Modern Selfhood in Translation: A Study of Progressive Translation Practices in China (1890s-1920s)

ISBN-13: 9789811345784 / Angielski / Miękka / 2019 / 220 str.

Limin Chi

Spis treści

Introduction

From Self-Strengthening to New Culture

Identity, Chinese Modernity and Translation

The Role of Translation and Translators in Translation Studies

Approaches to Researching Chinese Translation History and Thesis Overview

Chapter 1

Modernization Through Translation: Shifts and Trends (1890s – 1900s)

1.1 Statistical Analysis of Translated Works

1.2 Modern Development of the Print Culture and the Rise of Translation

1.2.1 The Patronage of Publishers and Literary Journals

1.2.2 Liang Qichao – a Leading Patron of Translation

1.3 Translation from Japanese

1.4 Translation of Textbooks as a Response to the Promotion of Modern Education

1.5 Acquiring Modern Values Through Science Translation

1.5.1 From Gezhi to Kexue – “Science” and Modern Chinese Identity

1.5.2 Promotion of Scientific Understanding as a Marker of Modern Fitness

1.6 Translation of Fiction

1.6.1 Translation of Political Fiction

1.6.2 Translation of Science Fiction

1.6.3 Translation of Detective Stories

Conclusion

Chapter 2

Translation as an Education in Modern Values: Yan Fu and Liang Qichao

2.1 Yan Fu on Western Social Thought

2.1.1 Yan Fu’s Selection of Works for Translation

2.1.2 Yan Fu’s Translation and Writing Style

2.1.3 Yan Fu’s Translation Strategy as Dictated by His Ideology of Modernity

2.2 Liang Qichao on Modern Citizenship Through Translation

2.2.1 Liang Qichao’s Promotion of Modern Attributes

2.2.2 Liang Qichao’s Fiction Translation

Conclusion

Chapter 3 

Making a “New Culture” Through Translation

3.1 Acquisition of Western Knowledge

3.1.1 The Impact of Late Qing Translations on the New Generation of Chinese Intellectuals

3.1.2 Overseas Study

3.2 Translation as a Precursor to New Culture

Conclusion

Chapter 4

Translating New Culture into a Collective Identity

4.1 New Culture Collectives

4.1.1 The New Youth Group

4.1.2 The Association for Literary Studies and Short Story Monthly

4.2 The Growing Authority of Translated Works

4.3 Otherness and Identity Politics - New Youth Debates with Lin Shu

Conclusion

Chapter 5

Constructing the Modern Self in Translation (I) – Hu Shi

5.1 Hu Shi’s Rewriting of Ibsen and Promotion of Liberal-Individualist Ideals

5.2 Nora as a Literary Trope for Self-Empowerment

5.3 Hu Shi’s Short Story and Poetry Translation and His Development of Cosmopolitan Humanism

5.4 The Influence of Foreign Thinkers and Hu Shi’s Academic Approach to China’s Modern Transformation

5.5 Promotion of Modern Vernacular

Conclusion

Chapter 6

Constructing the Modern Self in Translation (II) – Zhou Zuoren

6.1 Discovering Humanity in “Dishrags” and “Sad Beauty”

6.2 Faith in Humanity

6.3 Zhou Zuoren and the May Fourth Cult of Children

6.4 Promoting Gender Equality and Modern Womanhood

6.5 The Naturalness of Humanity and the “Invisible Utility”

Conclusion

Chapter 7

Constructing the Modern Self in Translation (III) – Lu Xun

7.1 The Nietzschean Spirit

7.2 An Instructive Realism

7.3 The Social Exteriorization of Mental Anguish

7.4 Investing Hope in the Young

Conclusion

Conclusion

References

Appendix

O autorze

Dr. Limin Chi is head of the Chinese Department at Kiangsu-Chekiang College, Hong Kong, with research interests in Chinese studies (Chinese intellectual and literary history since the 1890s), translation studies and applied linguistics. Previously he taught at Nanjing Normal University, the University of Auckland and Auckland International College. He completed his undergraduate studies in English at Xuzhou Normal University, China, and has obtained two master’s degrees: one in applied linguistics (University of Melbourne) and the other in translation studies (Monash University). He received his PhD in cultural studies from Monash University. 

Blurb

This book examines the development of Chinese translation practice in relation to the rise of ideas of modern selfhood in China from the 1890s to the 1920s. The key translations produced by late Qing and early Republican Chinese intellectuals over the three decades in question reflect a preoccupation with new personality ideals informed by foreign models and the healthy development of modern individuality, in the face of crises compounded by feelings of cultural inadequacy. The book clarifies how these translated works supplied the meanings for new terms and concepts that signify modern human experience, and sheds light on the ways in which they taught readers to internalize the idea of the modern as personal experience. Through their selection of source texts and their adoption of different translation strategies, the translators chosen as case studies championed a progressive view of the world: one that was open-minded and humanistic. The late Qing construction of modern Chinese identity, instigated under the imperative of national salvation in the aftermath of the First Sino-Japanese War, wielded a far-reaching influence on the New Culture discourse. This book argues that the New Culture translations, being largely explorations of modern self-consciousness, helped to produce an egalitarian cosmopolitan view of modern being. This was a view favoured by the majority of mainland intellectuals in the post-Maoist 1980s and which has since become an important topic in mainland scholarship.