Criticism of Sino-Western Translation Studies

Author: Wu Jingchu
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2004-10-01
Features: Traditional Chinese translation studies, as an applied translation discipline, aim to seek a unified and absolute standard for guiding translation practice, with its pinnacle being "Text-based—Seeking Faithfulness—Spiritual Resemblance—Transformation to the Realm of Art." Scholars like Nida and Newmark from the West applied linguistic theories to translation studies, enhancing its theoretical and academic rigor. However, they could not break free from an application-oriented approach and overlooked the interrelationships between translation and extralinguistic factors such as power and ideology, resulting in limited achievements. What made translation studies an independent discipline and brought it to the center stage was the translation research within the cultural context that became popular in the West in the past three decades. This book will demonstrate the applicability of these new theories to the study of Chinese translation phenomena while also offering critiques and suggestions for revision. The theme of this book is to critique the traditional application-oriented translation studies, introduce the descriptive translation research currently popular in the West within a cultural context, and through case studies, prove the applicability of Western theories to the study of Chinese translation phenomena.