Translation Studies and China: Literature, Cinema, and Visual Arts

Focusing on transculturality, this edited volume explores how the role of translation and the idea of (un)translatability in the transformative complementation of different civilizations facilitates the transcultural connection between Chinese and other cultures in the modern era.

Bringing together established international scholars and emerging new voices, this collection explores the linguistic, social, and cultural implications of translation and transculturality. The 13 chapters not only discuss the translation of literature, but also break new ground by addressing the translation of cinema, performance, and the visual arts, which are active bearer of modern and contemporary culture that are often neglected by academics. Our volume is ground-breaking in its trans-disciplinary attention to the study of translation related to China and such a trans-disciplinality should serve as a ground-breaking leverage for other areas of humanities as well. Through an engagement with these diverse fields, the title aims not only to reflect on how translation has reproduced values, concepts, and cultural forms, but also to stimulate the emergence of new possibilities in the dynamic transcultural interplay between China and the diverse national, cultural-linguistic, and contexts of Europe, the Americas, and Asia. It shows how cultures have been appropriated, misunderstood, transformed, and reconstructed through processes of linguistic mediation, as well as how knowledge, understanding, and connections have been generated through transculturality.

The book will be a must read for scholars and students of translation studies, transcultural studies, and Chinese studies.

Haiping Yan is the Tsinghua Academy Professor of the Class of World Literatures and Cultures and the Founding Dean of the Institute for World Literatures and Cultures, Tsinghua University, China, as well as the Director of the Executive Council and Secretary General of the China-UK Alliance for the Humanities in Higher Education (UKCHA). Her research focuses on comparative studies of modern literatures, intellectual history of the 19th and 20th centuries and transcultural theories with numerous publications in transnational feminism, transcultural modernism, and critical cosmopolitanism.

Haina Jin is a professor of translation, cinematic, and transcultural studies at the Communication University of China. She is an invited member of UKCHA, and the series editor of Routledge Series in Chinese Cinema. Her research interests include film translation, translation history, and film history.

Paul Gladston is the inaugural Judith Neilson Chair Professor of Contemporary Art at the University of New South Wales, Sydney and a distinguished affiliate member of the UKCHA. He has written extensively on contemporary art and culture with respect to the concerns of critical/cultural theory.