Translating otherness: images of a Chinese city

Abstract

Abstract This article investigates the way Western configurations of Eastern identities are formed. It focusses on how Western encounters in the East are represented in the West and what role translation plays in this process. It probes the representation of those cultural practices and encounters that are particularly prominent in the literary genre of travel writing. Here, three Dutch accounts of travels to Guangzhou (China) from the late nineteenth century will be compared, and their methods of translation will be analyzed. The examples show that a different style of translation can result in a different image of the city and that the travel accounts under investigation possess varying degrees of Orientalizing and appropriative style, even though the three writers follow more or less the same itinerary. It appears that they are not merely providing a representation of the Other, but, in fact, are merging the Other with the Self. Ultimately, the degree of merging the Other with the Self depends on the style of translation and each of these styles is defining for the configuration of identity, which, from a Western view, makes the East appear inferior, superior or universally equal.