Research on cultural translation enhancement of Chinese art English textbooks based on improved Marian NMT and cultural adversarial networks

This article focuses on the encounters and exchanges between French and Chinese artists, art critics and curators from 1985–90 and their impact on the development of two important presentations of the ’85 New Wave movement in France: Magiciens de la Terre (1989) and Chine Demain pour Hier (1990). Drawing on interviews with French and Chinese artists, critics and curators, it argues how the politics of intercultural encounters influenced the curatorial frameworks of both these exhibitions. Such politics ranged from the conditions of artistic exchanges between France and China initiated under French cultural policies to issues of linguistic and cultural translation.

This article focuses on the emerging ethnographic field 'refugee camp' and the challenges it poses in terms of an "engaged ethnomusicology" inscribed into a larger discussion about "public ethnography" and ethically informed collaborative practices. The prevailing focus of mass media and artists serves as a starting point, as they represent migratory phenomena primarily through the visual lens, through material artefacts, denying their multisensory character, particularly their immaterial and sonic aspects. Taking as examples the artistic work of Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei and exhibition concepts presented at the documenta 14 and at the Biennale in Venice 2019, the article questions the predominance of the material approach, the inaudibility of migration because of its compatibility with our "museological thinking'" and an abstract idea of "cultural heritage" as promoted by established cultural institutions in Western Europe. The article argues that sound should instead be taken more seriously into consideration. This includes reflecting on the prominent links between human existentiality and suffering, as well as musical production and performance. It is argued that the temporariness of refugee's musical practice is related to their precarious life conditions in camps suspended in time and space. As practical examples from the French camp of Calais demonstrate, music making in this context offers refugees one possible way to counter-act imposed policies of infantilization, passivity and an omnipresent experience of waiting. In a situation where creative space and musical instruments are a limited resource, social media and music apps generate particular forms of musical creativity and assume a fundamental role which should be acknowledged in research to a larger extent. Such conditions influence also largely the ways in which migrated musicians construct their self-image as "refugee musicians". Taking as an example Syrian pianist Aeham Ahmad, the article shows that such self and foreign attributions may be reductive and result in an ethically problematic branding with commercial intentions. The second part of the article presents a collaborative grassroot-music theatre project realized in a German Erstaufnahmeeinrichtung over a span of 4 months. It offers insights into the limitations of "making audible", or "voicing migrants" everyday concerns through artistic practice. It also questions the idea of developing an "artistic agency" and an equal "cultural participation" in a working context characterized by social and power hierarchies, emotional instabilities, and a constant flow of individuals and ideas. In this context the role of the ethnomusicologist as a (cultural) translator with multiple responsibilities is crucial. Not only does he/she balance out different levels of musical professionality or different aesthetic preferences, but he/she also opens up spaces for creativity for disadvantaged or marginalized individuals in the camps. On another level the researcher's responsibility lies in the task to make practices public which originally were self-referential or of local relevance in a socially segregated space. Despite numerous obstacles to make such interventions "culturally sustainable", the article shows the potentiality of producing bottom-up "counter-images" or "counter-soundings', which could generate counter-discourses to the main media narratives on migration.

The aim of this study is to assess the artistic creativity and pedagogical activities of V. S. Podgursky in China from 1920 to 1947, as part of understanding his historical role in the development of Russian culture in China. Podgursky’s artistic heritage is characterized by its richness and variety of forms and is of considerable scientific interest to researchers of painting, monumental painting, and applied art. An important part of his artistic practice was the organization of art exhibitions and pedagogical activities. Through teaching, Podgursky raised a whole generation of Chinese students with intercultural competence, who played an active role in the process of synthesizing European artistic trends with Chinese art, contributing to the modernization of art education in China. The scientific novelty of this work lies in the first systematic analysis of Podgursky’s diverse artistic practice in China. Through a comprehensive study of his painting, monumental art, pedagogical and cultural-organizational activities, his deep participation in the mechanisms of cultural exchange between Russia and China is revealed in the context of émigré identity. The study puts forward the thesis that Podgursky acted not only as an individual artist, but also as a mediative cultural translator, and his activity became an important intersection of cultural influences in the multicultural artistic field of Shanghai in the first half of the 20th century. This approach fills a gap in the study of the art of the Russian émigré community and deepens the understanding of the process of modernization of art education in China.

Arthur H. Smith’s Chinese Characteristics (1890) remained the most widely read American book on China until Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth (1931). Smith’s collection of pungent and humorous essays, originally written for white expatriates in Asia, was accepted by Americans at home as a wise and authentic handbook. The book was soon translated into Japanese (1896), classical Chinese (1903), and at least three more times into Chinese since 1990. The characteristics Smith identified reflect his conception of the American Way of Life, racial hierarchy, the idea of progress, and the middle-class values with which he was brought up. He used race and “national character” to explain Chinese food, dress, body care, music, art, language, and architecture, as well as politics and religion. Lu Xun, the preeminent Chinese cultural critic of the early twentieth century, pondered why his country had been defeated and came to believe that the character of his countrymen was the key to their future survival. Smith’s criticisms were valuable for this task of introspection but Lu Xun took him to task for misunderstanding the concept of “face” because he did not grasp it in the social context of unequal power. The ghost of Arthur Smith thus haunts both Chinese and Americans.

This chapter examines the mediated cultural encounter between the American serial queen adventure and nüxiapian, a subgenre of Chinese martial arts films. The nüxiapian genre, featuring a female knight errant, first appeared on the 1920s silent screen and had a lasting influence in Chinese cinema. The chapter first provides an overview of the theoretical and historical underpinnings of the word “vernacular” as well as the cultural essentialist aspects of the martial arts films. It then considers the local as the site of irreducible heterogeneity that enabled active and plural modes of cultural translation, resulting in the “vernacular” body of nüxia. In analyzing the interaction between American serial queen films and the Chinese entertainment world of the 1910s and 1920s, the chapter underscores the dual promise of the May Fourth Vernacular Movement and its implication for Chinese cinema. It also highlights the rise of a particular configuration of the female body on Chinese silent films.