Translation and Creation: Readings of Western Literature in Early Modern China, 1840-1918 (review)

The study of translations has recently become the center of attention in academic circles, since translation touches on many facets of the current methods of approach to intercultural studies. Translations have also, more often than not, formed the basis for manifold intercultural activities and negotiations in the past. This collection of essays on the translation of fiction is one example of the recent discourse on translations. It is the result of a research project, begun in 1994 in Hong Kong, which aimed to study the "self-reflecting mirror" character of Chinese translations at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth, that is, the possibility that they were expressive of the prevailing state of culture in China. Fourteen academics from Hong Kong, mainland China, the United States, and Japan came together to investigate the historical and social background ("Background"), specific translations and studies of genres ("Translated Works"), and the consequences of such cultural undertakings in late Qing Society ("Making Waves"), as shown in the subsections of the book. To what degree translations may reflect conditions in a particular historical period is thus one of the main problems taken up by this compilation, in addition to the question of whether translations are an indicator of contesting searches for alternatives to the status quo in that period.

In his introduction, David Pollard gives a short overview of "translation realities" in China at the turn of the century. In addition he provides some basic categories for separating translation "schools" in China and Japan and discusses translators' attitudes toward their works. The first section opens with an essay by Xiong Yuezhi, an expert in the field of the translation of Western knowledge in late Qing China, which reads like a summary of his most valuable book Xixue dongjian yu wan Qing shehui (The dissemination of Western learning and late Qing society) (Shanghai: Shanghai Renmin Chubanshe, second edition 1995). The wide range of sources in addition to the information presented in Xiong's book could of course hardly be covered in his short essay of about ten pages here, and yet it is a convincing reflection of his thesis that the importation of Western knowledge had a considerable influence on the intellectual stratum of Chinese society.

The study by Tarumoto Teruo challenges the hitherto uncontradicted studies of A Ying (History of Late Qing Fiction [1937] and Catalogue of Late Qing Fiction [1940]), who estimated that about 60 percent of all Qing fiction consisted of translations. Tarumoto's elaborate statistical survey corrects this assumption and reveals that original works exceeded translated works in the period 1840-1911. In a brief analysis of the futuristic visions of reformers such as Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, Wang Xiaoming puts forward the interesting argument that the reform, or modernization, discourse that developed in their petitions and fiction-writing was to an extent an artificial, human-made product that could only have stifled all other visions of China's future.

The second section opens with one of the few essays dealing with translations before the reform period of the 1890s. By applying a functionalist approach, Leo Tak-hung Chan analyzes the different approaches to translating Aesop's fables after 1840 and is thus able to find reasons for adaptations, changes, and different interpretations according to the varying needs of a changing readership. Chu Chi Yu's contribution on Lord Byron's poem "The Isles of Greece," an extremely popular piece that attracted such prominent translators as Liang Qichao, Ma Junwu, Su Manshu, and Hu Shi, analyzes the political and cultural reasons for its popularity. Liang Qichao's famous writings on political novels are the topic of Lawrence Wang-Chi Wong's contribution, which focuses on Liang's concepts of form and content. By analyzing the inner logic...