Translation Seminar Series

The first non-European and Asian writer to win the Nobel Prize for Literature was the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore; he is still the only Indian to win the prize and one of under half a dozen writers from Asia. Though the prize is awarded not for a single book but for a body of work, Tagore won it apparently for just one slim book of poems published in his own English translation under the non-translated title Gitanjali (A Handful of Offerings of Songs; 1912).

翻譯文化史重在探討翻譯對於文化（尤其是譯入語文化）的意義和影響，翻譯在文化史上的作用，以及文化對翻譯的制約。翻譯的過程也是一個文化感受的過程，它不同程度地包含著理解、比較、選擇、融會和創新，從中可以對翻譯的原因和意義獲得更充分的理解。
不同於一般翻譯史的是，翻譯文化史注重對種種翻譯現象、事件作文化傳播意義上的分析與解釋，而不僅僅是翻譯史實的敍述和鈎沉；即不僅僅是描述性的，還應是解釋性的。

A notion that has long dominated our understanding of the role of translation in (literary) modernization comes from postcolonial theories that emphasize the agency of the translational space (i.e. the third space) in the process of “importing” ideas. The descriptive and analytic limits of post-colonial thoughts are due to their reliance on colonial institutions (e.g. languages, literatures, universities, etc.) which are/were immediately available and advantageous to them.

Teaching translation in a research-informed instead of an impressionistic manner to ensure the pedagogical quality of translator training is, ceteris paribus, dependent on the extent to which the formulation of a text, be it a source or a target text, can be perceived and explained as accountable for its function and effect. This presentation will focus on an on-line platform (the Platform) specifically designed for an accountability-driven mode of teaching and (self-)learning for translation and bilingual writing, which is currently under construction at the City University of Hong Kong.

This lecture focuses on fundamental and fast GLOBAL(izing) changes;
In fact most academic guest lectures are an illustration of mobility (in – scholarly – communication). (Cf. Ong 1982.)
In the present case: (a) intercontinental contacts/exchanges (are in fast progress); (b) the focus is on (global and other) Communication

There is a growing tendency in contemporary art to explore the bonds and interconnections between text and image. The plethora of possible relations between the textual and the visual, across a variety of contemporary art practices, creates a vast geography of image as language and language as image, from typography to language-based art practices.

There exists mutual acceptance and interaction between American Redology and the two English versions of Hong Lou Meng. Obviously, the translations influence American Redology and are also being influenced by American Redology. The translation serves to enhancing reputation and foreign understanding of the original text, hence making it not only a part of Redology, but also a key element in promoting the Redology and enriching the original.

“Culture—Interculture—Intraculture” identifies three stages of cultural identity: cultural: where the foreign is clearly marked, as in Euripides’s Medea, the book of Ruth in the Bible, Shakespeare’s Henry V; intercultural: where the foreign is absorbed in the native, as in the Pole Joseph Conrad, the Czech Tom Stoppard, and the Japanese Kazuo Ishiguro in Great Britain, the Pole Czelaw Milosz, the Russians Vladimir Nabokov and Josef Brodsky in the United States; and the Romanians Paul Celan, E. M. Cioran, Eugène Ionesco, the Irishman Samuel Beckett, and the Chinese François Cheng in France.

Shifts in translation have been extensively visited and revisited. Many different taxonomies exist that intend to list most decisions taken or choices made by translators, be these decisions called shifts, techniques, procedures or strategies. The problem is that there's no explicit distinction between compulsory and deliberate interventions.

Jiang Rong's semi-autographical novel Lang Tu Teng (《狼圖騰》, first published in 2004) has been a huge literary triumph (winner of the Man Asian Literary Prize in 2007) and an unprecedented cultural phenomenon in Mainland China, breaking all-time sales records as the second most read book after Chairman Mao's little red book. Howard Goldblatt's lucid translation of Wolf Totem (2008) has also made the novel into an exciting popular work of narrative fiction for the international community of literary readers and cultural critics.