Maria Selezneva (Modern Languages)
‘The role of the translator in creating cultural identity (an examination of English and Russian texts for tourists in
China and regions of the Russian Federation)’
Mobility is a characteristic feature of travellers as well as cultural translators. The former one move between countries and cultures; the second one move between languages and cultures. The classical model of translation includes two sides of the process – the source language and target language and the translator as a mediator
(‘mobilizer’) between two of them. When it comes to cultural translation the process includes such elements as the
‘Self’, the ‘Other’ and the ‘third space’ between them. According to some scholars, for example, Wolf, the transfer of meaning from the source language to the target language in cultural translation is of a hybrid nature [1]. It means that the source and the target cultures are mixed with each other in order to produce something new and accessible for the target culture. However, in my opinion, no realia or culturally specific terms could be presented as a new notion which is adequate in the target culture. I believe that mobility of cultural meanings from one language to another always leads to the process of ‘domestication’. The problem of untranslatability in travel writings is frequently solved by comparing, replacing the foreign culture with the culture of the target audience in order to make the first one more understandable for the readers. This phenomenon can be called reverse mobility where translators transfer meanings not through creating something new but through partial or complete return to the culture of ‘home’.
1. Stephen Greenblatt. 2009. ‘A Mobility studies Manifesto’ in Cultural Mobility: A Manifesto, ed. by Stephen
Greenblatt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) pp. 250-253
2. Wolf, Michaela.2002. ‘Culture as Translation – and Beyond’. Ethnographic Models of Representation in Translation
Studies’, in Crosscultural Transgressions. Research Methods in Translation Studies //. Historical and Ideological
Issues, ed. by Theo Hermans (Manchester: St Jerome) pp. 180-192
Wang Hao (History Fudan University)
A Study of the new Jesuits' Sinology Attainments: The Case of Henri Doré’s Recherches sur les superstitions en
Chine’
Sinology is a term widely used in the context of Euro-American Chinese studies. It is closely related to Christian missionaries who are deemed to be its originators. Chinese religion is one of the most important topics in missionaries' Sinology. This article focuses on a French Jesuit P. Henri-François-Sébastien Doré 禄是遒 , 字 庆生 , and his well-known Recherches sur les superstitions en Chine. The author first introduces the background of Father Doré and then his works. Doré's Recherches sur les superstitions en Chine is one of the first modern monographs of studies on Chinese religions, it referred much to the works of a Chinese Father Pierre Hoang 黄伯禄 , including
Xunzhen bianwang 训真辨妄 , Jishuo quanzhen 集 说诠真 , Jishuo quanzhen xubian 集 说诠真续编 etc. However, as scholars coming from two contrasting cultures, Doré and Hoang shared different issue-consciousness. Doré's works benefited a lot from his anthropological missionary efforts. It is a milestone in Western scholarships in this field and has provoked many thoughts. As precursors of this modern discipline, there is no denying the fact that this Doré's works has its limitations, and this reflects the development of scholarships
Joan Price (Maritime History)
A unique Encounter: the First Fleet and the Australians
In 1788, over a thousand city dwellers from an industrialised country were sent to found a convict settlement in a land unlike any other. Its hunter gatherer society had over millennia learnt how to manage the erratic availability of its resources, in order to survive in a land with an unpredictable rainfall. The British had no knowledge of their destination, and were ill prepared for the conditions they faced. As a result the normal power structure was reversed, but unlike other indigenous people, Australians were uninterested in the incomers. What they could not avoid were the devastating effects of the diseases the first Europeans brought with them. In an attempt to improve communication the British kidnapped men and adopted children, but few ever permanently deserted their way of life. As a result of Enlightenment principles, the limited contacts made by the earliest post holders were a genuine form of intellectual enquiry, and they formed the closest ever relationship. From what inevitably are one sided accounts, I aim to examine how this and similar encounters elsewhere in the continent were initiated, often through art and eventually by a handful of go-betweens. All too soon a harsher colonial style of government prevailed.