Politics Of Translation In Contemporary China

The present dissertation proposes a theoretical frame for viewing translational phenomena from a process-oriented perspective and examines translations within its socio-cultural and socio-historical contexts. This study also tries to account for the textual reflections of the socio-cultural or socio-historical elements presented in the target text. Additionally, the impact of the interrelationship between the author, the translator, and the readers on the translation activity has been examined against the asymmetrical power partnership between the English and Chinese languages or cultures by a de-mathematical method borrowed from game theory.In this dissertation, politics is employed in its broad sense to mean maneuvering and intriguing as well as the whole of the interrelations between people in a society while the politics of translation refers to the politics of the process of translating or the politics in translation activities, which must be considered in relevance to the motivations in the selection of certain texts to be translated, the choices and positions that are made and held by a translator, and the social implications of the distribution and reception of a translation. The concept of the politics of translation is brought out to throw more light on the power relations between the subjects involved in the process of translation, the power relations between the two languages and cultures of a translation activity, and the interactions between these power relations and translation production and strategies.The first chapter offers the theoretical background for major notions or concepts which are to be used in the main body of the dissertation. These notionsare: politics, translation, the politics of translation, subject, game and game theory, ethics of translation, domesticating vs. foreignizing approaches. This chapter then goes on to deal with divided opinion on the notion of the subject, the socio-historical context for a translation activity, the personal perspective of translation study so as to prepare its readers for later theoretical discussions. After reflections on similar studies, this chapter closes on an overview of the study proposed by this dissertation.The second chapter provides the definition for the politics of translation and probes its two aspects on both the micro-level and the macro-level. The first section of this chapter begins with a distinction between social politics and the politics of translation as well as a new concept of translation, and ends in clarification of confusion about the ideological and political perceptions of translation studies. The second section of this chapter makes it clear that micro-leveled politics of translation indicates the motivation for selecting a particular text to be translated, the motivations for selecting certain translational strategies and techniques, and the expectation of certain translation effects. Macro-leveled politics of translation indicates the relations between the ethical ideas and value judgments that affect translation actions and the external factors such as the socio-historical environment and the political or cultural background of translation activities, which constitute the external or macro-leveled perspective for translation studies.Since the power relations between the subjects involved in the process of translation form a major part of the concerns of the politics of translation, focus has been put on the discussion of the ethics of translation in the third chapter. Firstly, the third chapter discusses a variety of issues surrounding the concept of the translating subject: the subjective agency of the translator, the subjectivity intranslation and the translator's self-awareness. The academic concern leads towards a general discussion of the ethics of translation. Drawing on game theory that is prevailing in economics and social sciences, this chapter goes on to explore the interrelations between the subjects involved in the translation process, and naturally arrives at a practical intersubjective ethics of trans...