Translingual Practice

Literature, National Culture, and Translated Modernity—China, 1900-1937

Bibliographic Data

ID19603427
AuthorsLydia H Liu (corresponding author)
Year1995
Publication date1995-01-01
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueTranslingual Practice (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherStanford University Press (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1515/9781503615755
OpenAlexW4301857236
Open LibraryOL51665007M
ISBN9781503615755
LanguageEN
Citations received385

Are languages incommensurate? If so, how do people establish and maintain hypothetical equivalences between words and their meanings? What does it mean to translate one culture into the language of another on the basis of commonly conceived equivalences? This study—bridging contemporary theory, Chinese history, comparative literature, and culture studies—analyzes the historical interactions among China, Japan, and the West in terms of "translingual practice." By this term, the author refers to the process by which new words, meanings, discourses, and modes of representation arose, circulated, and acquired legitimacy in early modern China as it contacted/collided with European/Japanese languages and literatures. In reexamining the rise of modern Chinese literature in this context, the book asks three central questions: How did "modernity" and "the West" become legitimized in May fourth literary discourse? What happened to native agency in this complex process of legitimation? How did the Chinese national culture imagine and interpret its own moment of unfolding

Agency (philosophy) · China · Context (archaeology) · Epistemology · Legitimacy · Legitimation · Linguistics · Modernity · Political science · Politics · Representation (politics) · Social science · Sociology · Chinese history and philosophy · History · Japanese History and Culture · Law · Philosophy