In search of interdisciplinary translation studies

The interdisciplinary translation studies (ITS) was advocated 20 years ago when the Fourth Asian Translators Forum was held at Tsinghua University in Beijing with its theme as “Translation, Cognition and Interdisciplinary Studies” in 2004. Two years later, the proceedings of the forum were published in three volumes: two in Chinese and one in English. The English one is entitled Translation Studies: An Interdisciplinary Approach (Luo 2006), which is supposedly the first ITS book in the world. With that humble achievement in mind, the author proposed a workshop of ITS for a translation and intercultural conference; unfortunately, the proposal was turned down by the organizing committee for the reason that the theory was not mature and not commonly recognized yet. The author then had to give up that bold and provocative idea. However, he did not go to that conference. Ironically, an international conference with interdisciplinary approaches in translation as its theme was held in Europe a few years later.

The potentials of ITS deserve reevaluation and reexamination. The term “interdisciplinary” carries two layers of connotations: “from the outside, it is a method which is applied to different disciplines to absorb nutrition from each other. From the inside, it is an epistemological search, because in translation, there are too much indeterminacy and flexibility” (Luo 2006, xi). The past three decades have seen different turns of translation studies, with “the cultural turn” as the most impressive one, which was, in fact, a result of interdisciplinary performance. Currently, interdisciplinary approaches in translation studies have obtained insights from cognitive science, corpus linguistics, sociology, literary criticism, comparative literature, anthropology, media and mass communication, as well as cultural studies, to name only a few.

Translation studies and interdisciplinary studies are in nature inseparable and are mutually beneficial. In most cases, the performance of ITS would potentially locate new virgin lands in both fields and put forward doubts and questions with an updated system of methodological and theoretical sources. Conversely, the new findings and discoveries in ITS would boost the development of other relevant disciplines as well, enabling a thorough understanding of the history of a certain discipline. As a result, frontiers in current ITS may illustrate.

Let us take big translation and cultural memory as an example. Big translation is a term proposed by Luo (2017, 1) who has elaborated the idea in recent years, especially in his recent article entitled “Big translation and cultural memory: integration and enlightenment.” In this article Luo (2024, 1, 8) asserts that big translation and cultural memory, both complementary and compatible to each other, form a relationship of organic interconnection. Big translation has its roots in humanities and aims to clear the obstacles stemming from differences and varieties in language, thinking patterns and cultural habitus. ITS has played an important role in this process. ITS can be approached both diachronically and synchronically. On the diachronic dimension, historical events and lexical clues are investigated while on the synchronic dimension, intertextual and interactive forces are brought into play.

Big translation can be compared to a car with cultural memory as its engine and cultural transmission and integration as its destination. Cultural memory can achieve its utmost effect in big translation which is embodied inside an epistemological inclination and outside an intersemiotic and multilingual force. In this context, fidelity is no longer the most important standard for translators. Instead, translation and translation studies should be treated from the multilingual, intersemiotic, intertextual, and interdisciplinary perspectives. ITS has paved the way for translation works to become world literature, and the classics of world literature can be created only through this way. We can find Shakespeare’s Macbeth into Japanese film The Spider City; in much the same way the play Hamlet was adapted into an animal film Lion King in Hollywood and a palace coup film Night Banquet in China. These adaptations, interpretations, and performances can explain why Shakespeare is so popular in the world: the translators, critics, and writers have created the strongest collective cultural memory, which was observed, interpreted, and cherished by generations of readers all over the world.

Despite a strong consciousness and progresses in sight, ITS still needs more attention, observation, and exploration. Concerted and combined efforts among translation scholars are always necessary for its robust advancement.