Much effort has been devoted over the past few centuries to presenting China to the West in the English language, beginning with the classical sinology of nineteenth-century Britain and reaching a climax through late-twentieth century Chinese Studies in the States, carried out mostly in departments of East Asian languages and literature/cultures. Invariably there is one shared element in these approaches: translation. In our age, the pervasive use of English as the language of academic discourse, combined with the increased hegemony of English in fields beyond those of business, recreation and diplomacy, means that the u22Westernizationu22 of forms of knowledge related to Chinese culture and tradition has become inescapable. In the new linguistic imperialism, what is prominent are the misrepresentation, distortion and manipulation carried out in connection with the translation of ideas from Chinese into English. The present article focuses on ideas rather than texts in order to understand the cannibalization of one language by another. Keywords fiction,
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