Dr.
ZHU Chunshen has won Stephen C. Soong Translation Studies Memorial Award 2006. The award-winning article is ‘Translation Studies in China or Chinese-related Translation Studies: Defining Chinese Translation Studies’, published in 2005 in Babel 50:4, John Benjamins, 332-345.
Abstract of the article
The paper begins with an observation of the paradoxical status of Chinese as a less-translated source language but a much-translated target language, and that of Chinese translation studies as a much studied subject in China but a little-noted branch of translation studies in the world. It then analyzes the implications of the two current conceptions of Chinese translation studies: either (1) as a self-contained system of “translation studies in China”, with China construed as a geopolitical body; or (2) as an open system of “Chinese language/culture-related translation studies”, with the Chinese as a nation, a linguistic and cultural entity in an anthropological sense. It points out that the first, exclusive conception has for too long kept Chinese translation studies from advancing a positive engagement with translation studies in other traditions, encouraging polarization of Chinese and non-Chinese translation studies into two opposite systems; while the second, inclusive conception relates the discipline more closely to other fields of Chinese-related academic study in the world, as well as translation studies in other languages/cultures. As such, Chinese translation studies, alongside an “applied” parallel which is more language-specific and practice-oriented, represents a linguistically medium- and culturally area-restricted branch of Partial Translation Studies under Pure Translation Studies. To substantiate its argument, the paper shows how the two conceptions may have influenced the interpretation of the time-honoured tenet of faithfulness-accessibility-elegance in Chinese translation studies for its conceptual sensibility and explanatory power.
Further information about the award is available at
http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/rct/home.html (under 'Academic activities').
