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ABSTRACT
Chinatowns in Canada and the United States are marked by cultural hybridity, where the translation of various types, verbal and non-verbal, takes place to produce distinct urban meanings. On the basis of an ethnographic observation, this article reveals the role of translation in the signification and imagination of Chinatowns. Cultural diaspora in relation to multimodal translation is designed as a theoretical framework, under which linguistic, aesthetic and cross-cultural tensions are explained. It argues that the urban meanings of Chinatowns are generated through an omnipresent practice of translation enacted by the interplay of text, image and culture across time and space. In the meantime, Chinatowns have evolved from ethnic enclaves into cosmopolitan prototypes for future cities. A translational perspective on Chinatowns incorporates visual semiotics into verbal languages to unpack cross-cultural relations, which informs a great deal about the nature of translation.
Acknowledgment
I would like to thank Dr. Xuemei Chen, the first reader of this manuscript, for giving me very useful suggestions. I also thank the anonymous reviewers and the editor for their great help in improving this article. My sincere thanks also go to Lingnan University, which financially supported my academic trip to Canada in 2016 where I got many ideas for this article. I also want to thank the Division of Humanities and Social Sciences at BNU-HKBU United International College (UIC) for granting me a fund in 2021 to continue this research.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Correction Statement
This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.