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This article offers an analysis of the dynamics in the translation of contemporary Chinese humanities and social sciences into English between 1989 and 2019. It identifies different social, (geo)political, economic, and intellectual factors that have driven the translation and circulation of works in those fields. This analysis is based on a database in which I have compiled bibliographic data about 256 works of Chinese humanities and social sciences translated into English and published during the period 1989–2019, including information about translators, paratextual materials and funding institutions.
I analyse the thematic scope of these publications and their paratextual material along with the contexts in which they were published, with the purpose of identifying the dynamics at different periods. Based on the analysis of this data, I have identified the following three phases of translations corresponding to specific dynamics:
(1) The titles published in the early 1990s are marked, on the one hand, by the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen movement and its harsh suppression by the authorities, revolving around the authoritarian nature of the Chinese state against an alleged push for democratization. This is visible in the selection and translation of authors who were related to the events leading to the Tiananmen incidents or who took part in them, and who appear characterized at different degrees as “dissidents”. On the other hand, yet related to this first topic, I identify a considerable number of titles dealing with socio-economic issues. As we shall see, many of these titles bear the influx of “modernization theory”, which experienced a comeback in the early 1990s after the closure of the Cold War and which brought along a set of prescriptive assumptions about the economic, social, and political path of development to be followed by countries such as China in their alleged escape from an autocratic system.
(2) In the early 2000s, China’s increasing engagement with the global economy, epitomized by its adhesion to the WTO in 2001, and its rising profile in international politics inspired a certain urgency to understand the country in a more complex way beyond the limitations of the modernization paradigm, and on its own terms. The publication of general surveys of China’s intellectual field can be seen as a way to account for the internal social, political and cultural developments of China. A few anthologies and collections of essays by Chinese intellectuals published in this period present a repository of names and texts as a way to make up for a perceived lack of knowledge, in a succinct and introductory fashion. These overviews of China’s intellectual and academic scene open the gate for a more meaningful engagement with certain authors through this decade and in the following years.
(3) In the 2010s, the data illustrate an unprecedented change in both quantitative and qualitative terms. As I mentioned before, the number of published titles experienced a considerable increase. Moreover, while most of the translation initiatives in previous decades emanated from publishers and editors in the target contexts, we observe a growing number of translations and publications that respond to initiatives emanating from China itself, in many cases even with the financial support of PRC institutions and in cooperation with well-established European and North American publishing houses. These publications are part of broader initiatives seeking to raise the international projection of China’s cultural production, as well as to obtain ideological legitimation abroad. These translations point to the consolidated status of China as a geopolitical agent with the financial capacity and political capital to fuel these initiatives. In qualitative terms, this means a diversification of authors and topics, and also the publication of titles that do not respond to the dynamics and interests of the target context, but rather to PRC’s domestic agendas and its own interests in promoting certain topics.
It is important to underscore that, although the emergence of these three phases follows a consecutive order in time, this does not imply that the prevailing discourse and dynamics in one phase are fully replaced by the following one. Instead, they accumulate and overlap in time.
In this article, I analyse the context of these three phases of translations. I show the mediating role that the social, geopolitical, political, and intellectual dynamics of the target and source contexts play in translation initiatives, both in the selection and in the re-contextualization of translated works. The analysis of the translation and circulation of Chinese works in the humanities and social sciences illuminate translation as an interconnected and multidirectional process shaped by both local and transnational forces.
