On October 15, 2023, the Department of Translation of the College of Foreign Languages of Nankai University hosted “the 4th Workshop on Comparative Literature and Translation Studies—Interlingual Journey of Texts". The meeting was held at the Mingzhuyuan Hotel of Nankai University, bringing together 14 outstanding scholars from universities across China. Professor Yan Guodong, dean of the College of Foreign Languages, delivered an opening speech, in which he expressed his sincere welcome to all the participants, conveyed strong support of the college for the workshop and appreciation for scholars for their commitment to academic pursuits, and finally expressed his earnest expectation for the mutual exchanges between different universities, disciplines and fields.
The workshop featured four groups. The theme of the first group was “Research on Translation Theory and Practice”, which was chaired by Associate Professor Shang Ruiqin. Professor Zhang Zhizhong, the head of the department, firstly made a speech, analyzing the five practical dimensions in the process of translating Chinese poems into English. By translating the aesthetics of China to the world can Chinese culture “go out” and realize the mutual understanding between Chinese and Western civilizations. Associate Professor Li Bo of Lingnan University conducted an “archaeological excavation” of translated literature serialized in The Chinese Mail from 1904 to1909 and found that the serialization in newspapers lengthened and extended the reading time and space of translated detective novels, and helped the circulation and reading of the newspaper. Associate Professor Fan Ruo’en of Sun Yat-sen University pointed out that large-scale appropriation of literary theories may overstate the translator’s subjectivity and the value of mistranslation by examining André Alphons Lefevere’s reflections on theory fever. Moreover, Manipulation Theory has been deified as well as one-sided and formulaic, overlooking the ideological foundations of Lefebvre’s anti-historical determinism and the implicit main thread of translation resistance to manipulation that the Manipulation Theory thus implies.
The second group, with the theme of “Research on the History of Concepts and the History of Ideas”, was chaired by Associate Professor Li Chunjiang. Professor Pu Haifeng of Tianjin University of Technology discussed the penetration of Darwin’s theory of evolution in children's literature and explored the relevance and influence of the theory of evolution on scientific narratives, fairy tale narratives, and quest narratives from the perspective of social studies and interdisciplinary research. Associate Professor Sun Ruosheng of Shanghai University, through close reading, explained the specific process of shaping the image of Takahashi Kazumi and how he became a typical figure in the post-war left-wing thought in Japan, and then explored the construction and metaphor of the post-war left-wing thought in Japan. Dr. Xiao Yizhi of Shanghai International Studies University exploredscience fiction in the late Qing dynasty as an intellectual contact zone, and argued that both in terms of texts and epistemological shifts, science fiction in the late Qing dynasty is a cultural form similar to pidgin English, recording the struggle between local and Western intellectual traditions. Dr. Gu Tian of Nankai University analyzed the “misreading” of the concept of “tragedy” in modern Chinese literary discourse, arguing that modern Chinese intellectuals constructed their understanding of tragedy more based on instrumentalism and that it is an active misinterpretation of the concept: while retaining the connotation of the term in their attempts of westernization, they have also changed and reconstructed the extension of the term in their efforts of localization.
With the theme of “East-West Cultural Exchange and the Reinterpretation of Classics”, the third group was chaired by Professor Hu Cui'e. Professor Xu Jia of the Beijing Institute of Technology started from the three common research themes of Macbeth, namely witches, treason, and the emptiness of life, exploring the research turn of criticism on Macbeth in recent years in terms of research content, research mode, and research orientation. The academic turn not only reflects the continuous deepening of interdisciplinary research, and is directly related to the change of the international political landscape in the post-9/11 period, world pluralism, and value conflicts. Professor Yao Dadui of Hainan University discusses the natural theology and science in the Chinese translation of Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Man by Timothy Richard and others. He argued that the translation reflects the integration of Christian theology and Confucianism, realizes the harmonious coexistence of the two discourses of natural theology and Cheng-Zhu science, and serves the purposes of introducing Western learning, promoting Christianity, and boosting Hundred Days' Reform. Then Dr. Li Lei and Professor Hu Cui'e of Nankai University made speeches one after another. Ms. Li Lei examined the spread of Chinese culture in Europe and the United States, believing that the efforts of the Basel Mission to spread Chinese culture in Switzerland and Germany could help Protestant missionary societies in China study Chinese cultural dissemination in their home countries and deepen the understanding of the history of Sino-European folk cultural exchanges. Professor Cui'e Hu regards the transcendentalists’ systematic reading, use, and dissemination of “Confucius’s Morality” and the translations of the classics about Confucius by Joshua Marshman and David Collie as the first conscious and systematic exchange and integration between Confucius’ thought and native American thought. Professor Hu believes that the relationship between the transcendentalists and Confucius Sinarum Philosophus can be seen as “Confucianism as footnote” and indicates the beginning of the globalization of Confucian humanism in the United States.
The fourth group, with the theme of “Modern and Contemporary Literary Studies”, was chaired by Dr. Gu Tian. Associate Professor Min Xuefei of Peking University, through evaluating the successes and failures of Mozambique’s modernization, analyzed of the “hybridity” of Terra Sonâmbula, and regarded it as a correction of Samora’s “New Man” project, revealing the deep political intention behind Mia Couto’s “hybridity” in writing, and interpreting his later turn in writing. Associate Professor Huang Qiang of Beijing Foreign Studies University specifically examined T. S. Eliot’s political theory debates on The Criterion, which is a response to the frenzied political climate of the time. The response not only influenced British intellectual debates during the interwar years, but also demonstrated how modernist little magazines responded in the socio-historical context full of conflicts.Associate Professor Zhang Qiang of Nankai University takes the experimental nature of stage art performance of W. H. Auden’s poetic drama The Dance of Death as an entry point, analyzing the relationship between authenticity and fictionality of dramatic representation, individualization and grouping of characterization, as well as symbolism and irony in the presentation of imagery. He explored the inheritance of and deviation from the traditional theatre of The Dance of Death, and argued that the play implies the dilemmas faced by Auden as a labeled Marxist, as well as the perplexed journey of the British middle class in the face of the impacts of the multiple ideologies in the 1930s.Dr. Shi Yuchen of Nankai University took the new mobility paradigm as a theoretical framework, focusing on the mobility system, mobility of people, resources, and information as well as literary creation in American neorealistic novels from a transnational perspective. She explored American neorealistic novels’ reflections on the new realities of transnational mobility in the era of mobility.
At last, the faculty of the Translation Department of Nankai University expressed their sincere thanks to the participating scholars. With the workshop as a platform, the participating scholars engaged in extensive and in-depth academic exchanges. “The 4th Workshop on Comparative Literature and Translation Studies — the Interlingual Journey of Texts” organized by the Translation Department of the College of Foreign Languages of Nankai University came to a success.
