Chinese translation of the west: A history for a global era.

摘要

Modern Chinese history can be described as an ongoing process of translating the West to re-define Chinese identity in relation to the West in colonial and postcolonial contexts. This massive translation effort points to some major intercultural challenges for the present age of globalization.; The thesis explores various dimensions of translation through hermeneutically reconstructing the Chinese experience of translating the West. It attempts to bring some new, Chinese perspectives to translation studies per se, and on that basis, to suggest some curricular implications of translation as a form of curriculum and curriculum itself as a form of translation.; An interpretive history of Chinese translation of the West was built by examining various historical details from different theoretical perspectives. This history displays the many dimensions of translation, perhaps especially the destructive patterns of a uniquely occidentalist translation of the West as Other, as well as linguistic and cultural difficulties that have been working at the heart of China-West engagement.; To gain some insights into where the ongoing work of translation is moving, three contemporary texts were selected, read and interpreted. These texts show that Chinese translation is still lost in a contradictory tension between a desire for wholesale Westernization and a kind of one-turn negation, or simple rejection of the West.; To find a way out of the impasse between Sinocentrism and Eurocentrism, a hermeneutic effort was made to identify the various roles of translation and translator, as seen in the Chinese experience. The idea of translation as a form of dreaming and translator as a person in exile was put forward, suggesting both hopes and possibilities for translation as a third space for intercultural mediation. This new form of understanding translation and translator was then re-translated and applied briefly to the context of curriculum inquiry. This may hold promise for developing an international discourse of curriculum, involving intercultural reconciliation, peace and harmony in a globalizing world.