RESUBMIT Translations and Transformations: China, Modernity and Cultural Transmission

全球化的时代使得人们比以往任何时候都更迫切地提出这样一个问题：是什么传播过程促成了中国与西方之间的文学和文化交流？中国与其他人的复杂互动是理解其与现代性关系的关键。关于此类互动中涉及的翻译和转换的人文学术研究存在分歧。一些人从西方人的角度提出了中国的另类。其他人则专注于任何文化接触中涉及的差异和对等的谈判，以及这些谈判带来的或改变的传播形式。该网络将专注于塑造和想象中国现代性的对立和关系。“现代人”的历史渊源在西方有不同的说法：宗教改革、启蒙运动、工业革命，或者先锋派的出现。然而，定义现代不仅是一个分期问题，也是一个地理问题。正如莉迪亚·刘所说，翻译问题日益成为现代性批判性思考的核心……人们可以谈论各种各样的现代性，这表明人们对现代性的可译性及其普遍精神有着非凡的信念。这个问题的核心是具体的翻译行为、地点和理论；普遍和特殊之间的关系；以及文化公约性的限制或可能性。无论是在语言和文化层面，还是在观念、技术和技法层面，翻译都定义了中国现代主义和现代性的领域。传播的过程包括文学和视觉翻译，以及语境和接受，但也提出了最广泛意义上的可译性问题。现代性与文化传播的关系研究不仅引起了中国等西方文学和文化研究学者的关注，也引起了翻译理论家、批评理论家和视觉理论家的关注。翻译网络的活动将分为三个方面：翻译现代主义：研究西方和中国现代主义关系的学者越来越多地寻求超越中国现代主义中的什么与欧洲现代主义相对应或源自欧洲现代主义的问题。翻译理论：自20世纪90年代以来，中国对西方后现代文化和批评理论的接受是戏剧性的，但对其翻译成新的语境提出了问题。翻译文化：当代中国艺术和文化产品从未像现在这样为全球观众所接受，但精英文化和大众文化中都出现了可比性问题。网络的基本原理是增加英国对中国现当代文化的研究能力。虽然在过去的15年里，美国学术界关于中国的文化传播工作一直很活跃，但在英国，这一领域仍然相对薄弱。清华大学比较文学与文化研究中心和耶鲁大学东亚研究委员会之间的三方网络的目的是建立和维持与中国和美国学者的关系，在美国，这一领域得到了进一步的发展。该网络将通过在剑桥和北京举行的讲习班、研讨会、访问研究金和两个主要国际会议方案，在发展研究能力方面发挥关键作用。它的参与者拥有文学理论、文化研究、翻译理论、现代主义和包括视觉文化在内的当代中国文化的专业知识。该网络的活动将引起比较文学、文化研究、批评和文化理论、翻译研究和中国研究领域的学者和从业人员的兴趣。

An age of globalization makes it more than ever urgent to ask: what processes of transmission mediate literary and cultural exchanges between China and the West? China's complex interactions with its others are key to understanding its relation to modernity. Humanities scholarship on the translations and transformations involved in such interactions have diverged. Some have posed, from a Western point of view, the alterity of China. Others have focused on the negotiations of difference and equivalence involved in any cultural encounter, and on forms of transmission enabled or transformed by these negotiations. The Network will focus on the oppositions and relations through which Chinese modernity has been shaped and imagined. The historical origins of 'the modern' have been variously located in western formations: Reformation, Enlightenment, Industrial Revolution, or the emergence of an Avant-Garde. Defining the modern, however, is not only a question of periodization, but also of geography. As Lydia Liu observes, 'The problem of translation has become increasingly central to critical reflections on modernity... The fact that one can speak about a varied range of modernities suggests an extraordinary faith in the translatability of modernity and its universal ethos.' At the heart of this problem are specific acts, sites, and theories of translation; relationships between universal and particular; and the limits or possibilities of cultural commensurability. Whether at the level of language and culture, or concepts, technologies and techniques, translation defines the field of Chinese modernism and modernity. The processes of transmission include literary and visual translation, as well as contextualization and reception, but also raise issues of translatability in the broadest sense. The study of modernity in relation to cultural transmission has proved increasingly attractive not only to scholars of literary and cultural studies in China and the West, but to translation theorists, critical theorists, and theorists of the visual. The activities of the Network will be organized into three strands: Translating Modernism: Scholars working on the relationship between Western and Chinese modernisms increasingly seek to go beyond the question of what in Chinese modernism corresponds to or derives from European modernism.Translating Theory: The take-up of western post-modern cultural and critical theory in China since the 1990s has been dramatic, yet poses questions about its translation into new contexts.Translating Culture: Contemporary Chinese artistic and cultural production has never been more accessible to global audiences, but issues of commensurability arise in both elite and popular culture.The rationale of the Network is to increase UK research capacity into modern and contemporary Chinese culture. While work on cultural transmission to and from China has been vibrant in the US academy over the past fifteen years, the field remains comparatively weak in the UK. The aim of the three-way Network between CRASSH, the Centre for Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies at Tsinghua University, and Yale's Council on East Asian Studies is to create and sustain relationships with academics in both China and the US, where the field is further advanced. The Network will play a key role in developing research capacity through a programme of workshops, seminars, visiting fellowships, and two major international conferences in Cambridge and Beijing. Its participants have expertise in literary theory, cultural studies, translation theory, modernism, and contemporary Chinese culture, including visual culture. The activities of the Network will be of interest to academics and practitioners in the fields of comparative literature, cultural studies, critical and cultural theory, translation studies, and Chinese studies.