The politics and practice of trans-culturation: importing and translating Chinese autobiographical writings into the British Literary Field

This study examines the social, cultural and institutional factors and circumstances surrounding the process of importing and translating six Chinese autobiographical writings in the British context. In parallel, it conducts a critical reading of the press reviews of these six books to map out and discuss the representations of Chinese culture and society as outcomes of the translation process (with the translation process understood in the broad sense to include the selection of the source text for translation as well as the actual translating activities). The investment in Chinese autobiographies set in 'Red China' and their uptake by the UK readership have become a prominent phenomenon over the last two decades or so. This phenomenon poses several questions around the criteria on the basis of which this specific genre has been selected and imported into the British literary market and the way it is translated. In this study I use a sociologically-orientated methodological and theoretical framework that takes into account the socio-cultural contexts of translation which then features as an instance of social reproduction. In addition to the press reviews, this study uses as primary data the accounts, views and experiences of the people who have been involved in the translation process, including the literary agent and the publishers who have not received enough attention in the recent sociologically-orientated approach despite their decisive role with regard to many aspects of the translation process. My research thus examines translation from the perspectives of social agents and their interactive relationships within institutional contexts that shape the agents' activities. Based on semi-structured interviews with the participants who were involved in the translation process of the six autobiographies, this study focuses, firstly, on the selection and importing of six Chinese auto/biographical writings for translation and the role of the social agents involved, with particular attention given to the literary agent. Selecting and importing the originals are seen as a formative stage in translation, involving the actions of a range of social agents situated within different yet overlapping institutional contexts: namely, literary agents, publishers, translators and authors. Secondly, this study focuses on the actual translating process, considered in the light of its interplay with the evaluation of the 'good' translation and the editing process, to examine the extent to which the social and professional interactions and negotiations between translators and other social agents - writers, literary agents and editors - affect the way translators translate. Then, based on a critical textual analysis of the press reviews of the six translated Chinese auto/biographical wrings that appeared in the UK daily newspapers, this study examines how the reviewers represent and frame the truth-value and witness voices through the translated self-writings, and how these reviews anticipate and mediate the readers' perceptions of Communist Chinese history and society. My findings suggest that the power relations underpinning the struggles, competitions, negotiations and collaborations within the publishing and literary fields shape the translation process where literary agents, publishers/editors, translators and authors interact and negotiate to yield the final product for the British book market. The selection process is shown to be a decisive step in the process of translation, which to a great extent shapes the way the Chinese autobiographies have been translated and received. Translation, thus, plays a significant role in anticipating, (re)constructing and reshaping the (existing) representations of Contemporary Chinese culture and society

Emerging Functions of Formal Legal Institutions in China\u27s Modernization

In 1977 when China\u27s leaders dedicated themselves to the four modernizations, they consciously decided to reestablish formal legal institutions as part of their ambitious plan of growth. In light of China\u27s legal history since the Communist victory in 1949, this decision is significant. Since 1949 law had borne the heavy imprint of politics; since the late nineteen-fifties, the Chinese leadership had shown little concern for the fate of formal legal institutions; during the Cultural Revolution, the legal system had virtually disappeared. But since 1977, despite fluctuations in economic policy the attitudes of the leadership toward law, repeatedly echoed by lower level officials, have been noticeably positive and consistent. The efforts that have been made recently to begin to build legal institutions are quite remarkable. This essay examines recent attempts in China to create a formal legal system, identifies the principal themes associated with those efforts, and analyzes some of the functions of the new institutions. In one sense, this is an inquiry into what has come to be considered law or legal in China today

Chinese Legal Education: A First-hand Account by a Canadian Law Student

In an article published in China\u27s leading law journal,1 Professor Chen Shouyi, the Dean of the Department of Law at Peking University reviewed the last three decades of Chinese legal education. Tentative but steady progress was made after the founding of the Republic in 1949. During the anti-rightist campaign begun in 1957, however, legal institutions came under harsh official attack. Following that, Chinese legal education suffered setback after setback. In the period between 1959 and 1965, it was on a continuously downward slope . 2 During this time, the Ministry of Justice was abolished, as were all subsidiary departments for the administration of justice. The few law courses in existence were either merged with or completely replaced by political theory courses. When the Cultural Revolution began in 1966, things became even worse

Analysis of the C-E Translation Skills of Political Text Based on the Eco-Translatology

As China’s exchanges with other countries grow more frequent, and influence keeps increasing, many foreigners have an increasingly strong desire to know much more about China. In this context, political texts, as authoritative publicity materials, cover all aspects of Chinese society. They provide an authoritative source of information for foreigners to follow China’s development trend.Based on the Eco-Translatology theory, the author takes the 2021 Government Work Report as an example to explore the complex and changeable translational eco-environment of today’s political texts through a comparative analysis of the Chinese and English versions. It also talks about how translators of political text can convey the Chinese voices throughout the world and establish cultural confidence while maintaining the ecological balance between the original language and the target language.This paper mainly talks about the C-E translation of the 2021 GWR from the eco-environment of Eco-Translatology. The analysis part focuses on skills and strategies adopted in the translation of political texts from the perspectives of lexis, syntax and text, taking the 2021 Government Work Report as an example. The conclusion is a summary of translation strategies for C-E translation of political texts. It also lists the limitations of this paper and the prospects of the research

Rhetorics of globalism.

This project examines the rhetorics that enable nations to tap into and deploy capital transnationally. Its primary focus is on China. China\u27s globalism promotes a version of Western neoliberalism, including tropes such as efficiency, individuality, and freedom, to underwrite inequality, consumerism, and masking of surplus labor/value. While an ostensible boon for China\u27s marginalized, China\u27s globalism continues to increase the gap between wealthy and poor. Chapter One introduces the project with an overview of theoretical and disciplinary responses to globalization. This chapter demonstrates how the discourse of transnational capital supports consumerism, competition, and simultaneous universality/difference worldwide. Chapter Two offers a rhetorical analysis of China\u27s Progress in Human Rights in 2004, an official document published in political organs such as People\u27s Daily and China Daily , to show how China\u27s party-state appropriates neoliberal discourse to appease international trade organizations. It is argued that China\u27s neoliberalism is a roll-out political neoliberalism that maintains state participation in its increasingly privatized provinces. Paradoxically, the market\u27s valorization of an interest-based social order must coexist with the nationalist call for a unity that would raise the people above the individual. Chapter Three offers a discourse analysis of the narratives of the dagongmei ( working sister ) and the dagongzai ( working son ), China\u27s floating population of migrant laborers who often work in urban factories and reside in hostile dormitories where the laboring body is alienated and sexualized. Migrant literacy is shown to resist and sustain China\u27s dominant discourse, an internal Orientalism that pejoratively constructs migrants as country bumpkins. The project\u27s final chapter presents analyses of interviews with Chinese factory workers. These interviews and other worker testimonies represent a clash of neoliberal, Confucian, and Maoist discourse, a rhetorical borderlands that bears new ways of talking about solidarity and workplace democracy

Heritagising the everyday : the case of Muyuge

Ever since the commencement of the new millennium, intangible cultural heritage, the cultural concept and campaign promoted by the UNESCO has rapidly spread the world. In China, thousands of traditional cultures and everyday practices have been absorbed into the intangible heritage system over the past decade, which is reshaping people\u27s perception and engagement with everyday life and traditions. Intangible cultural heritage as an \u27imported\u27 concept has been highly localised and resituated in contemporary China. I seek to examine how intangible heritage as a prevalent cultural phenomenon incorporates everyday practices into regional and national narratives in China in light of the marketization of traditional culture and the political and cultural agenda of \u27the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation\u27. Furthermore, I attempt to historicise the concept of heritage in China\u27s history of modernisation especially since around the establishment of the PRC in 1949. Through the historicised approach, I aim to demystify the imaginary of heritage and interrogate how cultural heritage turns from something to be reformed in the revolutionary era to something to be \u27protected\u27 and \u27preserved\u27 in the consumer society. Under such scope, l examine in detail the changes of mwywge (木鱼歌),a former popular everyday practice in the Pearl River Delta area, as it successively becomes an intangible heritage ofthe provincial and national levels. Despite its prevalence, muyuge was peripheral, marginalised in the both the cultural and geographical senses. I contextualise muyuge in the economic restructuring of the Pearl River Delta area and analyse the process of an everyday practice being reconstructed as an intangible heritage. Based on fieldwork interviews, policy analysis and media analysis, I particularly examine the reconstruction of muyuge\u27s performing practices, the reshaping of muyuge practitioners and its connection with the restructuring of an industrial town. I argue that intangible heritage is gradually replacing previous values and understanding of folk culture with ideas of capital, market and nationalistic identities, and that the autonomy of everyday life has been dissolved and re-incorporated into the dominant discourse

Military Corruption in China: The role of guanxi in the buying and selling of military positions

How does guanxi facilitate corrupt transactions? Utilizing fieldwork data and published materials, this paper investigates how guanxi practices distort the formal military promotion system and facilitate the buying and selling of military positions in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). It identifies three key functions of guanxi in facilitating corrupt transactions: communication, exchange and neutralization. Guanxi enables effective and safe communication among corrupt military officers, holds transaction partners to their word, and neutralizes their guilt about committing corrupt acts.postprin