According to Lefevere (1998:13-14), cultures are not likely to deal much with Others, unless they are forced to do so, and even when they do, they do it in ways of acculturation if (1) they see themselves as central in the world they inhabit, and (2) they are relatively homogeneous. Both conditions fit China in the late Qing period quite well.
As for the former, several millenniums of self-sufficiency had bred in intellectuals’ deep-seated self-esteem, which even survived the deep crisis: internal political and cultural deterioration on the one hand and the imperialistic incursions of European powers on the other. China’s eventual domination in the world represented the prevalent futuristic vision. Kang Youwei even composed a “Patriotic Song” with twelve stanzas, the eleventh of which runs as follows:
Only our country has the resources to achieve domination;
Who in the world is there to compete with us?
Fortunate am I to have born in such a great nation;
May our spirit and our Emperor reign long over us!
The last stanza concludes thus:
We’ll span all the five continents
And see the Yellow Dragon fly on every flag. (qtd. in Wang Xiaoming 46-47)
As for the latter, throughout Chinese history, up to the beginning of the 1820’s, the number of those who really participated in the literate culture was small: the Qing government limited both the producers and readers of literature to a relatively small coterie dominated by the court and the mandarins, and it also imposed its ideology and its poetics by making them part of the requirements to be met by those who wanted to belong to that coterie.
These factors, plus the emphasis on Chinese translation’s educational function, justify the current translators’ domesticating strategy, that is, “bringing the foreign culture closer to the reader in the target culture, making the text recognizable and familiar” (Schaffmer 1995: 4). The special attention given to the readers of the target texts is obvious and well-grounded:
Related Articles:
This entry was posted on Monday, March 3rd, 2008 at 10:40 am and is filed under 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, Uncategorized.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.
