More than a Two-Way Traffic: Analyzing,Translating, and Comparing Political Concepts from other Cultures

Abstract

Let me begin by sketching what I propose to do in this talk and explaining my title. My first published paper was on min ch’uan (the power of the people), a concept crucial to Sun Yat Sen’s political thought.2 I began my graduate work in Asian studies, with particular reference to China, where I had once served after learning Mandarin. More to the point, in my recent work on the theory and practice of the translation of political and social concepts, I have discovered that Asian studies have been the site of many theoretical and historical studies of translation as a complex act of intercultural communication. Although it may seem somewhat perverse to begin a conference on transatlantic dialogues by discussing those better described as transpacific, I shall argue that the issues, methodological and substantive, raised in this body of work in Asian studies, are equally applicable to the subject of this meeting, and add a needed comparative dimension. Perhaps the greatest single difference from South and Central America is that, unlike Asian conceptual transfers from European to nonEuropean languages, New World borrowings and adaptations came from Spanish and Portuguese as used in the metropolitan power to their colonies, and to their later status as independent nations.