreasonTranslation studiesCirculation and controversies