Collaborative translation is one of the most practiced modes of intercultural
communication in Late Qing as in the general history of China. While collaborative
translation, as its prevalence suggests, is expected to have a direct and significant
bearing on the way a translation is produced, little attention has been paid to the
understanding of its nature, not least its influence on the shaping of translation
products. The present study endeavors to explore collaborative translation with three
specimens of acclaimed Late Qing translation. It will show that these translations,
produced collaboratively by teams of Western and Chinese translator, are instilled
with a fusion of the collaborator’s horizons, thus rendered as a hybrid monstrous both
to the source and the target cultures.
The first part of this thesis establishes the conceptual paradigm from which a probe
into the general practices of Late Qing collaborative translation derives. It argues that
collaborative translation, which generally operates as a cooperation between a
bilingual foreign translator and a monolingual local translator, allows considerable
latitude for the local translator to participate in the transference and building of exotic
knowledge, bringing about hybridity to the translation products. Resting upon the
premise of hybridity, the second part of this thesis conducts close analyses of the
selected translations on medicine, mathematics and chemistry, namely Quanti Xinlun,
Daiweiji Shiji and Huaxue Jianyuan. By reconstructing the actual manner of
operation through which these translations were produced, and by examining how
certain fundamental concepts of modern Western sciences were rendered into
Chinese, this part forms a critical study of the agency of the Chinese translator, who,
as will be shown, selectively interprets and reshapes the body of knowledge to be
transmitted in a direction presumably unintended by his Western counterpart, thereby
creating a hybrid materialized as a blend of horizons between the two collaborators,
and in consequence a new entity of scientific concepts different from those in the
West and in China.
The purpose of this study, that is to say, is to explore the agency of translators in the
act of translation by positing collaborative translation as a site of observation, where
cultural entanglement is both theoretically and empirically conspicuous. It is hoped
that this study will on one hand foster our understanding of collaborative translation
in Late Qing, and on the other, reveal further the agency of translators in intercultural
communication. / published_or_final_version / Chinese / Master / Master of Philosophy
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:HKU/oai:hub.hku.hk:10722/182385 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Yan, Tsz-ting., 甄芷婷. |
| Publisher | The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) |
| Source Sets | Hong Kong University Theses |
| Language | Chinese |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | PG_Thesis |
| Source | http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B47869355 |
| Rights | The author retains all proprietary rights, (such as patent rights) and the right to use in future works., Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License |
| Relation | HKU Theses Online (HKUTO) |
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