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Translation and Interpreting Studies: Online-First Articles

Authenticating otherness

The English translation of Chinese thinking on painting

ORCID logo | BNU-HKBU United International College
Chinese painting is a foreign other to the Anglo-American world. This article explores how Chinese thinking on painting is translated into English and what implications it carries for the English translation of Chinese traditional culture in general. Early Chinese Texts on Painting, an academic book targeting academics and China enthusiasts, is taken as a case study. Using the notion of cultural translation as a theoretical foundation, this study finds that three strategies are used to translate Chinese painting into English: pluralizing meanings of key notions, contextualizing otherness through the recurrence of Taoist, Confucian, and Chinese literary ideas, and restructuring temporal and thematic ideas. These findings imply that cultural authenticity of foreign otherness can be approximated despite temporal, cultural, and linguistic distances. This study seeks to provide new answers to generic questions about the role of language in cross-cultural studies.
Keywords: Chinese painting, cultural translation, cross-cultural invention, cultural hybridity, third space
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Cultural translation: A conceptual tool
  • Strategies of accommodating Chinese painting in English
    • Pluralizing the meanings of key notions
    • Contextualizing otherness through the recurrence of Taoist, Confucian, and literary ideas
    • Restructuring temporal and thematic ideas in translation
  • Implications for translating traditional Chinese culture into English
  • Concluding remarks
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 29 March 2024
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https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.22039.son
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