Toward a translation study in the context of Chinese‐western comparative culture studies

Abstract

The article first of all presents a critical survey of the state of the art of contemporary Chinese translation studies by questioning Yan Fu's famous principle regarding literary translation. It then offers a new paradigm in regard to translation from English into Chinese and vice versa, namely that, to an author, there is no such thing as absolute equivalence in the context of Chinese‐English or English‐Chinese translation for the simple reason that Chinese and English belong to two entirely different cultural traditions. However, through careful comparative studies, relative equivalents can be achieved, namely: (1) the equivalent at the verbal level, (2) the equivalent at the sentence level, (3) the equivalent at the passage level, and (4) the equivalent at the textual level. Different genres appeal to different levels of equivalence, but translators should have in mind communication, cultural difference, cultural convention and their possible assimilation.