Conceptualising China through translation

This monograph provides an innovative methodology for investigating how China has been conceptualised both at home and abroad historically by tracing the development of four key cultural terms (filial piety, face, fengshui and guanxi) between English and Chinese. Centrally, it addresses how specific ideas about what constitutes the uniqueness of Chinese culture influence the ways users of these concepts think about China and themselves. Adopting a combination of archival research and mining of electronic databases seldom employed in Asian studies, this monograph traces the history of translation exchanges between Chinese and English, showing how the translation process has been bound up in the production of new meaning, not just the transmission of ‘old wine in new bottles’. In uncovering how both sides of the translation process stand to be transformed by it, the study demonstrates the dialogic nature of translation and its potential contribution to cross-cultural understanding. It also aims to develop a foundation on which other area studies might build broader scholarship about global knowledge production and exchange.