The Cross-cultural Dissemination Of The Chinese Wisdom

Lin Yutang, "straddling over Eastern and Western cultures and commenting on the literature in the universe", is reputed as "the man of wisdom in 20^th century", "a cultural ambassador" and "an authentic world citizen" who embodied both Chinese and Western culture, which made him a very typical case of Chinese culture disseminated in the West. Based on Lin Yutang's English writings and translation works, this paper explores Lin Yutang's Chinese wisdom involving such questions as how it came into being, why and how it was disseminated, and how well it has been accepted from a cross-cultural perspective. Meanwhile, by studying the whole process of this dissemination, this dissertation surveys Lin's actual writings and translations and the relationship between them, and analyzes their influence and function upon cross-cultural dissemination; Finally and specially, probes into the integration and interaction between translation and dissemination as well as translation and writing through a overall study of Lin's writings and translations both from epistemology to methodology and from process to effects. All of the above comprise the core part of this dissertation. Hence, the focus of this dissertation is not a one-dimensional overview or a static depiction of the texts of Lin Yutang's writings and translation works but a multi-dimensional study on the thoughts and strategy of them, as an event of cultural communication, from holistic and dynamic perspectives by restoring the original historical context of Chinese and Western cultural communication. This dissertation contains six chapters plus a prelude and a summary.In prelude, firstly, a historical review is made both on the achievements and deficiencies in the process of "the Chinese Culture Spreading to the Western World" and on the relevant study of Lin Yutang's writings and translation works; secondly, the reason of choosing this subject and the significance of this study are introduced with the description of research objective, purpose and methodology; finally, the content and framework of this paper are explained.The first chapter is a study on the historical and cultural contexts of Lin Yutang's cross-cultural dissemination of the Chinese wisdom. Through the comparison between his contemporary Chinese attitude towards Chinese culture and the understanding of Chinese cultural from overseas, the difference between Lin's cultural views with those of his contemporaries is revealed: he did not stick to outmoded values like the "National Quintessence School", nor was he radical and biased like the "Westernized School". The paper then further studies the formation and development of Lin Yutang's cultural value, stating that Lin experienced three phases of "Yu Si (weekly periodical)" period when traditional Chinese culture is criticized and deconstructed; "Lun Yu (periodical founded by Lin Yutang)" period when Chinese culture is introspected and reconstructed, and the overseas phase when the Chinese wisdom is disseminated cross-culturally. In the end, the fundamental driving force of Lin's dissemination of Chinese culture under that historical situation is explored, stating that the immediate causes of Lin's English writings and translation works are Pearl Buck's "encouragement", Gu Hongming's influence and the responses to missionary Arthur H. Smith's Chinese Characteristics to correct the misinterpretations on Chinese culture in the West, while the deeper cause is to cure the sufferings caused by the flooding western scientism, bridge Chinese and western culture and add Chinese humanism in the diversification of the world culture through dissemination of Chinese cultural spirit.Chapter two is the details of Lin Yutang's cross-cultural dissemination of Chinese wisdom. This chapter first interprets the basic elements of Lin Yutang's Chinese wisdom, which involves the "great realism", "a high sense of humor" and "a high poetic sensitivity to life and nature" based on Chinese Humanism. The merging of these three elements by Ling Yutang produced the Philosophy of the Half-and-Half with a Confucian lineage and Lyrical Philosophy which was bonded with Taoism. And then this chapter studies the connotation and features of these two philosophies as well as its effects in the cross-cultural communication to find that Philosophy of the Half-and-Half takes the "moderation" of Confucianism as its foundation, featuring "sense-reason interaction", "Confucianism-Taoism complementary" and "history-modern integration, Chinese-western comparison"; and Lyrical Philosophy shows the features of "leisurely sentiment", "lyrical existence" and the "trinity" involving the artistic pivots of "humor", "leisure" and "natural spirit". The interaction between Lin's Philosophy of the Half-and-Half and his Lyrical Philosophy constitutes the core part of Lin Yutang's Chinese wisdom and two most important and indispensible parts, as well as the main components of Lin's cross-cultural communication of Chinese culture.Chapter three is an investigation on the thoughts that drove Lin Yutang's English writings and translation works. First is an interpretation of the aesthetic root of Lin's "translation as an art ", linguistic foundation of translation criteria, and multi-folded background of "aesthetic translation" by tracing back to the source and analyzing from the perspective of the philosophy of language, indicating that Lin's translation aesthetic views originate from the influence of both the American expressionist aesthetician Benedetto Croce's idea that "Translation is creation" and the basic aesthetics of "faithfulness" from Taoist Laotse and Zhuangtse, while Lin's "sentence-based translation" under the norm of "faithfulness" derived from the humanism, awareness of life and "taking notion as the pivot" in his "theory of Sinogram spirit", and the criteria of "smoothness" is the "smooth and natural" harmony of translated language and created language, which is also closely related to Lin's "theory of language nature". The criterion of "aesthetic quality" is a requirement on consistent genre, style and contents, hence the exploration of the interaction between Lin's views on translation and his views on linguistics, culture, creation, aesthetics, literature and art. Next is a study on Lin's editing translation from the perspective of "rewriting" theory, and this dissertation expounds the legitimacy and theoretical foundations of Lin Yutang's editing translation from varied dimensions ranging from the perspective of cultural school, the dimension of deconstructionism, and the perspective of communication theories to the rewriting feature in Chinese-English/ English-Chinese translation. Finally, the dissertation puts forth the conclusion of "Chinese tune-pattern" after the exploration of Lin Yutang's translation philosophy—anti-"westernization" in English-Chinese translation and "sinicization" in Chinese-English translation.Chapter four probes into Lin Yutang's translation strategies. First is an external study on Lin's translation strategy, in which the study of "hypertext" investigates the restrictive functions exerted on the generation of Lin's authorial text by those factors beyond the text itself, including ideology, poetics and patronage and reveals the internal motivation of Lin Yutang's choice of text. On the other hand, the study of "paratext" reveals the positive effects and compensatory functions to the authorial text of such paratextual forms as language manipulation and non-language guidance. Next is the study of Lin Yutang's editing-translation strategies. Editing translation is the main translation form by Lin Yutang. In the process of editing-translation, Lin Yutang went from rewriting at the linguistic level to manipulating at the cultural level. His goal of cross-cultural dissemination was achieved by various editing devices, including from the manipulation of the prefaces, the guidance of headings and the introduction of reading methods, to reconstructing texts, "interspersing narration with comments" and "integrating translation with interpretations". The next is about the coordination of the strategies of "alienation" and "domestication" and the successful application of contrast and comparison devices during the process of Lin Yutang's editing-translation. Finally, the chapter also analyzes the linguistic and cultural motives behind the lexical, structural and strategic inconsistencies in his translation.Chapter five explores Lin Yutang's writing strategies in his essays, novels and biographic writings. First this chapter focuses on his essays, revealing the interaction and conversion between his early Chinese and English essays and demonstrating his creation strategy of perfectly unified form and content which involves his communicating carefree spirit through carefree style of writing. Next is the exploration of Lin Yutang's novel writing. The study shows that he successfully demonstrated the life wisdom of the Chinese people via the depiction of typical figures and reached his writing goal to spread cultures and wisdom of China by using essay-writing techniques, which depends highly on the "redundant" information. Another feature of text generation of Lin Yutang's novels is explored through the intertextuality study on Moment in Peking and A Dream of Red Mansions in terms of content, language and structure. Following that is a study on Lin's biographies from those on others to autobiography. Lin's biographies made a breakthrough in traditional Chinese biography writing by adopting modern western writing mode, novelization of narration and essay-like creation, which added humanism to his biographical works and improved their readability. Lastly, this chapter discusses the interaction between Lin Yutang's writings and translations in terms of theme selection, the writing style and writing purposes, reflects on the connotation and denotation of "translation", and the interface between translation and creation, in an effort to contribute to the current translation theory and translation culture.Chapter six investigates the dissemination effect of Lin Yutang's writings and translations, i.e. analyzes the acceptance and response from readers abroad. First, this chapter studies the continuous influence and cross regional communication of his works synchronically and diachronically. Next is a review on the statistics of reader responses with regard to content, language, strategy and form etc. Statistics shows that overseas readers basically recognize the life wisdom and leisurely spirit conveyed by Lin Yutang's writings and translations, speak highly of Lin's writing style and linguistic readability, and his writing and translation strategies are also esteemed to some degree. In addition, the paratexts in Lin's writings and translation works are also widely accepted and recognized among the readers. This chapter also concerns about the researches relevant with Lin Yutang throughout the world. Finally, this chapter analyses and evaluates the overseas responses to his works in terms of politics, sociology and aesthetics of reception. Politically and sociologically, the popularization of Lin's works is out of the purpose of political ally and military expansion and people's desire to relieve their anguish from materialism and scientism, while his strategy of "respect the readers" and "inspire the readers" and the self-adjustment based on adequate understanding of the readers ensured satisfaction of readers' expectations and ultimately achieved his intension of "merging view".As the summary, the last part reviews the main points, weighs the gain and loss of this dissertation, and forecasts the follow-up researches. In a time of economical globalization and cultural diversification, especially in the contemporary context of "cultural consciousness", the cross-cultural study on Lin Yutang may provide significant reference for disseminating Chinese culture and promoting equal dialogue between different cultures so that the cultural resource of Lin Yutang can be placed into modern cultural communication and civilization construction.