A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking

Nam Fung ChangLingnan University Hong Kong

According to Itamar Even-Zohar for a large social entity to be maintained a culture repertoire must be invented to create internal cohesion and external differentiation and from this repertoire certain items are chosen to build a col-lective identity In contrast imported items if regarded as threats to this identity may meet with resistance This theory may shed light on Even-Zoharrsquos hypoth-eses that the ldquonormalrdquo position assumed by translated literature in the literary polysystem tends to be a peripheral one and that translation tends towards acceptability when it is at the periphery

Keywords culture repertoire cohesion resistance polysystem translated literature centre periphery adequacy acceptability

Introduction

In his seminal paper ldquoThe position of translated literature within the literary poly-systemrdquo first published in 1978 (Even-Zohar 1990a) Itamar Even-Zohar puts for-ward two interrelated hypotheses first that the position assumed by translated lit-erature tends to be a peripheral one except in three special situations mdash when the literary polysystem is young weak or in a crisis and second that translation tends towards acceptability when it is at the periphery and towards adequacy when it is at the centre He has not explained in detail the basis of these hypotheses and has turned to culture research since the 1990s

In a seminar held in August 2005 at the Centre for Translation Hong Kong Baptist University Even-Zohar explained why his research interest had shifted from translation to culture ldquoOne question led to another and then to anotherrdquo he said I asked him when he would look back and supply answers to the first ques-tion and he replied that he would rather leave that to other scholars

Target 201 (2008) 135ndash148 doi 101075target20108chaissn 0924ndash1884 e-issn 1569ndash9986 copy John Benjamins Publishing Company

136 Nam Fung Chang

So this paper is an initial attempt to make Even-Zoharrsquos latest questions go back to his first one so that his chain of questions may form a loop It will try to elaborate on the two hypotheses in light of his culture research with examples drawn mainly from Chinese culture

1 Culture repertoire cohesion and cultural identity

According to Even-Zohar large social entities such as peoples or nations are not natural objects but have to be formed by the acts of individuals Since the benefits of establishing an organization larger than onersquos own immediate province are not self-evident willingness to cooperate with such attempts may be lacking on the part of the people and coercion is sometimes resorted to in the first instance However for such entities to be maintained in the long run it is necessary to create cohesion ie a widespread sense of solidarity in the community For this purpose a culture repertoire must be invented andor imported to organize life both on the collective and on the individual levels (Even-Zohar 1997 355 2000 392ndash396 2004 94)

It seems logical to assume that cohesion is easier to achieve if the culture reper-toire is generally regarded as possessing two qualities beneficialness and unique-ness First it must be believed to be able to bring benefits (in whatever sense of the word) to the users in order to be accepted by the majority of the entity concerned Secondly it must be seen to be different from the repertoires of other entities be-cause there can be no internal cohesion without external differentiation In other words the culture repertoire needs to be or become a source of pride for members of the entity so as to build a collective identity (cf Even-Zohar 2000 395) which can be said to be the pre-condition for cohesion

However the success of a culture repertoire first in gaining acceptance and then in shaping a collective identity sometimes seems to hinge more on marketing skills than on any ldquoinherent qualityrdquo of the thing itself To claim superiority over alternative options is a good strategy in that both beneficialness and uniqueness are included

Many culture planners rely heavily on emotional appeal when recommending their culture repertoire to the people Certain items would be selected from the culture repertoire as ldquoselling pointsrdquo Some of these items may look insignificant or meaningless or even ridiculous to members of other entities such as a linguistic or bodily feature as cited by Even-Zohar (1997a 27) Two lines of the lyrics of a popular Chinese patriotic song ldquoThe dragonrsquos descendantsrdquo read ldquo(With) black eyes black hair yellow skin (We are) forever and ever the dragonrsquos descendantsrdquo1 Most of the Chinese people are no doubt aware that black and yellow cannot be

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 137

proved to look any better (or worse) than other colours and that the dragon exists only in myths but this awareness does not seem to prevent them from being filled with national pride when singing that song

Some other claims for superiority may be based on facts but one may legiti-mately ask whether these facts are relevant in a world where military might still speak loudest Examples are ldquoour country has the largest populationrdquo ldquowe are one of the oldest civilizationsrdquo or ldquowe won the World Cuprdquo (cf Even-Zohar 2002a 79) Excelling in sports is apparently a sure win otherwise we would not have seen countries spend a bigger portion of their GNP on training professional athletes than on education Indeed sometimes one cannot help suspecting that there may be something from which the governments of these countries want to distract the attention of their people

There are criteria based on things that really matter in a competitive world such as technological advancement material wealth and military power Superi-ority in these areas can be objectively proved or disproved but facts may some-times be ignored forgotten or arbitrarily interpreted For example an astronaut sent into space in the twenty-first century mdash five decades later than the first one in the world mdash has been made and generally accepted as a national hero

So we can see that many claims for superiority are in fact questionable It seems that uniqueness of the culture repertoire is actually the decisive factor for cohesion and it might simply become a synonym of beneficialness in the eyes of the entity concerned That is the reason why in the words of Immanuel Waller-stein (1991 99) the states have played opposite roles in two parallel contradic-tions in the contradiction between the tendency to one world vs the tendency to distinctive nation-states the states have used their force to create cultural diversity whereas in the contradiction between the tendency to one nation vs the tendency to distinctive ethnic groups within each state they have used their force to create uniformity

However uniqueness can sometimes be as illusory as beneficialness Take the Chinese patriotic song again for example On the one hand some ethnic groups in China such as the 800-million-strong Uyghur do not have black eyes black hair and yellow skin On the other hand all peoples in the Mongolian race notably the Japanese the Koreans the Vietnamese and the Mongolian share these features

2 Cultural resistance to imported repertoires

After a culture repertoire is established and relatively stable the introduction of new repertoires or repertoremes (ie items in a repertoire) may meet with resis-tance Even-Zohar has identified two causes that ldquoacquiring a different repertoire

138 Nam Fung Chang

is painful and riskyrdquo and that a different repertoire may not equally benefit all members (Even-Zohar 2002 49) These seem to me to be typical Even-Zoharian understatements Sometimes a different repertoire such as communism may ben-efit some members at the expense of others leading to a large-scale redistribution of economic resources and political power and some others such as Nazism may even stipulate the extermination of a substantial part of an entity

One may also add a third possible cause incompatibility with the value system behind the accepted repertoire For example when the Manchurians conquered the Hans and established the Qing Dynasty about four centuries ago all men were ordered to cut their hair above the forehead and wear a long pigtail at the back of the head as a symbol of allegiance to the conqueror and the order met with great resistance not only because of the inconvenience caused but mainly because of the double humiliation in being subjugated to a minority ethnic group and in taking on a feminine look however after a certain period of time the pigtail became a symbol of allegiance to the Chinese nation and therefore it took nearly as much force to compel men to cut their pigtails in the late Qing Period at the turn of the twentieth century although it is very easy to get rid of such an inconvenience (see Xiaolin 2006)

Repertoires imported from other entities may be regarded as a double threat to cultural cohesion because in addition to causing instability in the established repertoire just as any indigenously invented repertoires do they may hurt national pride thus posing a direct threat to the collective identity They may therefore meet with greater resistance and their very foreignness rather than their lack of beneficialness is often the main and sometimes the only argument against them Indeed the very word ldquoforeignrdquo in Chinese (yang) sometimes carries a derogatory connotation

Examples of resistance to imported repertoires are many in Chinese history In the seventeenth century the introduction of Western learning (mostly science subjects such as astronomy geography and mathematics) into China initiated by Christian missionaries was so humiliating to a nation who had thought for thou-sands of years that they were at the ldquocentre of the earthrdquo and were the only civiliza-tion in the world that a myth had to be created that ldquoWestern learning originates from Chinardquo (xi xue Zhong yuan) mdash that the kinds of learning being imported at that time were Chinese in origin only that they had been lost to later generations and were stolen by Westerners For example Christian missionaries gave alge-bra the Chinese name ldquothe method from the Eastrdquo (dong lai fa) or ldquothe Chinese methodrdquo (Zhongguo fa) in order to smooth the ruffled feathers of the ruling class (see Wang Xiaoyuan 2006 45ndash47) When the myth apparently lost credibility in the late nineteenth century the proposition ldquoChinese learning as the body West-ern learning for practical applicationrdquo (Zhong ti xi yong) was put forward and it

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 139

gradually gained currency while Western repertoires kept coming in (see Wang Xiaoyuan 2006 47ndash49)

The proposition was refuted as ldquowrongrdquo by Mao Zedong in 1956 (Mao 1956) who replaced it with another slogan ldquomake foreign things serve Chinardquo (yang wei Zhong yong) (Nangfangwang 2003) but the very need for such a slogan reflected that there was still resistance in the culture to foreign repertoires In fact one may say that ldquoChinese learning as the body Western learning for practical applicationrdquo is still being practised even after Deng Xiaopingrsquos policy of opening to the outside world and even today in the sense that while Western technology is welcomed the core of the Western value system is carefully warded off

Resistance to Western ideas exists even in Translation Studies itself in vari-ous and sometimes contradictory ways When the introduction of foreign transla-tion theories began in the early 1980s mdash mostly linguistic theories at first such as those of Eugene Nida and Peter Newmark a leading translation scholar without demonstrating much knowledge of foreign theories opined that the body of Chi-nese discourses on translation had formed ldquoa system of its ownrdquo which is unique in the world and therefore there was no need to be ldquounduly humblerdquo (Luo 1984 588 603) From the mid 1980s to the late 1990s there were repeated calls for the establishment of ldquoChinese translatologyrdquo or a ldquotranslatology with Chinese char-acteristicsrdquo with the argument that foreign theories are bound to be inapplicable to translation into or from the Chinese language (see Chang 2004 43ndash51) In the past decade a few theorists have asserted that translation could never hope to be-come an academic discipline (Lao 1996 Zhang 1999) a status which a growing number of academics had been endeavouring to establish with the help of Western theories And in recent years a renowned professor cum translator declares that the ldquoliterary translation theories of Chinese school [sic] are the most advanced in the world of the 20th centuryrdquo on the ground that ldquoonly the Chinese school can solve the difficult problemsrdquo in translating between the two major languages of the world mdash Chinese and English (Xu 2003 52 54) By ldquothe theories of the Chinese schoolrdquo Xu actually means his own theory which he claims to have guided him to ldquoproduce the largest quantity of literary translations with the highest quality in the worldrdquo (Xu 2003 54)

Cultural resistance seems to have been strongest in the fields of ideology and politics The introduction of foreign religions and ideologies such as Buddhism Christianity and Marxism has led to bloody conflicts and even civil wars The present ruling party in China gained power by introducing a foreign ideology in the first place but after it succeeded in doing so it has gradually played down the foreignness of its ideological and political origin and built up an indigenous im-age carefully warding off the interference of other foreign ideologies and political forces Thus some politicians fighting for democracy in Hong Kong have been

140 Nam Fung Chang

called ldquotraitors to the Chinese Peoplerdquo (Hanjian) by the pro-government camp (Wen Wei Po 2004) and their appearing at a hearing of a Senate subcommittee of the United States on the democratization process in Hong Kong was described by a senior Chinese official in charge of Hong Kong affairs as ldquoworshipping at a for-eign templerdquo and ldquoseeking help from a foreign Bodhisattvardquo (Ta Kung Pao 2004)

3 Imported items as cultural goods and cultural tools

Here it may be useful to introduce Even-Zoharrsquos concepts of culture as goods and culture as tools In the former conception culture is considered as ldquoa set and stock of evaluable goods the possession of which signifies wealth high status and pres-tigerdquo (Even-Zohar 2000 389) whereas in the latter it is considered as ldquoa set of oper-ating tools for the organization of life both on the collective and individual levelsrdquo (Even-Zohar 2000 392) Some cultural goods may be converted into tools and the conversion ldquoentails the making of models hellip from symbolical valuesrdquo (Even-Zohar 2000 393) Since the nineteenth century the most highly valued cultural goods particularly those labelled ldquoworks of artrdquo have been propagated as the common property of ldquonationsrdquo to become their cultural ldquoheritagerdquo This ldquoaccepted canon of precious goodsrdquo functions as ldquoassets that distinguish social groups from othersrdquo and consequently also as ldquoa tool for validating the effectiveness of an established repertoire hellip and for securing its perpetuationrdquo (Even-Zohar 2000 391 394)

It may be said that cultural goods may function on different levels according to their perceived value Generally they signify wealth and prestige for individual owners but the most ldquopreciousrdquo ones mdash so precious that they are invaluable rather than evaluable that is those that have come to be regarded as the cultural heri-tage function also at a higher level signifying prestige for the whole social entity Similarly cultural tools may function on different levels All cultural goods may be converted to tools that serve as models within and beyond the boundaries of their own system For instance a literary work may serve as a model for writers to produce other literary works andor as one for members of the general public to make sense of the world and to take action in it In the latter case it is an ideo-logical or moral tool rather than a literary one However only the most ldquopreciousrdquo cultural goods may be converted into tools that function at the highest level to validate a repertoire

As to repertoires imported from other entities Even-Zohar observes that they may more likely be transferred as goods before these goods are converted into tools (Even-Zohar 2000 393ndash394) To this observation I would venture to add that at least in long-established and strong cultures imported repertoires can hardly hope to be accepted into the canon of precious cultural goods and subsequently to be

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 141

converted into high-level tools unless they undergo a process of naturalization because their very foreignness automatically disqualifies them from functioning to distinguish social groups from others

The proposition ldquoChinese learning as the body Western learning for practi-cal applicationrdquo was intended exactly to prevent foreign repertoires from becom-ing precious cultural goods while allowing them to function as lower-level tools According to a critic the body-application dichotomy is one between values and tools mdash ldquothe bodyrdquo means ldquothe system of cultural valuesrdquo whereas political science and economics which were being imported at that time were seen as ldquoappliedrdquo branches of learning that belong to the level of technical operation (Wang Yan 1998)

Buddhism and Marxism have become parts of the Chinese cultural heritage because they have come to be regarded by the ldquopersons-in-the-culturerdquo as indig-enous repertoires to different extents Apart from the ldquonaturalrdquo cause that the repertoires have declined in their respective birthplace the efforts of the culture planners are an important factor in the naturalization process In both cases the repertoires have been adapted to norms of the target culture In some Chinese translations of Buddhist texts the relatively high position that Buddhism gives to women and mothers has been changed in conformity to the Confucian concept of men as the superior sex (see Wright 1959 37) For example in the source text a mother exhorts her daughter not to marry a prince in this way ldquoWe however my daughter are prostitutes we give pleasure to all people we do not make our living by serving one man onlyrdquo but in the translation this has become ldquoWe of a humble position are not fit to marry princesrdquo as the receiving culture could not accept that prostitution was not necessarily a lowly occupation and ldquolaymen who practise the five precepts of morality take wivesrdquo has been translated as ldquothey take wives and concubinesrdquo because while ldquokeeping concubines was not sanctioned by the Buddhist lawrdquo in Chinese society the practice was ldquopermitted as a matter of courserdquo (Nakamura 1957 160ndash163) Moreover ldquohusband supports wiferdquo has been rendered as ldquothe husband controls his wiferdquo and ldquothe wife comforts the husbandrdquo as ldquothe wife reveres her husbandrdquo (Wright 1959 37 Gao 1989)

In the case of Marxism certain ideas of Marx that are not compatible with Chinarsquos agricultural civilization have been either ignored or adapted

For Chinarsquos pioneering communists Marxism was a weapon to subvert the ldquopatriarchal clan systemrdquo and its ideological buttress mdash Confucianism In the view of Li Dazhao (1889ndash1926) one of the earliest Marxist theorists in China such a system is maintained by ldquosacrificing the personality of the ruled in the service of the rulerrdquo and therefore what Confucius calls ldquothe cultivation of moral characterrdquo is in fact designed for the suppression rather than development of the individual personality (Li Dazhao 1959 296 Siu 2001 65ndash66) However under Communist

142 Nam Fung Chang

rule the collective entity is maintained in the same way albeit with a new name As Gao Chang Fan observes

Marxrsquos idea of personal fulfilment has been completely ignored by the Chinese Communist establishment so much so that everybody from childhood is urged to suppress onersquos personal desire and to contribute to the good of the whole com-munity The denial of self-interest is interpreted as ldquocommunist virtuerdquo and any satisfaction of personal desire is considered to be bourgeois and capitalist (Gao 1989 6)

Another point worth noting is that Marxism being a product of an industrial society cannot be applied to an agricultural society without adaptation Thus the landlord and the peasant have become the Chinese equivalents to the capitalist and the proletarian respectively in spite of the fact that in Marxrsquos theory they are not referred to as classes and the relations of production they represent are seen as a hindrance to the development of productivity (Siu 2001 73 79 84 95)

Besides there have been manoeuvres to build an indigenous image such as the substitution of Marxism-Leninism by Mao Zedong Thought as the ideological buttress since the 1960s the invention of ldquosocialism with Chinese characteristicsrdquo in the 1980s and the quiet removal of the portraits of Marx Engels Lenin and Stalin from Tiananmen Square in Beijing In other words to a certain extent the agents of transfer of a foreign repertoire have been re-presented as inventors of a domestic one

4 Even-Zoharrsquos two hypotheses again

Now we are ready to go back to Even-Zoharrsquos first hypothesis that the position assumed by translated literature in the literary polysystem tends to be a peripheral one under normal circumstances To explain this hypothesis we first need to see how the authorship of translation in general and of literary translation in particu-lar is conceived in the world of our experience According to Bassnett and Trivedi (1999 2) the idea of an author as ldquoownerrdquo of his or her text and the concept of the translation being a mere copy of the high-status original emerged only after the Middle Ages coinciding with the period of early colonial expansion It may be very interesting to research into the social conditions for the changes in these norms such as the degree of cohesion in the entity concerned its state of contact with other entities and the concept of copyright and intellectual properties but that will go beyond the scope of this paper Suffice it to say for the moment that in modern Europe social norms and laws dictate that the writer of the source text is regarded as the author of the target text too the translator being just the translator

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 143

The situation in China has been very much the same at least since the turn of the twentieth century when the first wave of massive translation of Western social sciences and literature began In 1919 a critic lambasted Yan Fu the most famous translator of the time for his use of strategies such as deletion expansion and paraphrase in translating Thomas H Huxleyrsquos Evolution and ethics saying that Huxley would have sued Yan if he had learned what Yan had done to his work be-cause Yan had sacrificed the author in pursuit of his own fame (Fu 1984 60)

In recent years there have been protests against the marginalization of transla-tors and translations especially from post-colonial theorists such as Venuti (1995) and Bassnett and Trivedi (1999) And in China there has been a call for the rec-ognition of the literary translator instead of the source text author as the author of the translated work and for the classification of translated literature as national rather than foreign literature on the ground that literary translation is a process of re-creation resulting in a product with a relatively independent artistic value (Xie 1999 208ndash237) As a literary translator I applaud their efforts However polysys-temists believe that it is no concern of a scientific discipline to effect changes in the world of our experience (Toury 1995 17) or to pass value judgement on the object of its study So we should simply state the fact that these efforts seem to have made hardly any impact on the prevailing social norms so far

Being regarded as originating from a foreign entity under normal conditions translated literature is naturally resisted by the institution of the literary polysys-tem due to the perceived threat to the collective identity That is to say it is not allowed to be converted into a cultural tool that exerts ldquoinfluence on major pro-cessesrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 48)

On the other hand when a literary polysystem is young peripheral or in a crisis the collective identity may be very weak or even thrown into confusion Then foreign items may be brought in to quickly fill the vacuum before similar items can be locally produced In such situations translated literature may indeed assume a central position taking part ldquoin the process of creating new primary modelsrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 50) mdash models not only for literary production but also for the ldquopersons-in-the-culturerdquo to make sense of the world and to take action in it (cf Even-Zohar 2000 392ndash393) In other words it may be converted into a cultural tool at a relatively high level

At this point I would like to add an observation although translated literature may become a powerful tool and translators may gain literary fame sometimes literary translations and translators have an even slimmer chance than other for-eign items and their agents of transfer to become part of the cultural heritage and subsequently to function as cultural tools at the highest level The reason may be that processes of naturalization and canonization take time whereas translated literature may assume a central position only for a relatively short while This is

144 Nam Fung Chang

because ldquono system can remain in a constant state of weakness lsquoturning pointrsquo or crisisrdquo as Even-Zohar (1990a 50) points out In fact one may see that compared with items in ideological and religious polysystems literary works may be more quickly replaceable especially as cultural tools So an entity may say ldquowe have Shakespearerdquo or ldquowe have Mozartrdquo but no entity seems to have taken as much pride in having a certain ldquoeminentrdquo translator

In the preceding paragraphs the term ldquotranslated literaturerdquo is used for con-ciseness It may be more accurate to say ldquotarget texts presented andor regarded as literary translationsrdquo (cf Toury 1995 38) because texts that are not presented as translations or no longer regarded as such for some reason may become canonized even though a source text may still be traceable Take for example A madmanrsquos dia-ry (kuangren riji) a short story by the Chinese writer Lu Xun It is largely modelled on the Russian writer Nikolai Gogolrsquos work of the same title (Cai 2001 55ndash56) and has been regarded as an ldquoimitationrdquo (fangzuo) by some (Li Oufan 1991 54 Zhongguo Qingnian Bao 2001) We can therefore say that it has the features of a semi- or quasi-translation (see Even-Zohar 1990a 50) although it was presented by its author not as a translation but as an original work However a number of works entitled History of modern Chinese literature published after the founding of the Peoplersquos Republic of China laud it as ldquothe first modern Chinese novelrdquo (Zhu 1996 20) or ldquothe first successful novel written in the vernacular in the history of modern Chinese literaturerdquo (Cheng et al 2000 59) They put emphasis on its originality saying for example that it ldquobreaks away from the traditional structure of story-telling and combines realism with symbolism in a daring manner so that a unique artistic effect is producedrdquo (Jiang 2002 26) They either avoid mentioning the source of the work (such as Zhu 1996 9) as if everything mdash including symbol-ism mdash was invented by Lu Xun or just mention in passing that Gogol has a work of the same title (Cheng et al 2000 59) as if it was a mere coincidence Interest-ingly enough Lursquos work is included in ldquoThe Norwegian book clubs association listrdquo of ldquoThe 100 greatest literary worksrdquo (Norwegian Book Clubs Association 2001) whereas its source text is not

Even-Zoharrsquos culture theory may also shed light on his second hypothesis that translation tends towards acceptability when it is at the periphery and towards adequacy when it is at the centre

Translation is usually undertaken for the purpose of bringing in new items so as to change replace or add to the existing repertoire But when a culture is stable and self-sufficient that is when translated literature is in a peripheral position imported items may have to be presented as or at least made compatible with in-digenous ones so as not to be seen as threats to the collective identity of the target culture otherwise they may not be accepted or tolerated due to strong resistance That is why acceptability-oriented translation strategies are most likely to be used

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 145

Thus Even-Zohar sees a paradox in this case what could have been an innovatory force has actually become a ldquomajor factor of conservatismrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 48ndash49) On the other hand when a culture is in one of the three situations that Even-Zohar mentions foreign items are needed and welcomed and their foreign-ness may be exactly what makes them fashionable

5 Concluding remarks

It is my opinion that Even-Zoharrsquos concepts of cohesion repertoire resistance cul-ture as goods vs culture as tools etc may provide researchers with tools to probe deeper and wider into the context of the total culture searching for more compre-hensive and detailed explanations for translational phenomena These concepts have helped polysystem theory maintain its vitality as a translation theory

Note

1 Ironically the song was written by a Taiwanese song-writer in the 1970s in protest against the United Statesrsquos change of policy in recognizing Beijing instead of Taipei as the only legitimate government of China The song can thus be regarded as originally a hijacking of the Chinese national identity for an anti-communist cause with the blessing of the authorities in Taipei but later it was accepted mdash and thus hijacked mdash by people all over China as their patriotic song this time with the blessing of the Beijing government (Minshi Xinwenwang 1983) and then in 1989 it was hijacked again by people in Hong Kong to be sung in rallies and demonstrations in support of the students in Tiananmen Square

References

Bassnett Susan and Harish Trivedi 1999 ldquoIntroduction Of colonies cannibals and vernacu-larsrdquo Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi eds Post-colonial translation Theory and practice London and New York Routledge 1999 1ndash18

Cai Huizhen 2001 Lu Xun xiaoshuo yanjiu [A study of Lu Xunrsquos fiction] Gaoxiong Gaoxiong tushu chubanshe

Chang Nam Fung 2004 Criticism of Chinese and Western translation theories [in Chinese] Bei-jing Tsinghua University Press

Cheng guangwei Wu Xiaodong Kong Qingdong Gao Yuanbaoand Liu Yong eds 2000 Zhong-guo xiandai wenxue shi [History of modern Chinese literature] Beijing Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe

Even-Zohar Itamar 1990 ldquoPolysystem theoryrdquo Polysystem studies [= Poetics today 111] 9ndash26Even-Zohar Itamar 1990a ldquoThe position of translated literature within the literary polysystemrdquo

Polysystem studies [= Poetics today 111] 45ndash51

146 Nam Fung Chang

Even-Zohar Itamar 1997 ldquoThe making of culture repertoire and the role of transferrdquo Target 92 355ndash363

Even-Zohar Itamar 1997a ldquoFactors and dependencies in culture A revised outline for polysys-tem researchrdquo Canadian review of comparative literature 3 15ndash34

Even-Zohar Itamar 2000 ldquoCulture repertoire and the wealth of collective entitiesrdquo Dirk De Geest et al eds Under construction Links for the site of literary theory Essays in honour of Hendrik Van Gorp Leuven Leuven University Press 2000 389ndash403

Even-Zohar Itamar 2002 ldquoCulture planning and cultural resistance in the making and main-taining of entitiesrdquo Sun Yat-Sen journal of humanities 14 45ndash52

Even-Zohar Itamar 2002a ldquoLiterature as goods literature as toolsrdquo Neohelicon XXIX1 75ndash83Even-Zohar Itamar 2004 ldquoCulture planningrdquo Itamar Even-Zohar Papers in culture research

82ndash103 Available online httpwwwtauacil~itamarezFu Sinian 1984 (first published in 1919) ldquoYi shu gan yanrdquo [Reflections on the translating of

books] Translatorrsquos notes editorial Department ed Fanyi yanjiu lunwenji (1894ndash1948) [Se-lected papers in Translation Studies (1894ndash1948)] Beijing Waiyu jiaoxue yu yanjiu chu-banshe 1984 59ndash63

Gao Chang Fan 1989 ldquoCultural barriers in translationrdquo New comparison 8 3ndash12Jiang Shuxian ed 2002 Zhongguo xiandai wenxue shi [History of modern Chinese literature]

Beijing Kexue chubansheLao Long 1996 ldquoDiudiao huanxiang lianxi shiji mdash Jiepo fanyi (ke) xue de mimengrdquo [My view

on translatology] Chinese translators journal 2 38ndash41Li Dazhao 1959 Li Dazhao xuanji [Selected Works of Li Dazhao] Beijing Renmin chubansheLi Oufan (Leo Ou-fan Lee) tr Yin Hui 1991 Tie wu zhong de nahan [Voices from the iron

house] Hong Kong Joint PublishingLuo Xinzhang 1984 ldquoWoguo zicheng tixi de fanyi lilunrdquo [Chinese ranslation theory A system

of its own] Translatorrsquos notes editorial department ed Fanyi yanjiu lunwen ji (1949ndash1983) [Selected papers in Translation Studies (1949ndash1983)] Beijing Waiyu jiaoxue yu yanjiu chu-banshe 1984 588ndash604

Mao Zedong 1956 ldquoChairman Maorsquos talk to music workersrdquo Available online httpwwwmarxistsorgreferencearchivemaoselected-worksvolume-7mswv7_469htm

Minshi Xinwenwang 1983 ldquoLong de chuanren Hou Dejian jinru Beijingrdquo [Decendant of the Dragon Hou Dejian enters Beijing] 4 June Available online httpwwwftvncomtwTop-icCaringTWTWnotes0604htm

Nakamura Hajime 1957 ldquoThe influence of Confucian ethics on the Chinese translations of Buddhist Sutrasrdquo Kshitis Roy ed Liebenthal Festschrift Sino-Indian studies v Parts 3 amp 4 Santiniketan Visvabharati University 1957 156ndash170

Nanfangwang 2003 ldquoMao Zedong wenhua jiaoyu sixiang gu wei jin yong yang wei Zhong yongrdquo [Mao Zedongrsquos thought on culture and education Make the past serve the present and make foreign things serve China] 22 December Available online httpbig5southcncomgatebig5wwwsouthcncomnewscommunityshztmzdthought200312220715htm

Norwegian book clubs association The 2001 ldquoThe 100 greatest literary worksrdquo Available on-line httpstation05qccacsrsbouscolanglaisbook_reportlinks8html

Siu Wingyip 2001 ldquoMakesizhuyi gainian fanyi zai Zhongguordquo [Translation of Marxist concepts in China] M Phil thesis Lingnan University Hong Kong

Ta Kung Pao 2004 ldquoZhongyang gaodu guanzhu Gang zhengzhi fazhan Tang Jiaxuan chi Li Zhuming lsquobai yang miaorsquordquo [Central government deeply concerned about HKrsquos constitution-

136 Nam Fung Chang

So this paper is an initial attempt to make Even-Zoharrsquos latest questions go back to his first one so that his chain of questions may form a loop It will try to elaborate on the two hypotheses in light of his culture research with examples drawn mainly from Chinese culture

1 Culture repertoire cohesion and cultural identity

According to Even-Zohar large social entities such as peoples or nations are not natural objects but have to be formed by the acts of individuals Since the benefits of establishing an organization larger than onersquos own immediate province are not self-evident willingness to cooperate with such attempts may be lacking on the part of the people and coercion is sometimes resorted to in the first instance However for such entities to be maintained in the long run it is necessary to create cohesion ie a widespread sense of solidarity in the community For this purpose a culture repertoire must be invented andor imported to organize life both on the collective and on the individual levels (Even-Zohar 1997 355 2000 392ndash396 2004 94)

It seems logical to assume that cohesion is easier to achieve if the culture reper-toire is generally regarded as possessing two qualities beneficialness and unique-ness First it must be believed to be able to bring benefits (in whatever sense of the word) to the users in order to be accepted by the majority of the entity concerned Secondly it must be seen to be different from the repertoires of other entities be-cause there can be no internal cohesion without external differentiation In other words the culture repertoire needs to be or become a source of pride for members of the entity so as to build a collective identity (cf Even-Zohar 2000 395) which can be said to be the pre-condition for cohesion

However the success of a culture repertoire first in gaining acceptance and then in shaping a collective identity sometimes seems to hinge more on marketing skills than on any ldquoinherent qualityrdquo of the thing itself To claim superiority over alternative options is a good strategy in that both beneficialness and uniqueness are included

Many culture planners rely heavily on emotional appeal when recommending their culture repertoire to the people Certain items would be selected from the culture repertoire as ldquoselling pointsrdquo Some of these items may look insignificant or meaningless or even ridiculous to members of other entities such as a linguistic or bodily feature as cited by Even-Zohar (1997a 27) Two lines of the lyrics of a popular Chinese patriotic song ldquoThe dragonrsquos descendantsrdquo read ldquo(With) black eyes black hair yellow skin (We are) forever and ever the dragonrsquos descendantsrdquo1 Most of the Chinese people are no doubt aware that black and yellow cannot be

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 137

proved to look any better (or worse) than other colours and that the dragon exists only in myths but this awareness does not seem to prevent them from being filled with national pride when singing that song

Some other claims for superiority may be based on facts but one may legiti-mately ask whether these facts are relevant in a world where military might still speak loudest Examples are ldquoour country has the largest populationrdquo ldquowe are one of the oldest civilizationsrdquo or ldquowe won the World Cuprdquo (cf Even-Zohar 2002a 79) Excelling in sports is apparently a sure win otherwise we would not have seen countries spend a bigger portion of their GNP on training professional athletes than on education Indeed sometimes one cannot help suspecting that there may be something from which the governments of these countries want to distract the attention of their people

There are criteria based on things that really matter in a competitive world such as technological advancement material wealth and military power Superi-ority in these areas can be objectively proved or disproved but facts may some-times be ignored forgotten or arbitrarily interpreted For example an astronaut sent into space in the twenty-first century mdash five decades later than the first one in the world mdash has been made and generally accepted as a national hero

So we can see that many claims for superiority are in fact questionable It seems that uniqueness of the culture repertoire is actually the decisive factor for cohesion and it might simply become a synonym of beneficialness in the eyes of the entity concerned That is the reason why in the words of Immanuel Waller-stein (1991 99) the states have played opposite roles in two parallel contradic-tions in the contradiction between the tendency to one world vs the tendency to distinctive nation-states the states have used their force to create cultural diversity whereas in the contradiction between the tendency to one nation vs the tendency to distinctive ethnic groups within each state they have used their force to create uniformity

However uniqueness can sometimes be as illusory as beneficialness Take the Chinese patriotic song again for example On the one hand some ethnic groups in China such as the 800-million-strong Uyghur do not have black eyes black hair and yellow skin On the other hand all peoples in the Mongolian race notably the Japanese the Koreans the Vietnamese and the Mongolian share these features

2 Cultural resistance to imported repertoires

After a culture repertoire is established and relatively stable the introduction of new repertoires or repertoremes (ie items in a repertoire) may meet with resis-tance Even-Zohar has identified two causes that ldquoacquiring a different repertoire

138 Nam Fung Chang

is painful and riskyrdquo and that a different repertoire may not equally benefit all members (Even-Zohar 2002 49) These seem to me to be typical Even-Zoharian understatements Sometimes a different repertoire such as communism may ben-efit some members at the expense of others leading to a large-scale redistribution of economic resources and political power and some others such as Nazism may even stipulate the extermination of a substantial part of an entity

One may also add a third possible cause incompatibility with the value system behind the accepted repertoire For example when the Manchurians conquered the Hans and established the Qing Dynasty about four centuries ago all men were ordered to cut their hair above the forehead and wear a long pigtail at the back of the head as a symbol of allegiance to the conqueror and the order met with great resistance not only because of the inconvenience caused but mainly because of the double humiliation in being subjugated to a minority ethnic group and in taking on a feminine look however after a certain period of time the pigtail became a symbol of allegiance to the Chinese nation and therefore it took nearly as much force to compel men to cut their pigtails in the late Qing Period at the turn of the twentieth century although it is very easy to get rid of such an inconvenience (see Xiaolin 2006)

Repertoires imported from other entities may be regarded as a double threat to cultural cohesion because in addition to causing instability in the established repertoire just as any indigenously invented repertoires do they may hurt national pride thus posing a direct threat to the collective identity They may therefore meet with greater resistance and their very foreignness rather than their lack of beneficialness is often the main and sometimes the only argument against them Indeed the very word ldquoforeignrdquo in Chinese (yang) sometimes carries a derogatory connotation

Examples of resistance to imported repertoires are many in Chinese history In the seventeenth century the introduction of Western learning (mostly science subjects such as astronomy geography and mathematics) into China initiated by Christian missionaries was so humiliating to a nation who had thought for thou-sands of years that they were at the ldquocentre of the earthrdquo and were the only civiliza-tion in the world that a myth had to be created that ldquoWestern learning originates from Chinardquo (xi xue Zhong yuan) mdash that the kinds of learning being imported at that time were Chinese in origin only that they had been lost to later generations and were stolen by Westerners For example Christian missionaries gave alge-bra the Chinese name ldquothe method from the Eastrdquo (dong lai fa) or ldquothe Chinese methodrdquo (Zhongguo fa) in order to smooth the ruffled feathers of the ruling class (see Wang Xiaoyuan 2006 45ndash47) When the myth apparently lost credibility in the late nineteenth century the proposition ldquoChinese learning as the body West-ern learning for practical applicationrdquo (Zhong ti xi yong) was put forward and it

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 139

gradually gained currency while Western repertoires kept coming in (see Wang Xiaoyuan 2006 47ndash49)

The proposition was refuted as ldquowrongrdquo by Mao Zedong in 1956 (Mao 1956) who replaced it with another slogan ldquomake foreign things serve Chinardquo (yang wei Zhong yong) (Nangfangwang 2003) but the very need for such a slogan reflected that there was still resistance in the culture to foreign repertoires In fact one may say that ldquoChinese learning as the body Western learning for practical applicationrdquo is still being practised even after Deng Xiaopingrsquos policy of opening to the outside world and even today in the sense that while Western technology is welcomed the core of the Western value system is carefully warded off

Resistance to Western ideas exists even in Translation Studies itself in vari-ous and sometimes contradictory ways When the introduction of foreign transla-tion theories began in the early 1980s mdash mostly linguistic theories at first such as those of Eugene Nida and Peter Newmark a leading translation scholar without demonstrating much knowledge of foreign theories opined that the body of Chi-nese discourses on translation had formed ldquoa system of its ownrdquo which is unique in the world and therefore there was no need to be ldquounduly humblerdquo (Luo 1984 588 603) From the mid 1980s to the late 1990s there were repeated calls for the establishment of ldquoChinese translatologyrdquo or a ldquotranslatology with Chinese char-acteristicsrdquo with the argument that foreign theories are bound to be inapplicable to translation into or from the Chinese language (see Chang 2004 43ndash51) In the past decade a few theorists have asserted that translation could never hope to be-come an academic discipline (Lao 1996 Zhang 1999) a status which a growing number of academics had been endeavouring to establish with the help of Western theories And in recent years a renowned professor cum translator declares that the ldquoliterary translation theories of Chinese school [sic] are the most advanced in the world of the 20th centuryrdquo on the ground that ldquoonly the Chinese school can solve the difficult problemsrdquo in translating between the two major languages of the world mdash Chinese and English (Xu 2003 52 54) By ldquothe theories of the Chinese schoolrdquo Xu actually means his own theory which he claims to have guided him to ldquoproduce the largest quantity of literary translations with the highest quality in the worldrdquo (Xu 2003 54)

Cultural resistance seems to have been strongest in the fields of ideology and politics The introduction of foreign religions and ideologies such as Buddhism Christianity and Marxism has led to bloody conflicts and even civil wars The present ruling party in China gained power by introducing a foreign ideology in the first place but after it succeeded in doing so it has gradually played down the foreignness of its ideological and political origin and built up an indigenous im-age carefully warding off the interference of other foreign ideologies and political forces Thus some politicians fighting for democracy in Hong Kong have been

140 Nam Fung Chang

called ldquotraitors to the Chinese Peoplerdquo (Hanjian) by the pro-government camp (Wen Wei Po 2004) and their appearing at a hearing of a Senate subcommittee of the United States on the democratization process in Hong Kong was described by a senior Chinese official in charge of Hong Kong affairs as ldquoworshipping at a for-eign templerdquo and ldquoseeking help from a foreign Bodhisattvardquo (Ta Kung Pao 2004)

3 Imported items as cultural goods and cultural tools

Here it may be useful to introduce Even-Zoharrsquos concepts of culture as goods and culture as tools In the former conception culture is considered as ldquoa set and stock of evaluable goods the possession of which signifies wealth high status and pres-tigerdquo (Even-Zohar 2000 389) whereas in the latter it is considered as ldquoa set of oper-ating tools for the organization of life both on the collective and individual levelsrdquo (Even-Zohar 2000 392) Some cultural goods may be converted into tools and the conversion ldquoentails the making of models hellip from symbolical valuesrdquo (Even-Zohar 2000 393) Since the nineteenth century the most highly valued cultural goods particularly those labelled ldquoworks of artrdquo have been propagated as the common property of ldquonationsrdquo to become their cultural ldquoheritagerdquo This ldquoaccepted canon of precious goodsrdquo functions as ldquoassets that distinguish social groups from othersrdquo and consequently also as ldquoa tool for validating the effectiveness of an established repertoire hellip and for securing its perpetuationrdquo (Even-Zohar 2000 391 394)

It may be said that cultural goods may function on different levels according to their perceived value Generally they signify wealth and prestige for individual owners but the most ldquopreciousrdquo ones mdash so precious that they are invaluable rather than evaluable that is those that have come to be regarded as the cultural heri-tage function also at a higher level signifying prestige for the whole social entity Similarly cultural tools may function on different levels All cultural goods may be converted to tools that serve as models within and beyond the boundaries of their own system For instance a literary work may serve as a model for writers to produce other literary works andor as one for members of the general public to make sense of the world and to take action in it In the latter case it is an ideo-logical or moral tool rather than a literary one However only the most ldquopreciousrdquo cultural goods may be converted into tools that function at the highest level to validate a repertoire

As to repertoires imported from other entities Even-Zohar observes that they may more likely be transferred as goods before these goods are converted into tools (Even-Zohar 2000 393ndash394) To this observation I would venture to add that at least in long-established and strong cultures imported repertoires can hardly hope to be accepted into the canon of precious cultural goods and subsequently to be

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 141

converted into high-level tools unless they undergo a process of naturalization because their very foreignness automatically disqualifies them from functioning to distinguish social groups from others

The proposition ldquoChinese learning as the body Western learning for practi-cal applicationrdquo was intended exactly to prevent foreign repertoires from becom-ing precious cultural goods while allowing them to function as lower-level tools According to a critic the body-application dichotomy is one between values and tools mdash ldquothe bodyrdquo means ldquothe system of cultural valuesrdquo whereas political science and economics which were being imported at that time were seen as ldquoappliedrdquo branches of learning that belong to the level of technical operation (Wang Yan 1998)

Buddhism and Marxism have become parts of the Chinese cultural heritage because they have come to be regarded by the ldquopersons-in-the-culturerdquo as indig-enous repertoires to different extents Apart from the ldquonaturalrdquo cause that the repertoires have declined in their respective birthplace the efforts of the culture planners are an important factor in the naturalization process In both cases the repertoires have been adapted to norms of the target culture In some Chinese translations of Buddhist texts the relatively high position that Buddhism gives to women and mothers has been changed in conformity to the Confucian concept of men as the superior sex (see Wright 1959 37) For example in the source text a mother exhorts her daughter not to marry a prince in this way ldquoWe however my daughter are prostitutes we give pleasure to all people we do not make our living by serving one man onlyrdquo but in the translation this has become ldquoWe of a humble position are not fit to marry princesrdquo as the receiving culture could not accept that prostitution was not necessarily a lowly occupation and ldquolaymen who practise the five precepts of morality take wivesrdquo has been translated as ldquothey take wives and concubinesrdquo because while ldquokeeping concubines was not sanctioned by the Buddhist lawrdquo in Chinese society the practice was ldquopermitted as a matter of courserdquo (Nakamura 1957 160ndash163) Moreover ldquohusband supports wiferdquo has been rendered as ldquothe husband controls his wiferdquo and ldquothe wife comforts the husbandrdquo as ldquothe wife reveres her husbandrdquo (Wright 1959 37 Gao 1989)

In the case of Marxism certain ideas of Marx that are not compatible with Chinarsquos agricultural civilization have been either ignored or adapted

For Chinarsquos pioneering communists Marxism was a weapon to subvert the ldquopatriarchal clan systemrdquo and its ideological buttress mdash Confucianism In the view of Li Dazhao (1889ndash1926) one of the earliest Marxist theorists in China such a system is maintained by ldquosacrificing the personality of the ruled in the service of the rulerrdquo and therefore what Confucius calls ldquothe cultivation of moral characterrdquo is in fact designed for the suppression rather than development of the individual personality (Li Dazhao 1959 296 Siu 2001 65ndash66) However under Communist

142 Nam Fung Chang

rule the collective entity is maintained in the same way albeit with a new name As Gao Chang Fan observes

Marxrsquos idea of personal fulfilment has been completely ignored by the Chinese Communist establishment so much so that everybody from childhood is urged to suppress onersquos personal desire and to contribute to the good of the whole com-munity The denial of self-interest is interpreted as ldquocommunist virtuerdquo and any satisfaction of personal desire is considered to be bourgeois and capitalist (Gao 1989 6)

Another point worth noting is that Marxism being a product of an industrial society cannot be applied to an agricultural society without adaptation Thus the landlord and the peasant have become the Chinese equivalents to the capitalist and the proletarian respectively in spite of the fact that in Marxrsquos theory they are not referred to as classes and the relations of production they represent are seen as a hindrance to the development of productivity (Siu 2001 73 79 84 95)

Besides there have been manoeuvres to build an indigenous image such as the substitution of Marxism-Leninism by Mao Zedong Thought as the ideological buttress since the 1960s the invention of ldquosocialism with Chinese characteristicsrdquo in the 1980s and the quiet removal of the portraits of Marx Engels Lenin and Stalin from Tiananmen Square in Beijing In other words to a certain extent the agents of transfer of a foreign repertoire have been re-presented as inventors of a domestic one

4 Even-Zoharrsquos two hypotheses again

Now we are ready to go back to Even-Zoharrsquos first hypothesis that the position assumed by translated literature in the literary polysystem tends to be a peripheral one under normal circumstances To explain this hypothesis we first need to see how the authorship of translation in general and of literary translation in particu-lar is conceived in the world of our experience According to Bassnett and Trivedi (1999 2) the idea of an author as ldquoownerrdquo of his or her text and the concept of the translation being a mere copy of the high-status original emerged only after the Middle Ages coinciding with the period of early colonial expansion It may be very interesting to research into the social conditions for the changes in these norms such as the degree of cohesion in the entity concerned its state of contact with other entities and the concept of copyright and intellectual properties but that will go beyond the scope of this paper Suffice it to say for the moment that in modern Europe social norms and laws dictate that the writer of the source text is regarded as the author of the target text too the translator being just the translator

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 143

The situation in China has been very much the same at least since the turn of the twentieth century when the first wave of massive translation of Western social sciences and literature began In 1919 a critic lambasted Yan Fu the most famous translator of the time for his use of strategies such as deletion expansion and paraphrase in translating Thomas H Huxleyrsquos Evolution and ethics saying that Huxley would have sued Yan if he had learned what Yan had done to his work be-cause Yan had sacrificed the author in pursuit of his own fame (Fu 1984 60)

In recent years there have been protests against the marginalization of transla-tors and translations especially from post-colonial theorists such as Venuti (1995) and Bassnett and Trivedi (1999) And in China there has been a call for the rec-ognition of the literary translator instead of the source text author as the author of the translated work and for the classification of translated literature as national rather than foreign literature on the ground that literary translation is a process of re-creation resulting in a product with a relatively independent artistic value (Xie 1999 208ndash237) As a literary translator I applaud their efforts However polysys-temists believe that it is no concern of a scientific discipline to effect changes in the world of our experience (Toury 1995 17) or to pass value judgement on the object of its study So we should simply state the fact that these efforts seem to have made hardly any impact on the prevailing social norms so far

Being regarded as originating from a foreign entity under normal conditions translated literature is naturally resisted by the institution of the literary polysys-tem due to the perceived threat to the collective identity That is to say it is not allowed to be converted into a cultural tool that exerts ldquoinfluence on major pro-cessesrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 48)

On the other hand when a literary polysystem is young peripheral or in a crisis the collective identity may be very weak or even thrown into confusion Then foreign items may be brought in to quickly fill the vacuum before similar items can be locally produced In such situations translated literature may indeed assume a central position taking part ldquoin the process of creating new primary modelsrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 50) mdash models not only for literary production but also for the ldquopersons-in-the-culturerdquo to make sense of the world and to take action in it (cf Even-Zohar 2000 392ndash393) In other words it may be converted into a cultural tool at a relatively high level

At this point I would like to add an observation although translated literature may become a powerful tool and translators may gain literary fame sometimes literary translations and translators have an even slimmer chance than other for-eign items and their agents of transfer to become part of the cultural heritage and subsequently to function as cultural tools at the highest level The reason may be that processes of naturalization and canonization take time whereas translated literature may assume a central position only for a relatively short while This is

144 Nam Fung Chang

because ldquono system can remain in a constant state of weakness lsquoturning pointrsquo or crisisrdquo as Even-Zohar (1990a 50) points out In fact one may see that compared with items in ideological and religious polysystems literary works may be more quickly replaceable especially as cultural tools So an entity may say ldquowe have Shakespearerdquo or ldquowe have Mozartrdquo but no entity seems to have taken as much pride in having a certain ldquoeminentrdquo translator

In the preceding paragraphs the term ldquotranslated literaturerdquo is used for con-ciseness It may be more accurate to say ldquotarget texts presented andor regarded as literary translationsrdquo (cf Toury 1995 38) because texts that are not presented as translations or no longer regarded as such for some reason may become canonized even though a source text may still be traceable Take for example A madmanrsquos dia-ry (kuangren riji) a short story by the Chinese writer Lu Xun It is largely modelled on the Russian writer Nikolai Gogolrsquos work of the same title (Cai 2001 55ndash56) and has been regarded as an ldquoimitationrdquo (fangzuo) by some (Li Oufan 1991 54 Zhongguo Qingnian Bao 2001) We can therefore say that it has the features of a semi- or quasi-translation (see Even-Zohar 1990a 50) although it was presented by its author not as a translation but as an original work However a number of works entitled History of modern Chinese literature published after the founding of the Peoplersquos Republic of China laud it as ldquothe first modern Chinese novelrdquo (Zhu 1996 20) or ldquothe first successful novel written in the vernacular in the history of modern Chinese literaturerdquo (Cheng et al 2000 59) They put emphasis on its originality saying for example that it ldquobreaks away from the traditional structure of story-telling and combines realism with symbolism in a daring manner so that a unique artistic effect is producedrdquo (Jiang 2002 26) They either avoid mentioning the source of the work (such as Zhu 1996 9) as if everything mdash including symbol-ism mdash was invented by Lu Xun or just mention in passing that Gogol has a work of the same title (Cheng et al 2000 59) as if it was a mere coincidence Interest-ingly enough Lursquos work is included in ldquoThe Norwegian book clubs association listrdquo of ldquoThe 100 greatest literary worksrdquo (Norwegian Book Clubs Association 2001) whereas its source text is not

Even-Zoharrsquos culture theory may also shed light on his second hypothesis that translation tends towards acceptability when it is at the periphery and towards adequacy when it is at the centre

Translation is usually undertaken for the purpose of bringing in new items so as to change replace or add to the existing repertoire But when a culture is stable and self-sufficient that is when translated literature is in a peripheral position imported items may have to be presented as or at least made compatible with in-digenous ones so as not to be seen as threats to the collective identity of the target culture otherwise they may not be accepted or tolerated due to strong resistance That is why acceptability-oriented translation strategies are most likely to be used

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 145

Thus Even-Zohar sees a paradox in this case what could have been an innovatory force has actually become a ldquomajor factor of conservatismrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 48ndash49) On the other hand when a culture is in one of the three situations that Even-Zohar mentions foreign items are needed and welcomed and their foreign-ness may be exactly what makes them fashionable

5 Concluding remarks

It is my opinion that Even-Zoharrsquos concepts of cohesion repertoire resistance cul-ture as goods vs culture as tools etc may provide researchers with tools to probe deeper and wider into the context of the total culture searching for more compre-hensive and detailed explanations for translational phenomena These concepts have helped polysystem theory maintain its vitality as a translation theory

Note

1 Ironically the song was written by a Taiwanese song-writer in the 1970s in protest against the United Statesrsquos change of policy in recognizing Beijing instead of Taipei as the only legitimate government of China The song can thus be regarded as originally a hijacking of the Chinese national identity for an anti-communist cause with the blessing of the authorities in Taipei but later it was accepted mdash and thus hijacked mdash by people all over China as their patriotic song this time with the blessing of the Beijing government (Minshi Xinwenwang 1983) and then in 1989 it was hijacked again by people in Hong Kong to be sung in rallies and demonstrations in support of the students in Tiananmen Square

References

Bassnett Susan and Harish Trivedi 1999 ldquoIntroduction Of colonies cannibals and vernacu-larsrdquo Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi eds Post-colonial translation Theory and practice London and New York Routledge 1999 1ndash18

Cai Huizhen 2001 Lu Xun xiaoshuo yanjiu [A study of Lu Xunrsquos fiction] Gaoxiong Gaoxiong tushu chubanshe

Chang Nam Fung 2004 Criticism of Chinese and Western translation theories [in Chinese] Bei-jing Tsinghua University Press

Cheng guangwei Wu Xiaodong Kong Qingdong Gao Yuanbaoand Liu Yong eds 2000 Zhong-guo xiandai wenxue shi [History of modern Chinese literature] Beijing Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe

Even-Zohar Itamar 1990 ldquoPolysystem theoryrdquo Polysystem studies [= Poetics today 111] 9ndash26Even-Zohar Itamar 1990a ldquoThe position of translated literature within the literary polysystemrdquo

Polysystem studies [= Poetics today 111] 45ndash51

146 Nam Fung Chang

Even-Zohar Itamar 1997 ldquoThe making of culture repertoire and the role of transferrdquo Target 92 355ndash363

Even-Zohar Itamar 1997a ldquoFactors and dependencies in culture A revised outline for polysys-tem researchrdquo Canadian review of comparative literature 3 15ndash34

Even-Zohar Itamar 2000 ldquoCulture repertoire and the wealth of collective entitiesrdquo Dirk De Geest et al eds Under construction Links for the site of literary theory Essays in honour of Hendrik Van Gorp Leuven Leuven University Press 2000 389ndash403

Even-Zohar Itamar 2002 ldquoCulture planning and cultural resistance in the making and main-taining of entitiesrdquo Sun Yat-Sen journal of humanities 14 45ndash52

Even-Zohar Itamar 2002a ldquoLiterature as goods literature as toolsrdquo Neohelicon XXIX1 75ndash83Even-Zohar Itamar 2004 ldquoCulture planningrdquo Itamar Even-Zohar Papers in culture research

82ndash103 Available online httpwwwtauacil~itamarezFu Sinian 1984 (first published in 1919) ldquoYi shu gan yanrdquo [Reflections on the translating of

books] Translatorrsquos notes editorial Department ed Fanyi yanjiu lunwenji (1894ndash1948) [Se-lected papers in Translation Studies (1894ndash1948)] Beijing Waiyu jiaoxue yu yanjiu chu-banshe 1984 59ndash63

Gao Chang Fan 1989 ldquoCultural barriers in translationrdquo New comparison 8 3ndash12Jiang Shuxian ed 2002 Zhongguo xiandai wenxue shi [History of modern Chinese literature]

Beijing Kexue chubansheLao Long 1996 ldquoDiudiao huanxiang lianxi shiji mdash Jiepo fanyi (ke) xue de mimengrdquo [My view

on translatology] Chinese translators journal 2 38ndash41Li Dazhao 1959 Li Dazhao xuanji [Selected Works of Li Dazhao] Beijing Renmin chubansheLi Oufan (Leo Ou-fan Lee) tr Yin Hui 1991 Tie wu zhong de nahan [Voices from the iron

house] Hong Kong Joint PublishingLuo Xinzhang 1984 ldquoWoguo zicheng tixi de fanyi lilunrdquo [Chinese ranslation theory A system

of its own] Translatorrsquos notes editorial department ed Fanyi yanjiu lunwen ji (1949ndash1983) [Selected papers in Translation Studies (1949ndash1983)] Beijing Waiyu jiaoxue yu yanjiu chu-banshe 1984 588ndash604

Mao Zedong 1956 ldquoChairman Maorsquos talk to music workersrdquo Available online httpwwwmarxistsorgreferencearchivemaoselected-worksvolume-7mswv7_469htm

Minshi Xinwenwang 1983 ldquoLong de chuanren Hou Dejian jinru Beijingrdquo [Decendant of the Dragon Hou Dejian enters Beijing] 4 June Available online httpwwwftvncomtwTop-icCaringTWTWnotes0604htm

Nakamura Hajime 1957 ldquoThe influence of Confucian ethics on the Chinese translations of Buddhist Sutrasrdquo Kshitis Roy ed Liebenthal Festschrift Sino-Indian studies v Parts 3 amp 4 Santiniketan Visvabharati University 1957 156ndash170

Nanfangwang 2003 ldquoMao Zedong wenhua jiaoyu sixiang gu wei jin yong yang wei Zhong yongrdquo [Mao Zedongrsquos thought on culture and education Make the past serve the present and make foreign things serve China] 22 December Available online httpbig5southcncomgatebig5wwwsouthcncomnewscommunityshztmzdthought200312220715htm

Norwegian book clubs association The 2001 ldquoThe 100 greatest literary worksrdquo Available on-line httpstation05qccacsrsbouscolanglaisbook_reportlinks8html

Siu Wingyip 2001 ldquoMakesizhuyi gainian fanyi zai Zhongguordquo [Translation of Marxist concepts in China] M Phil thesis Lingnan University Hong Kong

Ta Kung Pao 2004 ldquoZhongyang gaodu guanzhu Gang zhengzhi fazhan Tang Jiaxuan chi Li Zhuming lsquobai yang miaorsquordquo [Central government deeply concerned about HKrsquos constitution-

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 137

proved to look any better (or worse) than other colours and that the dragon exists only in myths but this awareness does not seem to prevent them from being filled with national pride when singing that song

Some other claims for superiority may be based on facts but one may legiti-mately ask whether these facts are relevant in a world where military might still speak loudest Examples are ldquoour country has the largest populationrdquo ldquowe are one of the oldest civilizationsrdquo or ldquowe won the World Cuprdquo (cf Even-Zohar 2002a 79) Excelling in sports is apparently a sure win otherwise we would not have seen countries spend a bigger portion of their GNP on training professional athletes than on education Indeed sometimes one cannot help suspecting that there may be something from which the governments of these countries want to distract the attention of their people

There are criteria based on things that really matter in a competitive world such as technological advancement material wealth and military power Superi-ority in these areas can be objectively proved or disproved but facts may some-times be ignored forgotten or arbitrarily interpreted For example an astronaut sent into space in the twenty-first century mdash five decades later than the first one in the world mdash has been made and generally accepted as a national hero

So we can see that many claims for superiority are in fact questionable It seems that uniqueness of the culture repertoire is actually the decisive factor for cohesion and it might simply become a synonym of beneficialness in the eyes of the entity concerned That is the reason why in the words of Immanuel Waller-stein (1991 99) the states have played opposite roles in two parallel contradic-tions in the contradiction between the tendency to one world vs the tendency to distinctive nation-states the states have used their force to create cultural diversity whereas in the contradiction between the tendency to one nation vs the tendency to distinctive ethnic groups within each state they have used their force to create uniformity

However uniqueness can sometimes be as illusory as beneficialness Take the Chinese patriotic song again for example On the one hand some ethnic groups in China such as the 800-million-strong Uyghur do not have black eyes black hair and yellow skin On the other hand all peoples in the Mongolian race notably the Japanese the Koreans the Vietnamese and the Mongolian share these features

2 Cultural resistance to imported repertoires

After a culture repertoire is established and relatively stable the introduction of new repertoires or repertoremes (ie items in a repertoire) may meet with resis-tance Even-Zohar has identified two causes that ldquoacquiring a different repertoire

138 Nam Fung Chang

is painful and riskyrdquo and that a different repertoire may not equally benefit all members (Even-Zohar 2002 49) These seem to me to be typical Even-Zoharian understatements Sometimes a different repertoire such as communism may ben-efit some members at the expense of others leading to a large-scale redistribution of economic resources and political power and some others such as Nazism may even stipulate the extermination of a substantial part of an entity

One may also add a third possible cause incompatibility with the value system behind the accepted repertoire For example when the Manchurians conquered the Hans and established the Qing Dynasty about four centuries ago all men were ordered to cut their hair above the forehead and wear a long pigtail at the back of the head as a symbol of allegiance to the conqueror and the order met with great resistance not only because of the inconvenience caused but mainly because of the double humiliation in being subjugated to a minority ethnic group and in taking on a feminine look however after a certain period of time the pigtail became a symbol of allegiance to the Chinese nation and therefore it took nearly as much force to compel men to cut their pigtails in the late Qing Period at the turn of the twentieth century although it is very easy to get rid of such an inconvenience (see Xiaolin 2006)

Repertoires imported from other entities may be regarded as a double threat to cultural cohesion because in addition to causing instability in the established repertoire just as any indigenously invented repertoires do they may hurt national pride thus posing a direct threat to the collective identity They may therefore meet with greater resistance and their very foreignness rather than their lack of beneficialness is often the main and sometimes the only argument against them Indeed the very word ldquoforeignrdquo in Chinese (yang) sometimes carries a derogatory connotation

Examples of resistance to imported repertoires are many in Chinese history In the seventeenth century the introduction of Western learning (mostly science subjects such as astronomy geography and mathematics) into China initiated by Christian missionaries was so humiliating to a nation who had thought for thou-sands of years that they were at the ldquocentre of the earthrdquo and were the only civiliza-tion in the world that a myth had to be created that ldquoWestern learning originates from Chinardquo (xi xue Zhong yuan) mdash that the kinds of learning being imported at that time were Chinese in origin only that they had been lost to later generations and were stolen by Westerners For example Christian missionaries gave alge-bra the Chinese name ldquothe method from the Eastrdquo (dong lai fa) or ldquothe Chinese methodrdquo (Zhongguo fa) in order to smooth the ruffled feathers of the ruling class (see Wang Xiaoyuan 2006 45ndash47) When the myth apparently lost credibility in the late nineteenth century the proposition ldquoChinese learning as the body West-ern learning for practical applicationrdquo (Zhong ti xi yong) was put forward and it

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 139

gradually gained currency while Western repertoires kept coming in (see Wang Xiaoyuan 2006 47ndash49)

The proposition was refuted as ldquowrongrdquo by Mao Zedong in 1956 (Mao 1956) who replaced it with another slogan ldquomake foreign things serve Chinardquo (yang wei Zhong yong) (Nangfangwang 2003) but the very need for such a slogan reflected that there was still resistance in the culture to foreign repertoires In fact one may say that ldquoChinese learning as the body Western learning for practical applicationrdquo is still being practised even after Deng Xiaopingrsquos policy of opening to the outside world and even today in the sense that while Western technology is welcomed the core of the Western value system is carefully warded off

Resistance to Western ideas exists even in Translation Studies itself in vari-ous and sometimes contradictory ways When the introduction of foreign transla-tion theories began in the early 1980s mdash mostly linguistic theories at first such as those of Eugene Nida and Peter Newmark a leading translation scholar without demonstrating much knowledge of foreign theories opined that the body of Chi-nese discourses on translation had formed ldquoa system of its ownrdquo which is unique in the world and therefore there was no need to be ldquounduly humblerdquo (Luo 1984 588 603) From the mid 1980s to the late 1990s there were repeated calls for the establishment of ldquoChinese translatologyrdquo or a ldquotranslatology with Chinese char-acteristicsrdquo with the argument that foreign theories are bound to be inapplicable to translation into or from the Chinese language (see Chang 2004 43ndash51) In the past decade a few theorists have asserted that translation could never hope to be-come an academic discipline (Lao 1996 Zhang 1999) a status which a growing number of academics had been endeavouring to establish with the help of Western theories And in recent years a renowned professor cum translator declares that the ldquoliterary translation theories of Chinese school [sic] are the most advanced in the world of the 20th centuryrdquo on the ground that ldquoonly the Chinese school can solve the difficult problemsrdquo in translating between the two major languages of the world mdash Chinese and English (Xu 2003 52 54) By ldquothe theories of the Chinese schoolrdquo Xu actually means his own theory which he claims to have guided him to ldquoproduce the largest quantity of literary translations with the highest quality in the worldrdquo (Xu 2003 54)

Cultural resistance seems to have been strongest in the fields of ideology and politics The introduction of foreign religions and ideologies such as Buddhism Christianity and Marxism has led to bloody conflicts and even civil wars The present ruling party in China gained power by introducing a foreign ideology in the first place but after it succeeded in doing so it has gradually played down the foreignness of its ideological and political origin and built up an indigenous im-age carefully warding off the interference of other foreign ideologies and political forces Thus some politicians fighting for democracy in Hong Kong have been

140 Nam Fung Chang

called ldquotraitors to the Chinese Peoplerdquo (Hanjian) by the pro-government camp (Wen Wei Po 2004) and their appearing at a hearing of a Senate subcommittee of the United States on the democratization process in Hong Kong was described by a senior Chinese official in charge of Hong Kong affairs as ldquoworshipping at a for-eign templerdquo and ldquoseeking help from a foreign Bodhisattvardquo (Ta Kung Pao 2004)

3 Imported items as cultural goods and cultural tools

Here it may be useful to introduce Even-Zoharrsquos concepts of culture as goods and culture as tools In the former conception culture is considered as ldquoa set and stock of evaluable goods the possession of which signifies wealth high status and pres-tigerdquo (Even-Zohar 2000 389) whereas in the latter it is considered as ldquoa set of oper-ating tools for the organization of life both on the collective and individual levelsrdquo (Even-Zohar 2000 392) Some cultural goods may be converted into tools and the conversion ldquoentails the making of models hellip from symbolical valuesrdquo (Even-Zohar 2000 393) Since the nineteenth century the most highly valued cultural goods particularly those labelled ldquoworks of artrdquo have been propagated as the common property of ldquonationsrdquo to become their cultural ldquoheritagerdquo This ldquoaccepted canon of precious goodsrdquo functions as ldquoassets that distinguish social groups from othersrdquo and consequently also as ldquoa tool for validating the effectiveness of an established repertoire hellip and for securing its perpetuationrdquo (Even-Zohar 2000 391 394)

It may be said that cultural goods may function on different levels according to their perceived value Generally they signify wealth and prestige for individual owners but the most ldquopreciousrdquo ones mdash so precious that they are invaluable rather than evaluable that is those that have come to be regarded as the cultural heri-tage function also at a higher level signifying prestige for the whole social entity Similarly cultural tools may function on different levels All cultural goods may be converted to tools that serve as models within and beyond the boundaries of their own system For instance a literary work may serve as a model for writers to produce other literary works andor as one for members of the general public to make sense of the world and to take action in it In the latter case it is an ideo-logical or moral tool rather than a literary one However only the most ldquopreciousrdquo cultural goods may be converted into tools that function at the highest level to validate a repertoire

As to repertoires imported from other entities Even-Zohar observes that they may more likely be transferred as goods before these goods are converted into tools (Even-Zohar 2000 393ndash394) To this observation I would venture to add that at least in long-established and strong cultures imported repertoires can hardly hope to be accepted into the canon of precious cultural goods and subsequently to be

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 141

converted into high-level tools unless they undergo a process of naturalization because their very foreignness automatically disqualifies them from functioning to distinguish social groups from others

The proposition ldquoChinese learning as the body Western learning for practi-cal applicationrdquo was intended exactly to prevent foreign repertoires from becom-ing precious cultural goods while allowing them to function as lower-level tools According to a critic the body-application dichotomy is one between values and tools mdash ldquothe bodyrdquo means ldquothe system of cultural valuesrdquo whereas political science and economics which were being imported at that time were seen as ldquoappliedrdquo branches of learning that belong to the level of technical operation (Wang Yan 1998)

Buddhism and Marxism have become parts of the Chinese cultural heritage because they have come to be regarded by the ldquopersons-in-the-culturerdquo as indig-enous repertoires to different extents Apart from the ldquonaturalrdquo cause that the repertoires have declined in their respective birthplace the efforts of the culture planners are an important factor in the naturalization process In both cases the repertoires have been adapted to norms of the target culture In some Chinese translations of Buddhist texts the relatively high position that Buddhism gives to women and mothers has been changed in conformity to the Confucian concept of men as the superior sex (see Wright 1959 37) For example in the source text a mother exhorts her daughter not to marry a prince in this way ldquoWe however my daughter are prostitutes we give pleasure to all people we do not make our living by serving one man onlyrdquo but in the translation this has become ldquoWe of a humble position are not fit to marry princesrdquo as the receiving culture could not accept that prostitution was not necessarily a lowly occupation and ldquolaymen who practise the five precepts of morality take wivesrdquo has been translated as ldquothey take wives and concubinesrdquo because while ldquokeeping concubines was not sanctioned by the Buddhist lawrdquo in Chinese society the practice was ldquopermitted as a matter of courserdquo (Nakamura 1957 160ndash163) Moreover ldquohusband supports wiferdquo has been rendered as ldquothe husband controls his wiferdquo and ldquothe wife comforts the husbandrdquo as ldquothe wife reveres her husbandrdquo (Wright 1959 37 Gao 1989)

In the case of Marxism certain ideas of Marx that are not compatible with Chinarsquos agricultural civilization have been either ignored or adapted

For Chinarsquos pioneering communists Marxism was a weapon to subvert the ldquopatriarchal clan systemrdquo and its ideological buttress mdash Confucianism In the view of Li Dazhao (1889ndash1926) one of the earliest Marxist theorists in China such a system is maintained by ldquosacrificing the personality of the ruled in the service of the rulerrdquo and therefore what Confucius calls ldquothe cultivation of moral characterrdquo is in fact designed for the suppression rather than development of the individual personality (Li Dazhao 1959 296 Siu 2001 65ndash66) However under Communist

142 Nam Fung Chang

rule the collective entity is maintained in the same way albeit with a new name As Gao Chang Fan observes

Marxrsquos idea of personal fulfilment has been completely ignored by the Chinese Communist establishment so much so that everybody from childhood is urged to suppress onersquos personal desire and to contribute to the good of the whole com-munity The denial of self-interest is interpreted as ldquocommunist virtuerdquo and any satisfaction of personal desire is considered to be bourgeois and capitalist (Gao 1989 6)

Another point worth noting is that Marxism being a product of an industrial society cannot be applied to an agricultural society without adaptation Thus the landlord and the peasant have become the Chinese equivalents to the capitalist and the proletarian respectively in spite of the fact that in Marxrsquos theory they are not referred to as classes and the relations of production they represent are seen as a hindrance to the development of productivity (Siu 2001 73 79 84 95)

Besides there have been manoeuvres to build an indigenous image such as the substitution of Marxism-Leninism by Mao Zedong Thought as the ideological buttress since the 1960s the invention of ldquosocialism with Chinese characteristicsrdquo in the 1980s and the quiet removal of the portraits of Marx Engels Lenin and Stalin from Tiananmen Square in Beijing In other words to a certain extent the agents of transfer of a foreign repertoire have been re-presented as inventors of a domestic one

4 Even-Zoharrsquos two hypotheses again

Now we are ready to go back to Even-Zoharrsquos first hypothesis that the position assumed by translated literature in the literary polysystem tends to be a peripheral one under normal circumstances To explain this hypothesis we first need to see how the authorship of translation in general and of literary translation in particu-lar is conceived in the world of our experience According to Bassnett and Trivedi (1999 2) the idea of an author as ldquoownerrdquo of his or her text and the concept of the translation being a mere copy of the high-status original emerged only after the Middle Ages coinciding with the period of early colonial expansion It may be very interesting to research into the social conditions for the changes in these norms such as the degree of cohesion in the entity concerned its state of contact with other entities and the concept of copyright and intellectual properties but that will go beyond the scope of this paper Suffice it to say for the moment that in modern Europe social norms and laws dictate that the writer of the source text is regarded as the author of the target text too the translator being just the translator

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 143

The situation in China has been very much the same at least since the turn of the twentieth century when the first wave of massive translation of Western social sciences and literature began In 1919 a critic lambasted Yan Fu the most famous translator of the time for his use of strategies such as deletion expansion and paraphrase in translating Thomas H Huxleyrsquos Evolution and ethics saying that Huxley would have sued Yan if he had learned what Yan had done to his work be-cause Yan had sacrificed the author in pursuit of his own fame (Fu 1984 60)

In recent years there have been protests against the marginalization of transla-tors and translations especially from post-colonial theorists such as Venuti (1995) and Bassnett and Trivedi (1999) And in China there has been a call for the rec-ognition of the literary translator instead of the source text author as the author of the translated work and for the classification of translated literature as national rather than foreign literature on the ground that literary translation is a process of re-creation resulting in a product with a relatively independent artistic value (Xie 1999 208ndash237) As a literary translator I applaud their efforts However polysys-temists believe that it is no concern of a scientific discipline to effect changes in the world of our experience (Toury 1995 17) or to pass value judgement on the object of its study So we should simply state the fact that these efforts seem to have made hardly any impact on the prevailing social norms so far

Being regarded as originating from a foreign entity under normal conditions translated literature is naturally resisted by the institution of the literary polysys-tem due to the perceived threat to the collective identity That is to say it is not allowed to be converted into a cultural tool that exerts ldquoinfluence on major pro-cessesrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 48)

On the other hand when a literary polysystem is young peripheral or in a crisis the collective identity may be very weak or even thrown into confusion Then foreign items may be brought in to quickly fill the vacuum before similar items can be locally produced In such situations translated literature may indeed assume a central position taking part ldquoin the process of creating new primary modelsrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 50) mdash models not only for literary production but also for the ldquopersons-in-the-culturerdquo to make sense of the world and to take action in it (cf Even-Zohar 2000 392ndash393) In other words it may be converted into a cultural tool at a relatively high level

At this point I would like to add an observation although translated literature may become a powerful tool and translators may gain literary fame sometimes literary translations and translators have an even slimmer chance than other for-eign items and their agents of transfer to become part of the cultural heritage and subsequently to function as cultural tools at the highest level The reason may be that processes of naturalization and canonization take time whereas translated literature may assume a central position only for a relatively short while This is

144 Nam Fung Chang

because ldquono system can remain in a constant state of weakness lsquoturning pointrsquo or crisisrdquo as Even-Zohar (1990a 50) points out In fact one may see that compared with items in ideological and religious polysystems literary works may be more quickly replaceable especially as cultural tools So an entity may say ldquowe have Shakespearerdquo or ldquowe have Mozartrdquo but no entity seems to have taken as much pride in having a certain ldquoeminentrdquo translator

In the preceding paragraphs the term ldquotranslated literaturerdquo is used for con-ciseness It may be more accurate to say ldquotarget texts presented andor regarded as literary translationsrdquo (cf Toury 1995 38) because texts that are not presented as translations or no longer regarded as such for some reason may become canonized even though a source text may still be traceable Take for example A madmanrsquos dia-ry (kuangren riji) a short story by the Chinese writer Lu Xun It is largely modelled on the Russian writer Nikolai Gogolrsquos work of the same title (Cai 2001 55ndash56) and has been regarded as an ldquoimitationrdquo (fangzuo) by some (Li Oufan 1991 54 Zhongguo Qingnian Bao 2001) We can therefore say that it has the features of a semi- or quasi-translation (see Even-Zohar 1990a 50) although it was presented by its author not as a translation but as an original work However a number of works entitled History of modern Chinese literature published after the founding of the Peoplersquos Republic of China laud it as ldquothe first modern Chinese novelrdquo (Zhu 1996 20) or ldquothe first successful novel written in the vernacular in the history of modern Chinese literaturerdquo (Cheng et al 2000 59) They put emphasis on its originality saying for example that it ldquobreaks away from the traditional structure of story-telling and combines realism with symbolism in a daring manner so that a unique artistic effect is producedrdquo (Jiang 2002 26) They either avoid mentioning the source of the work (such as Zhu 1996 9) as if everything mdash including symbol-ism mdash was invented by Lu Xun or just mention in passing that Gogol has a work of the same title (Cheng et al 2000 59) as if it was a mere coincidence Interest-ingly enough Lursquos work is included in ldquoThe Norwegian book clubs association listrdquo of ldquoThe 100 greatest literary worksrdquo (Norwegian Book Clubs Association 2001) whereas its source text is not

Even-Zoharrsquos culture theory may also shed light on his second hypothesis that translation tends towards acceptability when it is at the periphery and towards adequacy when it is at the centre

Translation is usually undertaken for the purpose of bringing in new items so as to change replace or add to the existing repertoire But when a culture is stable and self-sufficient that is when translated literature is in a peripheral position imported items may have to be presented as or at least made compatible with in-digenous ones so as not to be seen as threats to the collective identity of the target culture otherwise they may not be accepted or tolerated due to strong resistance That is why acceptability-oriented translation strategies are most likely to be used

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 145

Thus Even-Zohar sees a paradox in this case what could have been an innovatory force has actually become a ldquomajor factor of conservatismrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 48ndash49) On the other hand when a culture is in one of the three situations that Even-Zohar mentions foreign items are needed and welcomed and their foreign-ness may be exactly what makes them fashionable

5 Concluding remarks

It is my opinion that Even-Zoharrsquos concepts of cohesion repertoire resistance cul-ture as goods vs culture as tools etc may provide researchers with tools to probe deeper and wider into the context of the total culture searching for more compre-hensive and detailed explanations for translational phenomena These concepts have helped polysystem theory maintain its vitality as a translation theory

Note

1 Ironically the song was written by a Taiwanese song-writer in the 1970s in protest against the United Statesrsquos change of policy in recognizing Beijing instead of Taipei as the only legitimate government of China The song can thus be regarded as originally a hijacking of the Chinese national identity for an anti-communist cause with the blessing of the authorities in Taipei but later it was accepted mdash and thus hijacked mdash by people all over China as their patriotic song this time with the blessing of the Beijing government (Minshi Xinwenwang 1983) and then in 1989 it was hijacked again by people in Hong Kong to be sung in rallies and demonstrations in support of the students in Tiananmen Square

References

Bassnett Susan and Harish Trivedi 1999 ldquoIntroduction Of colonies cannibals and vernacu-larsrdquo Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi eds Post-colonial translation Theory and practice London and New York Routledge 1999 1ndash18

Cai Huizhen 2001 Lu Xun xiaoshuo yanjiu [A study of Lu Xunrsquos fiction] Gaoxiong Gaoxiong tushu chubanshe

Chang Nam Fung 2004 Criticism of Chinese and Western translation theories [in Chinese] Bei-jing Tsinghua University Press

Cheng guangwei Wu Xiaodong Kong Qingdong Gao Yuanbaoand Liu Yong eds 2000 Zhong-guo xiandai wenxue shi [History of modern Chinese literature] Beijing Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe

Even-Zohar Itamar 1990 ldquoPolysystem theoryrdquo Polysystem studies [= Poetics today 111] 9ndash26Even-Zohar Itamar 1990a ldquoThe position of translated literature within the literary polysystemrdquo

Polysystem studies [= Poetics today 111] 45ndash51

146 Nam Fung Chang

Even-Zohar Itamar 1997 ldquoThe making of culture repertoire and the role of transferrdquo Target 92 355ndash363

Even-Zohar Itamar 1997a ldquoFactors and dependencies in culture A revised outline for polysys-tem researchrdquo Canadian review of comparative literature 3 15ndash34

Even-Zohar Itamar 2000 ldquoCulture repertoire and the wealth of collective entitiesrdquo Dirk De Geest et al eds Under construction Links for the site of literary theory Essays in honour of Hendrik Van Gorp Leuven Leuven University Press 2000 389ndash403

Even-Zohar Itamar 2002 ldquoCulture planning and cultural resistance in the making and main-taining of entitiesrdquo Sun Yat-Sen journal of humanities 14 45ndash52

Even-Zohar Itamar 2002a ldquoLiterature as goods literature as toolsrdquo Neohelicon XXIX1 75ndash83Even-Zohar Itamar 2004 ldquoCulture planningrdquo Itamar Even-Zohar Papers in culture research

82ndash103 Available online httpwwwtauacil~itamarezFu Sinian 1984 (first published in 1919) ldquoYi shu gan yanrdquo [Reflections on the translating of

books] Translatorrsquos notes editorial Department ed Fanyi yanjiu lunwenji (1894ndash1948) [Se-lected papers in Translation Studies (1894ndash1948)] Beijing Waiyu jiaoxue yu yanjiu chu-banshe 1984 59ndash63

Gao Chang Fan 1989 ldquoCultural barriers in translationrdquo New comparison 8 3ndash12Jiang Shuxian ed 2002 Zhongguo xiandai wenxue shi [History of modern Chinese literature]

Beijing Kexue chubansheLao Long 1996 ldquoDiudiao huanxiang lianxi shiji mdash Jiepo fanyi (ke) xue de mimengrdquo [My view

on translatology] Chinese translators journal 2 38ndash41Li Dazhao 1959 Li Dazhao xuanji [Selected Works of Li Dazhao] Beijing Renmin chubansheLi Oufan (Leo Ou-fan Lee) tr Yin Hui 1991 Tie wu zhong de nahan [Voices from the iron

house] Hong Kong Joint PublishingLuo Xinzhang 1984 ldquoWoguo zicheng tixi de fanyi lilunrdquo [Chinese ranslation theory A system

of its own] Translatorrsquos notes editorial department ed Fanyi yanjiu lunwen ji (1949ndash1983) [Selected papers in Translation Studies (1949ndash1983)] Beijing Waiyu jiaoxue yu yanjiu chu-banshe 1984 588ndash604

Mao Zedong 1956 ldquoChairman Maorsquos talk to music workersrdquo Available online httpwwwmarxistsorgreferencearchivemaoselected-worksvolume-7mswv7_469htm

Minshi Xinwenwang 1983 ldquoLong de chuanren Hou Dejian jinru Beijingrdquo [Decendant of the Dragon Hou Dejian enters Beijing] 4 June Available online httpwwwftvncomtwTop-icCaringTWTWnotes0604htm

Nakamura Hajime 1957 ldquoThe influence of Confucian ethics on the Chinese translations of Buddhist Sutrasrdquo Kshitis Roy ed Liebenthal Festschrift Sino-Indian studies v Parts 3 amp 4 Santiniketan Visvabharati University 1957 156ndash170

Nanfangwang 2003 ldquoMao Zedong wenhua jiaoyu sixiang gu wei jin yong yang wei Zhong yongrdquo [Mao Zedongrsquos thought on culture and education Make the past serve the present and make foreign things serve China] 22 December Available online httpbig5southcncomgatebig5wwwsouthcncomnewscommunityshztmzdthought200312220715htm

Norwegian book clubs association The 2001 ldquoThe 100 greatest literary worksrdquo Available on-line httpstation05qccacsrsbouscolanglaisbook_reportlinks8html

Siu Wingyip 2001 ldquoMakesizhuyi gainian fanyi zai Zhongguordquo [Translation of Marxist concepts in China] M Phil thesis Lingnan University Hong Kong

Ta Kung Pao 2004 ldquoZhongyang gaodu guanzhu Gang zhengzhi fazhan Tang Jiaxuan chi Li Zhuming lsquobai yang miaorsquordquo [Central government deeply concerned about HKrsquos constitution-

138 Nam Fung Chang

is painful and riskyrdquo and that a different repertoire may not equally benefit all members (Even-Zohar 2002 49) These seem to me to be typical Even-Zoharian understatements Sometimes a different repertoire such as communism may ben-efit some members at the expense of others leading to a large-scale redistribution of economic resources and political power and some others such as Nazism may even stipulate the extermination of a substantial part of an entity

One may also add a third possible cause incompatibility with the value system behind the accepted repertoire For example when the Manchurians conquered the Hans and established the Qing Dynasty about four centuries ago all men were ordered to cut their hair above the forehead and wear a long pigtail at the back of the head as a symbol of allegiance to the conqueror and the order met with great resistance not only because of the inconvenience caused but mainly because of the double humiliation in being subjugated to a minority ethnic group and in taking on a feminine look however after a certain period of time the pigtail became a symbol of allegiance to the Chinese nation and therefore it took nearly as much force to compel men to cut their pigtails in the late Qing Period at the turn of the twentieth century although it is very easy to get rid of such an inconvenience (see Xiaolin 2006)

Repertoires imported from other entities may be regarded as a double threat to cultural cohesion because in addition to causing instability in the established repertoire just as any indigenously invented repertoires do they may hurt national pride thus posing a direct threat to the collective identity They may therefore meet with greater resistance and their very foreignness rather than their lack of beneficialness is often the main and sometimes the only argument against them Indeed the very word ldquoforeignrdquo in Chinese (yang) sometimes carries a derogatory connotation

Examples of resistance to imported repertoires are many in Chinese history In the seventeenth century the introduction of Western learning (mostly science subjects such as astronomy geography and mathematics) into China initiated by Christian missionaries was so humiliating to a nation who had thought for thou-sands of years that they were at the ldquocentre of the earthrdquo and were the only civiliza-tion in the world that a myth had to be created that ldquoWestern learning originates from Chinardquo (xi xue Zhong yuan) mdash that the kinds of learning being imported at that time were Chinese in origin only that they had been lost to later generations and were stolen by Westerners For example Christian missionaries gave alge-bra the Chinese name ldquothe method from the Eastrdquo (dong lai fa) or ldquothe Chinese methodrdquo (Zhongguo fa) in order to smooth the ruffled feathers of the ruling class (see Wang Xiaoyuan 2006 45ndash47) When the myth apparently lost credibility in the late nineteenth century the proposition ldquoChinese learning as the body West-ern learning for practical applicationrdquo (Zhong ti xi yong) was put forward and it

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 139

gradually gained currency while Western repertoires kept coming in (see Wang Xiaoyuan 2006 47ndash49)

The proposition was refuted as ldquowrongrdquo by Mao Zedong in 1956 (Mao 1956) who replaced it with another slogan ldquomake foreign things serve Chinardquo (yang wei Zhong yong) (Nangfangwang 2003) but the very need for such a slogan reflected that there was still resistance in the culture to foreign repertoires In fact one may say that ldquoChinese learning as the body Western learning for practical applicationrdquo is still being practised even after Deng Xiaopingrsquos policy of opening to the outside world and even today in the sense that while Western technology is welcomed the core of the Western value system is carefully warded off

Resistance to Western ideas exists even in Translation Studies itself in vari-ous and sometimes contradictory ways When the introduction of foreign transla-tion theories began in the early 1980s mdash mostly linguistic theories at first such as those of Eugene Nida and Peter Newmark a leading translation scholar without demonstrating much knowledge of foreign theories opined that the body of Chi-nese discourses on translation had formed ldquoa system of its ownrdquo which is unique in the world and therefore there was no need to be ldquounduly humblerdquo (Luo 1984 588 603) From the mid 1980s to the late 1990s there were repeated calls for the establishment of ldquoChinese translatologyrdquo or a ldquotranslatology with Chinese char-acteristicsrdquo with the argument that foreign theories are bound to be inapplicable to translation into or from the Chinese language (see Chang 2004 43ndash51) In the past decade a few theorists have asserted that translation could never hope to be-come an academic discipline (Lao 1996 Zhang 1999) a status which a growing number of academics had been endeavouring to establish with the help of Western theories And in recent years a renowned professor cum translator declares that the ldquoliterary translation theories of Chinese school [sic] are the most advanced in the world of the 20th centuryrdquo on the ground that ldquoonly the Chinese school can solve the difficult problemsrdquo in translating between the two major languages of the world mdash Chinese and English (Xu 2003 52 54) By ldquothe theories of the Chinese schoolrdquo Xu actually means his own theory which he claims to have guided him to ldquoproduce the largest quantity of literary translations with the highest quality in the worldrdquo (Xu 2003 54)

Cultural resistance seems to have been strongest in the fields of ideology and politics The introduction of foreign religions and ideologies such as Buddhism Christianity and Marxism has led to bloody conflicts and even civil wars The present ruling party in China gained power by introducing a foreign ideology in the first place but after it succeeded in doing so it has gradually played down the foreignness of its ideological and political origin and built up an indigenous im-age carefully warding off the interference of other foreign ideologies and political forces Thus some politicians fighting for democracy in Hong Kong have been

140 Nam Fung Chang

called ldquotraitors to the Chinese Peoplerdquo (Hanjian) by the pro-government camp (Wen Wei Po 2004) and their appearing at a hearing of a Senate subcommittee of the United States on the democratization process in Hong Kong was described by a senior Chinese official in charge of Hong Kong affairs as ldquoworshipping at a for-eign templerdquo and ldquoseeking help from a foreign Bodhisattvardquo (Ta Kung Pao 2004)

3 Imported items as cultural goods and cultural tools

Here it may be useful to introduce Even-Zoharrsquos concepts of culture as goods and culture as tools In the former conception culture is considered as ldquoa set and stock of evaluable goods the possession of which signifies wealth high status and pres-tigerdquo (Even-Zohar 2000 389) whereas in the latter it is considered as ldquoa set of oper-ating tools for the organization of life both on the collective and individual levelsrdquo (Even-Zohar 2000 392) Some cultural goods may be converted into tools and the conversion ldquoentails the making of models hellip from symbolical valuesrdquo (Even-Zohar 2000 393) Since the nineteenth century the most highly valued cultural goods particularly those labelled ldquoworks of artrdquo have been propagated as the common property of ldquonationsrdquo to become their cultural ldquoheritagerdquo This ldquoaccepted canon of precious goodsrdquo functions as ldquoassets that distinguish social groups from othersrdquo and consequently also as ldquoa tool for validating the effectiveness of an established repertoire hellip and for securing its perpetuationrdquo (Even-Zohar 2000 391 394)

It may be said that cultural goods may function on different levels according to their perceived value Generally they signify wealth and prestige for individual owners but the most ldquopreciousrdquo ones mdash so precious that they are invaluable rather than evaluable that is those that have come to be regarded as the cultural heri-tage function also at a higher level signifying prestige for the whole social entity Similarly cultural tools may function on different levels All cultural goods may be converted to tools that serve as models within and beyond the boundaries of their own system For instance a literary work may serve as a model for writers to produce other literary works andor as one for members of the general public to make sense of the world and to take action in it In the latter case it is an ideo-logical or moral tool rather than a literary one However only the most ldquopreciousrdquo cultural goods may be converted into tools that function at the highest level to validate a repertoire

As to repertoires imported from other entities Even-Zohar observes that they may more likely be transferred as goods before these goods are converted into tools (Even-Zohar 2000 393ndash394) To this observation I would venture to add that at least in long-established and strong cultures imported repertoires can hardly hope to be accepted into the canon of precious cultural goods and subsequently to be

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 141

converted into high-level tools unless they undergo a process of naturalization because their very foreignness automatically disqualifies them from functioning to distinguish social groups from others

The proposition ldquoChinese learning as the body Western learning for practi-cal applicationrdquo was intended exactly to prevent foreign repertoires from becom-ing precious cultural goods while allowing them to function as lower-level tools According to a critic the body-application dichotomy is one between values and tools mdash ldquothe bodyrdquo means ldquothe system of cultural valuesrdquo whereas political science and economics which were being imported at that time were seen as ldquoappliedrdquo branches of learning that belong to the level of technical operation (Wang Yan 1998)

Buddhism and Marxism have become parts of the Chinese cultural heritage because they have come to be regarded by the ldquopersons-in-the-culturerdquo as indig-enous repertoires to different extents Apart from the ldquonaturalrdquo cause that the repertoires have declined in their respective birthplace the efforts of the culture planners are an important factor in the naturalization process In both cases the repertoires have been adapted to norms of the target culture In some Chinese translations of Buddhist texts the relatively high position that Buddhism gives to women and mothers has been changed in conformity to the Confucian concept of men as the superior sex (see Wright 1959 37) For example in the source text a mother exhorts her daughter not to marry a prince in this way ldquoWe however my daughter are prostitutes we give pleasure to all people we do not make our living by serving one man onlyrdquo but in the translation this has become ldquoWe of a humble position are not fit to marry princesrdquo as the receiving culture could not accept that prostitution was not necessarily a lowly occupation and ldquolaymen who practise the five precepts of morality take wivesrdquo has been translated as ldquothey take wives and concubinesrdquo because while ldquokeeping concubines was not sanctioned by the Buddhist lawrdquo in Chinese society the practice was ldquopermitted as a matter of courserdquo (Nakamura 1957 160ndash163) Moreover ldquohusband supports wiferdquo has been rendered as ldquothe husband controls his wiferdquo and ldquothe wife comforts the husbandrdquo as ldquothe wife reveres her husbandrdquo (Wright 1959 37 Gao 1989)

In the case of Marxism certain ideas of Marx that are not compatible with Chinarsquos agricultural civilization have been either ignored or adapted

For Chinarsquos pioneering communists Marxism was a weapon to subvert the ldquopatriarchal clan systemrdquo and its ideological buttress mdash Confucianism In the view of Li Dazhao (1889ndash1926) one of the earliest Marxist theorists in China such a system is maintained by ldquosacrificing the personality of the ruled in the service of the rulerrdquo and therefore what Confucius calls ldquothe cultivation of moral characterrdquo is in fact designed for the suppression rather than development of the individual personality (Li Dazhao 1959 296 Siu 2001 65ndash66) However under Communist

142 Nam Fung Chang

rule the collective entity is maintained in the same way albeit with a new name As Gao Chang Fan observes

Marxrsquos idea of personal fulfilment has been completely ignored by the Chinese Communist establishment so much so that everybody from childhood is urged to suppress onersquos personal desire and to contribute to the good of the whole com-munity The denial of self-interest is interpreted as ldquocommunist virtuerdquo and any satisfaction of personal desire is considered to be bourgeois and capitalist (Gao 1989 6)

Another point worth noting is that Marxism being a product of an industrial society cannot be applied to an agricultural society without adaptation Thus the landlord and the peasant have become the Chinese equivalents to the capitalist and the proletarian respectively in spite of the fact that in Marxrsquos theory they are not referred to as classes and the relations of production they represent are seen as a hindrance to the development of productivity (Siu 2001 73 79 84 95)

Besides there have been manoeuvres to build an indigenous image such as the substitution of Marxism-Leninism by Mao Zedong Thought as the ideological buttress since the 1960s the invention of ldquosocialism with Chinese characteristicsrdquo in the 1980s and the quiet removal of the portraits of Marx Engels Lenin and Stalin from Tiananmen Square in Beijing In other words to a certain extent the agents of transfer of a foreign repertoire have been re-presented as inventors of a domestic one

4 Even-Zoharrsquos two hypotheses again

Now we are ready to go back to Even-Zoharrsquos first hypothesis that the position assumed by translated literature in the literary polysystem tends to be a peripheral one under normal circumstances To explain this hypothesis we first need to see how the authorship of translation in general and of literary translation in particu-lar is conceived in the world of our experience According to Bassnett and Trivedi (1999 2) the idea of an author as ldquoownerrdquo of his or her text and the concept of the translation being a mere copy of the high-status original emerged only after the Middle Ages coinciding with the period of early colonial expansion It may be very interesting to research into the social conditions for the changes in these norms such as the degree of cohesion in the entity concerned its state of contact with other entities and the concept of copyright and intellectual properties but that will go beyond the scope of this paper Suffice it to say for the moment that in modern Europe social norms and laws dictate that the writer of the source text is regarded as the author of the target text too the translator being just the translator

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 143

The situation in China has been very much the same at least since the turn of the twentieth century when the first wave of massive translation of Western social sciences and literature began In 1919 a critic lambasted Yan Fu the most famous translator of the time for his use of strategies such as deletion expansion and paraphrase in translating Thomas H Huxleyrsquos Evolution and ethics saying that Huxley would have sued Yan if he had learned what Yan had done to his work be-cause Yan had sacrificed the author in pursuit of his own fame (Fu 1984 60)

In recent years there have been protests against the marginalization of transla-tors and translations especially from post-colonial theorists such as Venuti (1995) and Bassnett and Trivedi (1999) And in China there has been a call for the rec-ognition of the literary translator instead of the source text author as the author of the translated work and for the classification of translated literature as national rather than foreign literature on the ground that literary translation is a process of re-creation resulting in a product with a relatively independent artistic value (Xie 1999 208ndash237) As a literary translator I applaud their efforts However polysys-temists believe that it is no concern of a scientific discipline to effect changes in the world of our experience (Toury 1995 17) or to pass value judgement on the object of its study So we should simply state the fact that these efforts seem to have made hardly any impact on the prevailing social norms so far

Being regarded as originating from a foreign entity under normal conditions translated literature is naturally resisted by the institution of the literary polysys-tem due to the perceived threat to the collective identity That is to say it is not allowed to be converted into a cultural tool that exerts ldquoinfluence on major pro-cessesrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 48)

On the other hand when a literary polysystem is young peripheral or in a crisis the collective identity may be very weak or even thrown into confusion Then foreign items may be brought in to quickly fill the vacuum before similar items can be locally produced In such situations translated literature may indeed assume a central position taking part ldquoin the process of creating new primary modelsrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 50) mdash models not only for literary production but also for the ldquopersons-in-the-culturerdquo to make sense of the world and to take action in it (cf Even-Zohar 2000 392ndash393) In other words it may be converted into a cultural tool at a relatively high level

At this point I would like to add an observation although translated literature may become a powerful tool and translators may gain literary fame sometimes literary translations and translators have an even slimmer chance than other for-eign items and their agents of transfer to become part of the cultural heritage and subsequently to function as cultural tools at the highest level The reason may be that processes of naturalization and canonization take time whereas translated literature may assume a central position only for a relatively short while This is

144 Nam Fung Chang

because ldquono system can remain in a constant state of weakness lsquoturning pointrsquo or crisisrdquo as Even-Zohar (1990a 50) points out In fact one may see that compared with items in ideological and religious polysystems literary works may be more quickly replaceable especially as cultural tools So an entity may say ldquowe have Shakespearerdquo or ldquowe have Mozartrdquo but no entity seems to have taken as much pride in having a certain ldquoeminentrdquo translator

In the preceding paragraphs the term ldquotranslated literaturerdquo is used for con-ciseness It may be more accurate to say ldquotarget texts presented andor regarded as literary translationsrdquo (cf Toury 1995 38) because texts that are not presented as translations or no longer regarded as such for some reason may become canonized even though a source text may still be traceable Take for example A madmanrsquos dia-ry (kuangren riji) a short story by the Chinese writer Lu Xun It is largely modelled on the Russian writer Nikolai Gogolrsquos work of the same title (Cai 2001 55ndash56) and has been regarded as an ldquoimitationrdquo (fangzuo) by some (Li Oufan 1991 54 Zhongguo Qingnian Bao 2001) We can therefore say that it has the features of a semi- or quasi-translation (see Even-Zohar 1990a 50) although it was presented by its author not as a translation but as an original work However a number of works entitled History of modern Chinese literature published after the founding of the Peoplersquos Republic of China laud it as ldquothe first modern Chinese novelrdquo (Zhu 1996 20) or ldquothe first successful novel written in the vernacular in the history of modern Chinese literaturerdquo (Cheng et al 2000 59) They put emphasis on its originality saying for example that it ldquobreaks away from the traditional structure of story-telling and combines realism with symbolism in a daring manner so that a unique artistic effect is producedrdquo (Jiang 2002 26) They either avoid mentioning the source of the work (such as Zhu 1996 9) as if everything mdash including symbol-ism mdash was invented by Lu Xun or just mention in passing that Gogol has a work of the same title (Cheng et al 2000 59) as if it was a mere coincidence Interest-ingly enough Lursquos work is included in ldquoThe Norwegian book clubs association listrdquo of ldquoThe 100 greatest literary worksrdquo (Norwegian Book Clubs Association 2001) whereas its source text is not

Even-Zoharrsquos culture theory may also shed light on his second hypothesis that translation tends towards acceptability when it is at the periphery and towards adequacy when it is at the centre

Translation is usually undertaken for the purpose of bringing in new items so as to change replace or add to the existing repertoire But when a culture is stable and self-sufficient that is when translated literature is in a peripheral position imported items may have to be presented as or at least made compatible with in-digenous ones so as not to be seen as threats to the collective identity of the target culture otherwise they may not be accepted or tolerated due to strong resistance That is why acceptability-oriented translation strategies are most likely to be used

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 145

Thus Even-Zohar sees a paradox in this case what could have been an innovatory force has actually become a ldquomajor factor of conservatismrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 48ndash49) On the other hand when a culture is in one of the three situations that Even-Zohar mentions foreign items are needed and welcomed and their foreign-ness may be exactly what makes them fashionable

5 Concluding remarks

It is my opinion that Even-Zoharrsquos concepts of cohesion repertoire resistance cul-ture as goods vs culture as tools etc may provide researchers with tools to probe deeper and wider into the context of the total culture searching for more compre-hensive and detailed explanations for translational phenomena These concepts have helped polysystem theory maintain its vitality as a translation theory

Note

1 Ironically the song was written by a Taiwanese song-writer in the 1970s in protest against the United Statesrsquos change of policy in recognizing Beijing instead of Taipei as the only legitimate government of China The song can thus be regarded as originally a hijacking of the Chinese national identity for an anti-communist cause with the blessing of the authorities in Taipei but later it was accepted mdash and thus hijacked mdash by people all over China as their patriotic song this time with the blessing of the Beijing government (Minshi Xinwenwang 1983) and then in 1989 it was hijacked again by people in Hong Kong to be sung in rallies and demonstrations in support of the students in Tiananmen Square

References

Bassnett Susan and Harish Trivedi 1999 ldquoIntroduction Of colonies cannibals and vernacu-larsrdquo Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi eds Post-colonial translation Theory and practice London and New York Routledge 1999 1ndash18

Cai Huizhen 2001 Lu Xun xiaoshuo yanjiu [A study of Lu Xunrsquos fiction] Gaoxiong Gaoxiong tushu chubanshe

Chang Nam Fung 2004 Criticism of Chinese and Western translation theories [in Chinese] Bei-jing Tsinghua University Press

Cheng guangwei Wu Xiaodong Kong Qingdong Gao Yuanbaoand Liu Yong eds 2000 Zhong-guo xiandai wenxue shi [History of modern Chinese literature] Beijing Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe

Even-Zohar Itamar 1990 ldquoPolysystem theoryrdquo Polysystem studies [= Poetics today 111] 9ndash26Even-Zohar Itamar 1990a ldquoThe position of translated literature within the literary polysystemrdquo

Polysystem studies [= Poetics today 111] 45ndash51

146 Nam Fung Chang

Even-Zohar Itamar 1997 ldquoThe making of culture repertoire and the role of transferrdquo Target 92 355ndash363

Even-Zohar Itamar 1997a ldquoFactors and dependencies in culture A revised outline for polysys-tem researchrdquo Canadian review of comparative literature 3 15ndash34

Even-Zohar Itamar 2000 ldquoCulture repertoire and the wealth of collective entitiesrdquo Dirk De Geest et al eds Under construction Links for the site of literary theory Essays in honour of Hendrik Van Gorp Leuven Leuven University Press 2000 389ndash403

Even-Zohar Itamar 2002 ldquoCulture planning and cultural resistance in the making and main-taining of entitiesrdquo Sun Yat-Sen journal of humanities 14 45ndash52

Even-Zohar Itamar 2002a ldquoLiterature as goods literature as toolsrdquo Neohelicon XXIX1 75ndash83Even-Zohar Itamar 2004 ldquoCulture planningrdquo Itamar Even-Zohar Papers in culture research

82ndash103 Available online httpwwwtauacil~itamarezFu Sinian 1984 (first published in 1919) ldquoYi shu gan yanrdquo [Reflections on the translating of

books] Translatorrsquos notes editorial Department ed Fanyi yanjiu lunwenji (1894ndash1948) [Se-lected papers in Translation Studies (1894ndash1948)] Beijing Waiyu jiaoxue yu yanjiu chu-banshe 1984 59ndash63

Gao Chang Fan 1989 ldquoCultural barriers in translationrdquo New comparison 8 3ndash12Jiang Shuxian ed 2002 Zhongguo xiandai wenxue shi [History of modern Chinese literature]

Beijing Kexue chubansheLao Long 1996 ldquoDiudiao huanxiang lianxi shiji mdash Jiepo fanyi (ke) xue de mimengrdquo [My view

on translatology] Chinese translators journal 2 38ndash41Li Dazhao 1959 Li Dazhao xuanji [Selected Works of Li Dazhao] Beijing Renmin chubansheLi Oufan (Leo Ou-fan Lee) tr Yin Hui 1991 Tie wu zhong de nahan [Voices from the iron

house] Hong Kong Joint PublishingLuo Xinzhang 1984 ldquoWoguo zicheng tixi de fanyi lilunrdquo [Chinese ranslation theory A system

of its own] Translatorrsquos notes editorial department ed Fanyi yanjiu lunwen ji (1949ndash1983) [Selected papers in Translation Studies (1949ndash1983)] Beijing Waiyu jiaoxue yu yanjiu chu-banshe 1984 588ndash604

Mao Zedong 1956 ldquoChairman Maorsquos talk to music workersrdquo Available online httpwwwmarxistsorgreferencearchivemaoselected-worksvolume-7mswv7_469htm

Minshi Xinwenwang 1983 ldquoLong de chuanren Hou Dejian jinru Beijingrdquo [Decendant of the Dragon Hou Dejian enters Beijing] 4 June Available online httpwwwftvncomtwTop-icCaringTWTWnotes0604htm

Nakamura Hajime 1957 ldquoThe influence of Confucian ethics on the Chinese translations of Buddhist Sutrasrdquo Kshitis Roy ed Liebenthal Festschrift Sino-Indian studies v Parts 3 amp 4 Santiniketan Visvabharati University 1957 156ndash170

Nanfangwang 2003 ldquoMao Zedong wenhua jiaoyu sixiang gu wei jin yong yang wei Zhong yongrdquo [Mao Zedongrsquos thought on culture and education Make the past serve the present and make foreign things serve China] 22 December Available online httpbig5southcncomgatebig5wwwsouthcncomnewscommunityshztmzdthought200312220715htm

Norwegian book clubs association The 2001 ldquoThe 100 greatest literary worksrdquo Available on-line httpstation05qccacsrsbouscolanglaisbook_reportlinks8html

Siu Wingyip 2001 ldquoMakesizhuyi gainian fanyi zai Zhongguordquo [Translation of Marxist concepts in China] M Phil thesis Lingnan University Hong Kong

Ta Kung Pao 2004 ldquoZhongyang gaodu guanzhu Gang zhengzhi fazhan Tang Jiaxuan chi Li Zhuming lsquobai yang miaorsquordquo [Central government deeply concerned about HKrsquos constitution-

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 139

gradually gained currency while Western repertoires kept coming in (see Wang Xiaoyuan 2006 47ndash49)

The proposition was refuted as ldquowrongrdquo by Mao Zedong in 1956 (Mao 1956) who replaced it with another slogan ldquomake foreign things serve Chinardquo (yang wei Zhong yong) (Nangfangwang 2003) but the very need for such a slogan reflected that there was still resistance in the culture to foreign repertoires In fact one may say that ldquoChinese learning as the body Western learning for practical applicationrdquo is still being practised even after Deng Xiaopingrsquos policy of opening to the outside world and even today in the sense that while Western technology is welcomed the core of the Western value system is carefully warded off

Resistance to Western ideas exists even in Translation Studies itself in vari-ous and sometimes contradictory ways When the introduction of foreign transla-tion theories began in the early 1980s mdash mostly linguistic theories at first such as those of Eugene Nida and Peter Newmark a leading translation scholar without demonstrating much knowledge of foreign theories opined that the body of Chi-nese discourses on translation had formed ldquoa system of its ownrdquo which is unique in the world and therefore there was no need to be ldquounduly humblerdquo (Luo 1984 588 603) From the mid 1980s to the late 1990s there were repeated calls for the establishment of ldquoChinese translatologyrdquo or a ldquotranslatology with Chinese char-acteristicsrdquo with the argument that foreign theories are bound to be inapplicable to translation into or from the Chinese language (see Chang 2004 43ndash51) In the past decade a few theorists have asserted that translation could never hope to be-come an academic discipline (Lao 1996 Zhang 1999) a status which a growing number of academics had been endeavouring to establish with the help of Western theories And in recent years a renowned professor cum translator declares that the ldquoliterary translation theories of Chinese school [sic] are the most advanced in the world of the 20th centuryrdquo on the ground that ldquoonly the Chinese school can solve the difficult problemsrdquo in translating between the two major languages of the world mdash Chinese and English (Xu 2003 52 54) By ldquothe theories of the Chinese schoolrdquo Xu actually means his own theory which he claims to have guided him to ldquoproduce the largest quantity of literary translations with the highest quality in the worldrdquo (Xu 2003 54)

Cultural resistance seems to have been strongest in the fields of ideology and politics The introduction of foreign religions and ideologies such as Buddhism Christianity and Marxism has led to bloody conflicts and even civil wars The present ruling party in China gained power by introducing a foreign ideology in the first place but after it succeeded in doing so it has gradually played down the foreignness of its ideological and political origin and built up an indigenous im-age carefully warding off the interference of other foreign ideologies and political forces Thus some politicians fighting for democracy in Hong Kong have been

140 Nam Fung Chang

called ldquotraitors to the Chinese Peoplerdquo (Hanjian) by the pro-government camp (Wen Wei Po 2004) and their appearing at a hearing of a Senate subcommittee of the United States on the democratization process in Hong Kong was described by a senior Chinese official in charge of Hong Kong affairs as ldquoworshipping at a for-eign templerdquo and ldquoseeking help from a foreign Bodhisattvardquo (Ta Kung Pao 2004)

3 Imported items as cultural goods and cultural tools

Here it may be useful to introduce Even-Zoharrsquos concepts of culture as goods and culture as tools In the former conception culture is considered as ldquoa set and stock of evaluable goods the possession of which signifies wealth high status and pres-tigerdquo (Even-Zohar 2000 389) whereas in the latter it is considered as ldquoa set of oper-ating tools for the organization of life both on the collective and individual levelsrdquo (Even-Zohar 2000 392) Some cultural goods may be converted into tools and the conversion ldquoentails the making of models hellip from symbolical valuesrdquo (Even-Zohar 2000 393) Since the nineteenth century the most highly valued cultural goods particularly those labelled ldquoworks of artrdquo have been propagated as the common property of ldquonationsrdquo to become their cultural ldquoheritagerdquo This ldquoaccepted canon of precious goodsrdquo functions as ldquoassets that distinguish social groups from othersrdquo and consequently also as ldquoa tool for validating the effectiveness of an established repertoire hellip and for securing its perpetuationrdquo (Even-Zohar 2000 391 394)

It may be said that cultural goods may function on different levels according to their perceived value Generally they signify wealth and prestige for individual owners but the most ldquopreciousrdquo ones mdash so precious that they are invaluable rather than evaluable that is those that have come to be regarded as the cultural heri-tage function also at a higher level signifying prestige for the whole social entity Similarly cultural tools may function on different levels All cultural goods may be converted to tools that serve as models within and beyond the boundaries of their own system For instance a literary work may serve as a model for writers to produce other literary works andor as one for members of the general public to make sense of the world and to take action in it In the latter case it is an ideo-logical or moral tool rather than a literary one However only the most ldquopreciousrdquo cultural goods may be converted into tools that function at the highest level to validate a repertoire

As to repertoires imported from other entities Even-Zohar observes that they may more likely be transferred as goods before these goods are converted into tools (Even-Zohar 2000 393ndash394) To this observation I would venture to add that at least in long-established and strong cultures imported repertoires can hardly hope to be accepted into the canon of precious cultural goods and subsequently to be

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 141

converted into high-level tools unless they undergo a process of naturalization because their very foreignness automatically disqualifies them from functioning to distinguish social groups from others

The proposition ldquoChinese learning as the body Western learning for practi-cal applicationrdquo was intended exactly to prevent foreign repertoires from becom-ing precious cultural goods while allowing them to function as lower-level tools According to a critic the body-application dichotomy is one between values and tools mdash ldquothe bodyrdquo means ldquothe system of cultural valuesrdquo whereas political science and economics which were being imported at that time were seen as ldquoappliedrdquo branches of learning that belong to the level of technical operation (Wang Yan 1998)

Buddhism and Marxism have become parts of the Chinese cultural heritage because they have come to be regarded by the ldquopersons-in-the-culturerdquo as indig-enous repertoires to different extents Apart from the ldquonaturalrdquo cause that the repertoires have declined in their respective birthplace the efforts of the culture planners are an important factor in the naturalization process In both cases the repertoires have been adapted to norms of the target culture In some Chinese translations of Buddhist texts the relatively high position that Buddhism gives to women and mothers has been changed in conformity to the Confucian concept of men as the superior sex (see Wright 1959 37) For example in the source text a mother exhorts her daughter not to marry a prince in this way ldquoWe however my daughter are prostitutes we give pleasure to all people we do not make our living by serving one man onlyrdquo but in the translation this has become ldquoWe of a humble position are not fit to marry princesrdquo as the receiving culture could not accept that prostitution was not necessarily a lowly occupation and ldquolaymen who practise the five precepts of morality take wivesrdquo has been translated as ldquothey take wives and concubinesrdquo because while ldquokeeping concubines was not sanctioned by the Buddhist lawrdquo in Chinese society the practice was ldquopermitted as a matter of courserdquo (Nakamura 1957 160ndash163) Moreover ldquohusband supports wiferdquo has been rendered as ldquothe husband controls his wiferdquo and ldquothe wife comforts the husbandrdquo as ldquothe wife reveres her husbandrdquo (Wright 1959 37 Gao 1989)

In the case of Marxism certain ideas of Marx that are not compatible with Chinarsquos agricultural civilization have been either ignored or adapted

For Chinarsquos pioneering communists Marxism was a weapon to subvert the ldquopatriarchal clan systemrdquo and its ideological buttress mdash Confucianism In the view of Li Dazhao (1889ndash1926) one of the earliest Marxist theorists in China such a system is maintained by ldquosacrificing the personality of the ruled in the service of the rulerrdquo and therefore what Confucius calls ldquothe cultivation of moral characterrdquo is in fact designed for the suppression rather than development of the individual personality (Li Dazhao 1959 296 Siu 2001 65ndash66) However under Communist

142 Nam Fung Chang

rule the collective entity is maintained in the same way albeit with a new name As Gao Chang Fan observes

Marxrsquos idea of personal fulfilment has been completely ignored by the Chinese Communist establishment so much so that everybody from childhood is urged to suppress onersquos personal desire and to contribute to the good of the whole com-munity The denial of self-interest is interpreted as ldquocommunist virtuerdquo and any satisfaction of personal desire is considered to be bourgeois and capitalist (Gao 1989 6)

Another point worth noting is that Marxism being a product of an industrial society cannot be applied to an agricultural society without adaptation Thus the landlord and the peasant have become the Chinese equivalents to the capitalist and the proletarian respectively in spite of the fact that in Marxrsquos theory they are not referred to as classes and the relations of production they represent are seen as a hindrance to the development of productivity (Siu 2001 73 79 84 95)

Besides there have been manoeuvres to build an indigenous image such as the substitution of Marxism-Leninism by Mao Zedong Thought as the ideological buttress since the 1960s the invention of ldquosocialism with Chinese characteristicsrdquo in the 1980s and the quiet removal of the portraits of Marx Engels Lenin and Stalin from Tiananmen Square in Beijing In other words to a certain extent the agents of transfer of a foreign repertoire have been re-presented as inventors of a domestic one

4 Even-Zoharrsquos two hypotheses again

Now we are ready to go back to Even-Zoharrsquos first hypothesis that the position assumed by translated literature in the literary polysystem tends to be a peripheral one under normal circumstances To explain this hypothesis we first need to see how the authorship of translation in general and of literary translation in particu-lar is conceived in the world of our experience According to Bassnett and Trivedi (1999 2) the idea of an author as ldquoownerrdquo of his or her text and the concept of the translation being a mere copy of the high-status original emerged only after the Middle Ages coinciding with the period of early colonial expansion It may be very interesting to research into the social conditions for the changes in these norms such as the degree of cohesion in the entity concerned its state of contact with other entities and the concept of copyright and intellectual properties but that will go beyond the scope of this paper Suffice it to say for the moment that in modern Europe social norms and laws dictate that the writer of the source text is regarded as the author of the target text too the translator being just the translator

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 143

The situation in China has been very much the same at least since the turn of the twentieth century when the first wave of massive translation of Western social sciences and literature began In 1919 a critic lambasted Yan Fu the most famous translator of the time for his use of strategies such as deletion expansion and paraphrase in translating Thomas H Huxleyrsquos Evolution and ethics saying that Huxley would have sued Yan if he had learned what Yan had done to his work be-cause Yan had sacrificed the author in pursuit of his own fame (Fu 1984 60)

In recent years there have been protests against the marginalization of transla-tors and translations especially from post-colonial theorists such as Venuti (1995) and Bassnett and Trivedi (1999) And in China there has been a call for the rec-ognition of the literary translator instead of the source text author as the author of the translated work and for the classification of translated literature as national rather than foreign literature on the ground that literary translation is a process of re-creation resulting in a product with a relatively independent artistic value (Xie 1999 208ndash237) As a literary translator I applaud their efforts However polysys-temists believe that it is no concern of a scientific discipline to effect changes in the world of our experience (Toury 1995 17) or to pass value judgement on the object of its study So we should simply state the fact that these efforts seem to have made hardly any impact on the prevailing social norms so far

Being regarded as originating from a foreign entity under normal conditions translated literature is naturally resisted by the institution of the literary polysys-tem due to the perceived threat to the collective identity That is to say it is not allowed to be converted into a cultural tool that exerts ldquoinfluence on major pro-cessesrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 48)

On the other hand when a literary polysystem is young peripheral or in a crisis the collective identity may be very weak or even thrown into confusion Then foreign items may be brought in to quickly fill the vacuum before similar items can be locally produced In such situations translated literature may indeed assume a central position taking part ldquoin the process of creating new primary modelsrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 50) mdash models not only for literary production but also for the ldquopersons-in-the-culturerdquo to make sense of the world and to take action in it (cf Even-Zohar 2000 392ndash393) In other words it may be converted into a cultural tool at a relatively high level

At this point I would like to add an observation although translated literature may become a powerful tool and translators may gain literary fame sometimes literary translations and translators have an even slimmer chance than other for-eign items and their agents of transfer to become part of the cultural heritage and subsequently to function as cultural tools at the highest level The reason may be that processes of naturalization and canonization take time whereas translated literature may assume a central position only for a relatively short while This is

144 Nam Fung Chang

because ldquono system can remain in a constant state of weakness lsquoturning pointrsquo or crisisrdquo as Even-Zohar (1990a 50) points out In fact one may see that compared with items in ideological and religious polysystems literary works may be more quickly replaceable especially as cultural tools So an entity may say ldquowe have Shakespearerdquo or ldquowe have Mozartrdquo but no entity seems to have taken as much pride in having a certain ldquoeminentrdquo translator

In the preceding paragraphs the term ldquotranslated literaturerdquo is used for con-ciseness It may be more accurate to say ldquotarget texts presented andor regarded as literary translationsrdquo (cf Toury 1995 38) because texts that are not presented as translations or no longer regarded as such for some reason may become canonized even though a source text may still be traceable Take for example A madmanrsquos dia-ry (kuangren riji) a short story by the Chinese writer Lu Xun It is largely modelled on the Russian writer Nikolai Gogolrsquos work of the same title (Cai 2001 55ndash56) and has been regarded as an ldquoimitationrdquo (fangzuo) by some (Li Oufan 1991 54 Zhongguo Qingnian Bao 2001) We can therefore say that it has the features of a semi- or quasi-translation (see Even-Zohar 1990a 50) although it was presented by its author not as a translation but as an original work However a number of works entitled History of modern Chinese literature published after the founding of the Peoplersquos Republic of China laud it as ldquothe first modern Chinese novelrdquo (Zhu 1996 20) or ldquothe first successful novel written in the vernacular in the history of modern Chinese literaturerdquo (Cheng et al 2000 59) They put emphasis on its originality saying for example that it ldquobreaks away from the traditional structure of story-telling and combines realism with symbolism in a daring manner so that a unique artistic effect is producedrdquo (Jiang 2002 26) They either avoid mentioning the source of the work (such as Zhu 1996 9) as if everything mdash including symbol-ism mdash was invented by Lu Xun or just mention in passing that Gogol has a work of the same title (Cheng et al 2000 59) as if it was a mere coincidence Interest-ingly enough Lursquos work is included in ldquoThe Norwegian book clubs association listrdquo of ldquoThe 100 greatest literary worksrdquo (Norwegian Book Clubs Association 2001) whereas its source text is not

Even-Zoharrsquos culture theory may also shed light on his second hypothesis that translation tends towards acceptability when it is at the periphery and towards adequacy when it is at the centre

Translation is usually undertaken for the purpose of bringing in new items so as to change replace or add to the existing repertoire But when a culture is stable and self-sufficient that is when translated literature is in a peripheral position imported items may have to be presented as or at least made compatible with in-digenous ones so as not to be seen as threats to the collective identity of the target culture otherwise they may not be accepted or tolerated due to strong resistance That is why acceptability-oriented translation strategies are most likely to be used

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 145

Thus Even-Zohar sees a paradox in this case what could have been an innovatory force has actually become a ldquomajor factor of conservatismrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 48ndash49) On the other hand when a culture is in one of the three situations that Even-Zohar mentions foreign items are needed and welcomed and their foreign-ness may be exactly what makes them fashionable

5 Concluding remarks

It is my opinion that Even-Zoharrsquos concepts of cohesion repertoire resistance cul-ture as goods vs culture as tools etc may provide researchers with tools to probe deeper and wider into the context of the total culture searching for more compre-hensive and detailed explanations for translational phenomena These concepts have helped polysystem theory maintain its vitality as a translation theory

Note

1 Ironically the song was written by a Taiwanese song-writer in the 1970s in protest against the United Statesrsquos change of policy in recognizing Beijing instead of Taipei as the only legitimate government of China The song can thus be regarded as originally a hijacking of the Chinese national identity for an anti-communist cause with the blessing of the authorities in Taipei but later it was accepted mdash and thus hijacked mdash by people all over China as their patriotic song this time with the blessing of the Beijing government (Minshi Xinwenwang 1983) and then in 1989 it was hijacked again by people in Hong Kong to be sung in rallies and demonstrations in support of the students in Tiananmen Square

References

Bassnett Susan and Harish Trivedi 1999 ldquoIntroduction Of colonies cannibals and vernacu-larsrdquo Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi eds Post-colonial translation Theory and practice London and New York Routledge 1999 1ndash18

Cai Huizhen 2001 Lu Xun xiaoshuo yanjiu [A study of Lu Xunrsquos fiction] Gaoxiong Gaoxiong tushu chubanshe

Chang Nam Fung 2004 Criticism of Chinese and Western translation theories [in Chinese] Bei-jing Tsinghua University Press

Cheng guangwei Wu Xiaodong Kong Qingdong Gao Yuanbaoand Liu Yong eds 2000 Zhong-guo xiandai wenxue shi [History of modern Chinese literature] Beijing Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe

Even-Zohar Itamar 1990 ldquoPolysystem theoryrdquo Polysystem studies [= Poetics today 111] 9ndash26Even-Zohar Itamar 1990a ldquoThe position of translated literature within the literary polysystemrdquo

Polysystem studies [= Poetics today 111] 45ndash51

146 Nam Fung Chang

Even-Zohar Itamar 1997 ldquoThe making of culture repertoire and the role of transferrdquo Target 92 355ndash363

Even-Zohar Itamar 1997a ldquoFactors and dependencies in culture A revised outline for polysys-tem researchrdquo Canadian review of comparative literature 3 15ndash34

Even-Zohar Itamar 2000 ldquoCulture repertoire and the wealth of collective entitiesrdquo Dirk De Geest et al eds Under construction Links for the site of literary theory Essays in honour of Hendrik Van Gorp Leuven Leuven University Press 2000 389ndash403

Even-Zohar Itamar 2002 ldquoCulture planning and cultural resistance in the making and main-taining of entitiesrdquo Sun Yat-Sen journal of humanities 14 45ndash52

Even-Zohar Itamar 2002a ldquoLiterature as goods literature as toolsrdquo Neohelicon XXIX1 75ndash83Even-Zohar Itamar 2004 ldquoCulture planningrdquo Itamar Even-Zohar Papers in culture research

82ndash103 Available online httpwwwtauacil~itamarezFu Sinian 1984 (first published in 1919) ldquoYi shu gan yanrdquo [Reflections on the translating of

books] Translatorrsquos notes editorial Department ed Fanyi yanjiu lunwenji (1894ndash1948) [Se-lected papers in Translation Studies (1894ndash1948)] Beijing Waiyu jiaoxue yu yanjiu chu-banshe 1984 59ndash63

Gao Chang Fan 1989 ldquoCultural barriers in translationrdquo New comparison 8 3ndash12Jiang Shuxian ed 2002 Zhongguo xiandai wenxue shi [History of modern Chinese literature]

Beijing Kexue chubansheLao Long 1996 ldquoDiudiao huanxiang lianxi shiji mdash Jiepo fanyi (ke) xue de mimengrdquo [My view

on translatology] Chinese translators journal 2 38ndash41Li Dazhao 1959 Li Dazhao xuanji [Selected Works of Li Dazhao] Beijing Renmin chubansheLi Oufan (Leo Ou-fan Lee) tr Yin Hui 1991 Tie wu zhong de nahan [Voices from the iron

house] Hong Kong Joint PublishingLuo Xinzhang 1984 ldquoWoguo zicheng tixi de fanyi lilunrdquo [Chinese ranslation theory A system

of its own] Translatorrsquos notes editorial department ed Fanyi yanjiu lunwen ji (1949ndash1983) [Selected papers in Translation Studies (1949ndash1983)] Beijing Waiyu jiaoxue yu yanjiu chu-banshe 1984 588ndash604

Mao Zedong 1956 ldquoChairman Maorsquos talk to music workersrdquo Available online httpwwwmarxistsorgreferencearchivemaoselected-worksvolume-7mswv7_469htm

Minshi Xinwenwang 1983 ldquoLong de chuanren Hou Dejian jinru Beijingrdquo [Decendant of the Dragon Hou Dejian enters Beijing] 4 June Available online httpwwwftvncomtwTop-icCaringTWTWnotes0604htm

Nakamura Hajime 1957 ldquoThe influence of Confucian ethics on the Chinese translations of Buddhist Sutrasrdquo Kshitis Roy ed Liebenthal Festschrift Sino-Indian studies v Parts 3 amp 4 Santiniketan Visvabharati University 1957 156ndash170

Nanfangwang 2003 ldquoMao Zedong wenhua jiaoyu sixiang gu wei jin yong yang wei Zhong yongrdquo [Mao Zedongrsquos thought on culture and education Make the past serve the present and make foreign things serve China] 22 December Available online httpbig5southcncomgatebig5wwwsouthcncomnewscommunityshztmzdthought200312220715htm

Norwegian book clubs association The 2001 ldquoThe 100 greatest literary worksrdquo Available on-line httpstation05qccacsrsbouscolanglaisbook_reportlinks8html

Siu Wingyip 2001 ldquoMakesizhuyi gainian fanyi zai Zhongguordquo [Translation of Marxist concepts in China] M Phil thesis Lingnan University Hong Kong

Ta Kung Pao 2004 ldquoZhongyang gaodu guanzhu Gang zhengzhi fazhan Tang Jiaxuan chi Li Zhuming lsquobai yang miaorsquordquo [Central government deeply concerned about HKrsquos constitution-

140 Nam Fung Chang

called ldquotraitors to the Chinese Peoplerdquo (Hanjian) by the pro-government camp (Wen Wei Po 2004) and their appearing at a hearing of a Senate subcommittee of the United States on the democratization process in Hong Kong was described by a senior Chinese official in charge of Hong Kong affairs as ldquoworshipping at a for-eign templerdquo and ldquoseeking help from a foreign Bodhisattvardquo (Ta Kung Pao 2004)

3 Imported items as cultural goods and cultural tools

Here it may be useful to introduce Even-Zoharrsquos concepts of culture as goods and culture as tools In the former conception culture is considered as ldquoa set and stock of evaluable goods the possession of which signifies wealth high status and pres-tigerdquo (Even-Zohar 2000 389) whereas in the latter it is considered as ldquoa set of oper-ating tools for the organization of life both on the collective and individual levelsrdquo (Even-Zohar 2000 392) Some cultural goods may be converted into tools and the conversion ldquoentails the making of models hellip from symbolical valuesrdquo (Even-Zohar 2000 393) Since the nineteenth century the most highly valued cultural goods particularly those labelled ldquoworks of artrdquo have been propagated as the common property of ldquonationsrdquo to become their cultural ldquoheritagerdquo This ldquoaccepted canon of precious goodsrdquo functions as ldquoassets that distinguish social groups from othersrdquo and consequently also as ldquoa tool for validating the effectiveness of an established repertoire hellip and for securing its perpetuationrdquo (Even-Zohar 2000 391 394)

It may be said that cultural goods may function on different levels according to their perceived value Generally they signify wealth and prestige for individual owners but the most ldquopreciousrdquo ones mdash so precious that they are invaluable rather than evaluable that is those that have come to be regarded as the cultural heri-tage function also at a higher level signifying prestige for the whole social entity Similarly cultural tools may function on different levels All cultural goods may be converted to tools that serve as models within and beyond the boundaries of their own system For instance a literary work may serve as a model for writers to produce other literary works andor as one for members of the general public to make sense of the world and to take action in it In the latter case it is an ideo-logical or moral tool rather than a literary one However only the most ldquopreciousrdquo cultural goods may be converted into tools that function at the highest level to validate a repertoire

As to repertoires imported from other entities Even-Zohar observes that they may more likely be transferred as goods before these goods are converted into tools (Even-Zohar 2000 393ndash394) To this observation I would venture to add that at least in long-established and strong cultures imported repertoires can hardly hope to be accepted into the canon of precious cultural goods and subsequently to be

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 141

converted into high-level tools unless they undergo a process of naturalization because their very foreignness automatically disqualifies them from functioning to distinguish social groups from others

The proposition ldquoChinese learning as the body Western learning for practi-cal applicationrdquo was intended exactly to prevent foreign repertoires from becom-ing precious cultural goods while allowing them to function as lower-level tools According to a critic the body-application dichotomy is one between values and tools mdash ldquothe bodyrdquo means ldquothe system of cultural valuesrdquo whereas political science and economics which were being imported at that time were seen as ldquoappliedrdquo branches of learning that belong to the level of technical operation (Wang Yan 1998)

Buddhism and Marxism have become parts of the Chinese cultural heritage because they have come to be regarded by the ldquopersons-in-the-culturerdquo as indig-enous repertoires to different extents Apart from the ldquonaturalrdquo cause that the repertoires have declined in their respective birthplace the efforts of the culture planners are an important factor in the naturalization process In both cases the repertoires have been adapted to norms of the target culture In some Chinese translations of Buddhist texts the relatively high position that Buddhism gives to women and mothers has been changed in conformity to the Confucian concept of men as the superior sex (see Wright 1959 37) For example in the source text a mother exhorts her daughter not to marry a prince in this way ldquoWe however my daughter are prostitutes we give pleasure to all people we do not make our living by serving one man onlyrdquo but in the translation this has become ldquoWe of a humble position are not fit to marry princesrdquo as the receiving culture could not accept that prostitution was not necessarily a lowly occupation and ldquolaymen who practise the five precepts of morality take wivesrdquo has been translated as ldquothey take wives and concubinesrdquo because while ldquokeeping concubines was not sanctioned by the Buddhist lawrdquo in Chinese society the practice was ldquopermitted as a matter of courserdquo (Nakamura 1957 160ndash163) Moreover ldquohusband supports wiferdquo has been rendered as ldquothe husband controls his wiferdquo and ldquothe wife comforts the husbandrdquo as ldquothe wife reveres her husbandrdquo (Wright 1959 37 Gao 1989)

In the case of Marxism certain ideas of Marx that are not compatible with Chinarsquos agricultural civilization have been either ignored or adapted

For Chinarsquos pioneering communists Marxism was a weapon to subvert the ldquopatriarchal clan systemrdquo and its ideological buttress mdash Confucianism In the view of Li Dazhao (1889ndash1926) one of the earliest Marxist theorists in China such a system is maintained by ldquosacrificing the personality of the ruled in the service of the rulerrdquo and therefore what Confucius calls ldquothe cultivation of moral characterrdquo is in fact designed for the suppression rather than development of the individual personality (Li Dazhao 1959 296 Siu 2001 65ndash66) However under Communist

142 Nam Fung Chang

rule the collective entity is maintained in the same way albeit with a new name As Gao Chang Fan observes

Marxrsquos idea of personal fulfilment has been completely ignored by the Chinese Communist establishment so much so that everybody from childhood is urged to suppress onersquos personal desire and to contribute to the good of the whole com-munity The denial of self-interest is interpreted as ldquocommunist virtuerdquo and any satisfaction of personal desire is considered to be bourgeois and capitalist (Gao 1989 6)

Another point worth noting is that Marxism being a product of an industrial society cannot be applied to an agricultural society without adaptation Thus the landlord and the peasant have become the Chinese equivalents to the capitalist and the proletarian respectively in spite of the fact that in Marxrsquos theory they are not referred to as classes and the relations of production they represent are seen as a hindrance to the development of productivity (Siu 2001 73 79 84 95)

Besides there have been manoeuvres to build an indigenous image such as the substitution of Marxism-Leninism by Mao Zedong Thought as the ideological buttress since the 1960s the invention of ldquosocialism with Chinese characteristicsrdquo in the 1980s and the quiet removal of the portraits of Marx Engels Lenin and Stalin from Tiananmen Square in Beijing In other words to a certain extent the agents of transfer of a foreign repertoire have been re-presented as inventors of a domestic one

4 Even-Zoharrsquos two hypotheses again

Now we are ready to go back to Even-Zoharrsquos first hypothesis that the position assumed by translated literature in the literary polysystem tends to be a peripheral one under normal circumstances To explain this hypothesis we first need to see how the authorship of translation in general and of literary translation in particu-lar is conceived in the world of our experience According to Bassnett and Trivedi (1999 2) the idea of an author as ldquoownerrdquo of his or her text and the concept of the translation being a mere copy of the high-status original emerged only after the Middle Ages coinciding with the period of early colonial expansion It may be very interesting to research into the social conditions for the changes in these norms such as the degree of cohesion in the entity concerned its state of contact with other entities and the concept of copyright and intellectual properties but that will go beyond the scope of this paper Suffice it to say for the moment that in modern Europe social norms and laws dictate that the writer of the source text is regarded as the author of the target text too the translator being just the translator

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 143

The situation in China has been very much the same at least since the turn of the twentieth century when the first wave of massive translation of Western social sciences and literature began In 1919 a critic lambasted Yan Fu the most famous translator of the time for his use of strategies such as deletion expansion and paraphrase in translating Thomas H Huxleyrsquos Evolution and ethics saying that Huxley would have sued Yan if he had learned what Yan had done to his work be-cause Yan had sacrificed the author in pursuit of his own fame (Fu 1984 60)

In recent years there have been protests against the marginalization of transla-tors and translations especially from post-colonial theorists such as Venuti (1995) and Bassnett and Trivedi (1999) And in China there has been a call for the rec-ognition of the literary translator instead of the source text author as the author of the translated work and for the classification of translated literature as national rather than foreign literature on the ground that literary translation is a process of re-creation resulting in a product with a relatively independent artistic value (Xie 1999 208ndash237) As a literary translator I applaud their efforts However polysys-temists believe that it is no concern of a scientific discipline to effect changes in the world of our experience (Toury 1995 17) or to pass value judgement on the object of its study So we should simply state the fact that these efforts seem to have made hardly any impact on the prevailing social norms so far

Being regarded as originating from a foreign entity under normal conditions translated literature is naturally resisted by the institution of the literary polysys-tem due to the perceived threat to the collective identity That is to say it is not allowed to be converted into a cultural tool that exerts ldquoinfluence on major pro-cessesrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 48)

On the other hand when a literary polysystem is young peripheral or in a crisis the collective identity may be very weak or even thrown into confusion Then foreign items may be brought in to quickly fill the vacuum before similar items can be locally produced In such situations translated literature may indeed assume a central position taking part ldquoin the process of creating new primary modelsrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 50) mdash models not only for literary production but also for the ldquopersons-in-the-culturerdquo to make sense of the world and to take action in it (cf Even-Zohar 2000 392ndash393) In other words it may be converted into a cultural tool at a relatively high level

At this point I would like to add an observation although translated literature may become a powerful tool and translators may gain literary fame sometimes literary translations and translators have an even slimmer chance than other for-eign items and their agents of transfer to become part of the cultural heritage and subsequently to function as cultural tools at the highest level The reason may be that processes of naturalization and canonization take time whereas translated literature may assume a central position only for a relatively short while This is

144 Nam Fung Chang

because ldquono system can remain in a constant state of weakness lsquoturning pointrsquo or crisisrdquo as Even-Zohar (1990a 50) points out In fact one may see that compared with items in ideological and religious polysystems literary works may be more quickly replaceable especially as cultural tools So an entity may say ldquowe have Shakespearerdquo or ldquowe have Mozartrdquo but no entity seems to have taken as much pride in having a certain ldquoeminentrdquo translator

In the preceding paragraphs the term ldquotranslated literaturerdquo is used for con-ciseness It may be more accurate to say ldquotarget texts presented andor regarded as literary translationsrdquo (cf Toury 1995 38) because texts that are not presented as translations or no longer regarded as such for some reason may become canonized even though a source text may still be traceable Take for example A madmanrsquos dia-ry (kuangren riji) a short story by the Chinese writer Lu Xun It is largely modelled on the Russian writer Nikolai Gogolrsquos work of the same title (Cai 2001 55ndash56) and has been regarded as an ldquoimitationrdquo (fangzuo) by some (Li Oufan 1991 54 Zhongguo Qingnian Bao 2001) We can therefore say that it has the features of a semi- or quasi-translation (see Even-Zohar 1990a 50) although it was presented by its author not as a translation but as an original work However a number of works entitled History of modern Chinese literature published after the founding of the Peoplersquos Republic of China laud it as ldquothe first modern Chinese novelrdquo (Zhu 1996 20) or ldquothe first successful novel written in the vernacular in the history of modern Chinese literaturerdquo (Cheng et al 2000 59) They put emphasis on its originality saying for example that it ldquobreaks away from the traditional structure of story-telling and combines realism with symbolism in a daring manner so that a unique artistic effect is producedrdquo (Jiang 2002 26) They either avoid mentioning the source of the work (such as Zhu 1996 9) as if everything mdash including symbol-ism mdash was invented by Lu Xun or just mention in passing that Gogol has a work of the same title (Cheng et al 2000 59) as if it was a mere coincidence Interest-ingly enough Lursquos work is included in ldquoThe Norwegian book clubs association listrdquo of ldquoThe 100 greatest literary worksrdquo (Norwegian Book Clubs Association 2001) whereas its source text is not

Even-Zoharrsquos culture theory may also shed light on his second hypothesis that translation tends towards acceptability when it is at the periphery and towards adequacy when it is at the centre

Translation is usually undertaken for the purpose of bringing in new items so as to change replace or add to the existing repertoire But when a culture is stable and self-sufficient that is when translated literature is in a peripheral position imported items may have to be presented as or at least made compatible with in-digenous ones so as not to be seen as threats to the collective identity of the target culture otherwise they may not be accepted or tolerated due to strong resistance That is why acceptability-oriented translation strategies are most likely to be used

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 145

Thus Even-Zohar sees a paradox in this case what could have been an innovatory force has actually become a ldquomajor factor of conservatismrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 48ndash49) On the other hand when a culture is in one of the three situations that Even-Zohar mentions foreign items are needed and welcomed and their foreign-ness may be exactly what makes them fashionable

5 Concluding remarks

It is my opinion that Even-Zoharrsquos concepts of cohesion repertoire resistance cul-ture as goods vs culture as tools etc may provide researchers with tools to probe deeper and wider into the context of the total culture searching for more compre-hensive and detailed explanations for translational phenomena These concepts have helped polysystem theory maintain its vitality as a translation theory

Note

1 Ironically the song was written by a Taiwanese song-writer in the 1970s in protest against the United Statesrsquos change of policy in recognizing Beijing instead of Taipei as the only legitimate government of China The song can thus be regarded as originally a hijacking of the Chinese national identity for an anti-communist cause with the blessing of the authorities in Taipei but later it was accepted mdash and thus hijacked mdash by people all over China as their patriotic song this time with the blessing of the Beijing government (Minshi Xinwenwang 1983) and then in 1989 it was hijacked again by people in Hong Kong to be sung in rallies and demonstrations in support of the students in Tiananmen Square

References

Bassnett Susan and Harish Trivedi 1999 ldquoIntroduction Of colonies cannibals and vernacu-larsrdquo Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi eds Post-colonial translation Theory and practice London and New York Routledge 1999 1ndash18

Cai Huizhen 2001 Lu Xun xiaoshuo yanjiu [A study of Lu Xunrsquos fiction] Gaoxiong Gaoxiong tushu chubanshe

Chang Nam Fung 2004 Criticism of Chinese and Western translation theories [in Chinese] Bei-jing Tsinghua University Press

Cheng guangwei Wu Xiaodong Kong Qingdong Gao Yuanbaoand Liu Yong eds 2000 Zhong-guo xiandai wenxue shi [History of modern Chinese literature] Beijing Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe

Even-Zohar Itamar 1990 ldquoPolysystem theoryrdquo Polysystem studies [= Poetics today 111] 9ndash26Even-Zohar Itamar 1990a ldquoThe position of translated literature within the literary polysystemrdquo

Polysystem studies [= Poetics today 111] 45ndash51

146 Nam Fung Chang

Even-Zohar Itamar 1997 ldquoThe making of culture repertoire and the role of transferrdquo Target 92 355ndash363

Even-Zohar Itamar 1997a ldquoFactors and dependencies in culture A revised outline for polysys-tem researchrdquo Canadian review of comparative literature 3 15ndash34

Even-Zohar Itamar 2000 ldquoCulture repertoire and the wealth of collective entitiesrdquo Dirk De Geest et al eds Under construction Links for the site of literary theory Essays in honour of Hendrik Van Gorp Leuven Leuven University Press 2000 389ndash403

Even-Zohar Itamar 2002 ldquoCulture planning and cultural resistance in the making and main-taining of entitiesrdquo Sun Yat-Sen journal of humanities 14 45ndash52

Even-Zohar Itamar 2002a ldquoLiterature as goods literature as toolsrdquo Neohelicon XXIX1 75ndash83Even-Zohar Itamar 2004 ldquoCulture planningrdquo Itamar Even-Zohar Papers in culture research

82ndash103 Available online httpwwwtauacil~itamarezFu Sinian 1984 (first published in 1919) ldquoYi shu gan yanrdquo [Reflections on the translating of

books] Translatorrsquos notes editorial Department ed Fanyi yanjiu lunwenji (1894ndash1948) [Se-lected papers in Translation Studies (1894ndash1948)] Beijing Waiyu jiaoxue yu yanjiu chu-banshe 1984 59ndash63

Gao Chang Fan 1989 ldquoCultural barriers in translationrdquo New comparison 8 3ndash12Jiang Shuxian ed 2002 Zhongguo xiandai wenxue shi [History of modern Chinese literature]

Beijing Kexue chubansheLao Long 1996 ldquoDiudiao huanxiang lianxi shiji mdash Jiepo fanyi (ke) xue de mimengrdquo [My view

on translatology] Chinese translators journal 2 38ndash41Li Dazhao 1959 Li Dazhao xuanji [Selected Works of Li Dazhao] Beijing Renmin chubansheLi Oufan (Leo Ou-fan Lee) tr Yin Hui 1991 Tie wu zhong de nahan [Voices from the iron

house] Hong Kong Joint PublishingLuo Xinzhang 1984 ldquoWoguo zicheng tixi de fanyi lilunrdquo [Chinese ranslation theory A system

of its own] Translatorrsquos notes editorial department ed Fanyi yanjiu lunwen ji (1949ndash1983) [Selected papers in Translation Studies (1949ndash1983)] Beijing Waiyu jiaoxue yu yanjiu chu-banshe 1984 588ndash604

Mao Zedong 1956 ldquoChairman Maorsquos talk to music workersrdquo Available online httpwwwmarxistsorgreferencearchivemaoselected-worksvolume-7mswv7_469htm

Minshi Xinwenwang 1983 ldquoLong de chuanren Hou Dejian jinru Beijingrdquo [Decendant of the Dragon Hou Dejian enters Beijing] 4 June Available online httpwwwftvncomtwTop-icCaringTWTWnotes0604htm

Nakamura Hajime 1957 ldquoThe influence of Confucian ethics on the Chinese translations of Buddhist Sutrasrdquo Kshitis Roy ed Liebenthal Festschrift Sino-Indian studies v Parts 3 amp 4 Santiniketan Visvabharati University 1957 156ndash170

Nanfangwang 2003 ldquoMao Zedong wenhua jiaoyu sixiang gu wei jin yong yang wei Zhong yongrdquo [Mao Zedongrsquos thought on culture and education Make the past serve the present and make foreign things serve China] 22 December Available online httpbig5southcncomgatebig5wwwsouthcncomnewscommunityshztmzdthought200312220715htm

Norwegian book clubs association The 2001 ldquoThe 100 greatest literary worksrdquo Available on-line httpstation05qccacsrsbouscolanglaisbook_reportlinks8html

Siu Wingyip 2001 ldquoMakesizhuyi gainian fanyi zai Zhongguordquo [Translation of Marxist concepts in China] M Phil thesis Lingnan University Hong Kong

Ta Kung Pao 2004 ldquoZhongyang gaodu guanzhu Gang zhengzhi fazhan Tang Jiaxuan chi Li Zhuming lsquobai yang miaorsquordquo [Central government deeply concerned about HKrsquos constitution-

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 141

converted into high-level tools unless they undergo a process of naturalization because their very foreignness automatically disqualifies them from functioning to distinguish social groups from others

The proposition ldquoChinese learning as the body Western learning for practi-cal applicationrdquo was intended exactly to prevent foreign repertoires from becom-ing precious cultural goods while allowing them to function as lower-level tools According to a critic the body-application dichotomy is one between values and tools mdash ldquothe bodyrdquo means ldquothe system of cultural valuesrdquo whereas political science and economics which were being imported at that time were seen as ldquoappliedrdquo branches of learning that belong to the level of technical operation (Wang Yan 1998)

Buddhism and Marxism have become parts of the Chinese cultural heritage because they have come to be regarded by the ldquopersons-in-the-culturerdquo as indig-enous repertoires to different extents Apart from the ldquonaturalrdquo cause that the repertoires have declined in their respective birthplace the efforts of the culture planners are an important factor in the naturalization process In both cases the repertoires have been adapted to norms of the target culture In some Chinese translations of Buddhist texts the relatively high position that Buddhism gives to women and mothers has been changed in conformity to the Confucian concept of men as the superior sex (see Wright 1959 37) For example in the source text a mother exhorts her daughter not to marry a prince in this way ldquoWe however my daughter are prostitutes we give pleasure to all people we do not make our living by serving one man onlyrdquo but in the translation this has become ldquoWe of a humble position are not fit to marry princesrdquo as the receiving culture could not accept that prostitution was not necessarily a lowly occupation and ldquolaymen who practise the five precepts of morality take wivesrdquo has been translated as ldquothey take wives and concubinesrdquo because while ldquokeeping concubines was not sanctioned by the Buddhist lawrdquo in Chinese society the practice was ldquopermitted as a matter of courserdquo (Nakamura 1957 160ndash163) Moreover ldquohusband supports wiferdquo has been rendered as ldquothe husband controls his wiferdquo and ldquothe wife comforts the husbandrdquo as ldquothe wife reveres her husbandrdquo (Wright 1959 37 Gao 1989)

In the case of Marxism certain ideas of Marx that are not compatible with Chinarsquos agricultural civilization have been either ignored or adapted

For Chinarsquos pioneering communists Marxism was a weapon to subvert the ldquopatriarchal clan systemrdquo and its ideological buttress mdash Confucianism In the view of Li Dazhao (1889ndash1926) one of the earliest Marxist theorists in China such a system is maintained by ldquosacrificing the personality of the ruled in the service of the rulerrdquo and therefore what Confucius calls ldquothe cultivation of moral characterrdquo is in fact designed for the suppression rather than development of the individual personality (Li Dazhao 1959 296 Siu 2001 65ndash66) However under Communist

142 Nam Fung Chang

rule the collective entity is maintained in the same way albeit with a new name As Gao Chang Fan observes

Marxrsquos idea of personal fulfilment has been completely ignored by the Chinese Communist establishment so much so that everybody from childhood is urged to suppress onersquos personal desire and to contribute to the good of the whole com-munity The denial of self-interest is interpreted as ldquocommunist virtuerdquo and any satisfaction of personal desire is considered to be bourgeois and capitalist (Gao 1989 6)

Another point worth noting is that Marxism being a product of an industrial society cannot be applied to an agricultural society without adaptation Thus the landlord and the peasant have become the Chinese equivalents to the capitalist and the proletarian respectively in spite of the fact that in Marxrsquos theory they are not referred to as classes and the relations of production they represent are seen as a hindrance to the development of productivity (Siu 2001 73 79 84 95)

Besides there have been manoeuvres to build an indigenous image such as the substitution of Marxism-Leninism by Mao Zedong Thought as the ideological buttress since the 1960s the invention of ldquosocialism with Chinese characteristicsrdquo in the 1980s and the quiet removal of the portraits of Marx Engels Lenin and Stalin from Tiananmen Square in Beijing In other words to a certain extent the agents of transfer of a foreign repertoire have been re-presented as inventors of a domestic one

4 Even-Zoharrsquos two hypotheses again

Now we are ready to go back to Even-Zoharrsquos first hypothesis that the position assumed by translated literature in the literary polysystem tends to be a peripheral one under normal circumstances To explain this hypothesis we first need to see how the authorship of translation in general and of literary translation in particu-lar is conceived in the world of our experience According to Bassnett and Trivedi (1999 2) the idea of an author as ldquoownerrdquo of his or her text and the concept of the translation being a mere copy of the high-status original emerged only after the Middle Ages coinciding with the period of early colonial expansion It may be very interesting to research into the social conditions for the changes in these norms such as the degree of cohesion in the entity concerned its state of contact with other entities and the concept of copyright and intellectual properties but that will go beyond the scope of this paper Suffice it to say for the moment that in modern Europe social norms and laws dictate that the writer of the source text is regarded as the author of the target text too the translator being just the translator

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 143

The situation in China has been very much the same at least since the turn of the twentieth century when the first wave of massive translation of Western social sciences and literature began In 1919 a critic lambasted Yan Fu the most famous translator of the time for his use of strategies such as deletion expansion and paraphrase in translating Thomas H Huxleyrsquos Evolution and ethics saying that Huxley would have sued Yan if he had learned what Yan had done to his work be-cause Yan had sacrificed the author in pursuit of his own fame (Fu 1984 60)

In recent years there have been protests against the marginalization of transla-tors and translations especially from post-colonial theorists such as Venuti (1995) and Bassnett and Trivedi (1999) And in China there has been a call for the rec-ognition of the literary translator instead of the source text author as the author of the translated work and for the classification of translated literature as national rather than foreign literature on the ground that literary translation is a process of re-creation resulting in a product with a relatively independent artistic value (Xie 1999 208ndash237) As a literary translator I applaud their efforts However polysys-temists believe that it is no concern of a scientific discipline to effect changes in the world of our experience (Toury 1995 17) or to pass value judgement on the object of its study So we should simply state the fact that these efforts seem to have made hardly any impact on the prevailing social norms so far

Being regarded as originating from a foreign entity under normal conditions translated literature is naturally resisted by the institution of the literary polysys-tem due to the perceived threat to the collective identity That is to say it is not allowed to be converted into a cultural tool that exerts ldquoinfluence on major pro-cessesrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 48)

On the other hand when a literary polysystem is young peripheral or in a crisis the collective identity may be very weak or even thrown into confusion Then foreign items may be brought in to quickly fill the vacuum before similar items can be locally produced In such situations translated literature may indeed assume a central position taking part ldquoin the process of creating new primary modelsrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 50) mdash models not only for literary production but also for the ldquopersons-in-the-culturerdquo to make sense of the world and to take action in it (cf Even-Zohar 2000 392ndash393) In other words it may be converted into a cultural tool at a relatively high level

At this point I would like to add an observation although translated literature may become a powerful tool and translators may gain literary fame sometimes literary translations and translators have an even slimmer chance than other for-eign items and their agents of transfer to become part of the cultural heritage and subsequently to function as cultural tools at the highest level The reason may be that processes of naturalization and canonization take time whereas translated literature may assume a central position only for a relatively short while This is

144 Nam Fung Chang

because ldquono system can remain in a constant state of weakness lsquoturning pointrsquo or crisisrdquo as Even-Zohar (1990a 50) points out In fact one may see that compared with items in ideological and religious polysystems literary works may be more quickly replaceable especially as cultural tools So an entity may say ldquowe have Shakespearerdquo or ldquowe have Mozartrdquo but no entity seems to have taken as much pride in having a certain ldquoeminentrdquo translator

In the preceding paragraphs the term ldquotranslated literaturerdquo is used for con-ciseness It may be more accurate to say ldquotarget texts presented andor regarded as literary translationsrdquo (cf Toury 1995 38) because texts that are not presented as translations or no longer regarded as such for some reason may become canonized even though a source text may still be traceable Take for example A madmanrsquos dia-ry (kuangren riji) a short story by the Chinese writer Lu Xun It is largely modelled on the Russian writer Nikolai Gogolrsquos work of the same title (Cai 2001 55ndash56) and has been regarded as an ldquoimitationrdquo (fangzuo) by some (Li Oufan 1991 54 Zhongguo Qingnian Bao 2001) We can therefore say that it has the features of a semi- or quasi-translation (see Even-Zohar 1990a 50) although it was presented by its author not as a translation but as an original work However a number of works entitled History of modern Chinese literature published after the founding of the Peoplersquos Republic of China laud it as ldquothe first modern Chinese novelrdquo (Zhu 1996 20) or ldquothe first successful novel written in the vernacular in the history of modern Chinese literaturerdquo (Cheng et al 2000 59) They put emphasis on its originality saying for example that it ldquobreaks away from the traditional structure of story-telling and combines realism with symbolism in a daring manner so that a unique artistic effect is producedrdquo (Jiang 2002 26) They either avoid mentioning the source of the work (such as Zhu 1996 9) as if everything mdash including symbol-ism mdash was invented by Lu Xun or just mention in passing that Gogol has a work of the same title (Cheng et al 2000 59) as if it was a mere coincidence Interest-ingly enough Lursquos work is included in ldquoThe Norwegian book clubs association listrdquo of ldquoThe 100 greatest literary worksrdquo (Norwegian Book Clubs Association 2001) whereas its source text is not

Even-Zoharrsquos culture theory may also shed light on his second hypothesis that translation tends towards acceptability when it is at the periphery and towards adequacy when it is at the centre

Translation is usually undertaken for the purpose of bringing in new items so as to change replace or add to the existing repertoire But when a culture is stable and self-sufficient that is when translated literature is in a peripheral position imported items may have to be presented as or at least made compatible with in-digenous ones so as not to be seen as threats to the collective identity of the target culture otherwise they may not be accepted or tolerated due to strong resistance That is why acceptability-oriented translation strategies are most likely to be used

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 145

Thus Even-Zohar sees a paradox in this case what could have been an innovatory force has actually become a ldquomajor factor of conservatismrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 48ndash49) On the other hand when a culture is in one of the three situations that Even-Zohar mentions foreign items are needed and welcomed and their foreign-ness may be exactly what makes them fashionable

5 Concluding remarks

It is my opinion that Even-Zoharrsquos concepts of cohesion repertoire resistance cul-ture as goods vs culture as tools etc may provide researchers with tools to probe deeper and wider into the context of the total culture searching for more compre-hensive and detailed explanations for translational phenomena These concepts have helped polysystem theory maintain its vitality as a translation theory

Note

1 Ironically the song was written by a Taiwanese song-writer in the 1970s in protest against the United Statesrsquos change of policy in recognizing Beijing instead of Taipei as the only legitimate government of China The song can thus be regarded as originally a hijacking of the Chinese national identity for an anti-communist cause with the blessing of the authorities in Taipei but later it was accepted mdash and thus hijacked mdash by people all over China as their patriotic song this time with the blessing of the Beijing government (Minshi Xinwenwang 1983) and then in 1989 it was hijacked again by people in Hong Kong to be sung in rallies and demonstrations in support of the students in Tiananmen Square

References

Bassnett Susan and Harish Trivedi 1999 ldquoIntroduction Of colonies cannibals and vernacu-larsrdquo Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi eds Post-colonial translation Theory and practice London and New York Routledge 1999 1ndash18

Cai Huizhen 2001 Lu Xun xiaoshuo yanjiu [A study of Lu Xunrsquos fiction] Gaoxiong Gaoxiong tushu chubanshe

Chang Nam Fung 2004 Criticism of Chinese and Western translation theories [in Chinese] Bei-jing Tsinghua University Press

Cheng guangwei Wu Xiaodong Kong Qingdong Gao Yuanbaoand Liu Yong eds 2000 Zhong-guo xiandai wenxue shi [History of modern Chinese literature] Beijing Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe

Even-Zohar Itamar 1990 ldquoPolysystem theoryrdquo Polysystem studies [= Poetics today 111] 9ndash26Even-Zohar Itamar 1990a ldquoThe position of translated literature within the literary polysystemrdquo

Polysystem studies [= Poetics today 111] 45ndash51

146 Nam Fung Chang

Even-Zohar Itamar 1997 ldquoThe making of culture repertoire and the role of transferrdquo Target 92 355ndash363

Even-Zohar Itamar 1997a ldquoFactors and dependencies in culture A revised outline for polysys-tem researchrdquo Canadian review of comparative literature 3 15ndash34

Even-Zohar Itamar 2000 ldquoCulture repertoire and the wealth of collective entitiesrdquo Dirk De Geest et al eds Under construction Links for the site of literary theory Essays in honour of Hendrik Van Gorp Leuven Leuven University Press 2000 389ndash403

Even-Zohar Itamar 2002 ldquoCulture planning and cultural resistance in the making and main-taining of entitiesrdquo Sun Yat-Sen journal of humanities 14 45ndash52

Even-Zohar Itamar 2002a ldquoLiterature as goods literature as toolsrdquo Neohelicon XXIX1 75ndash83Even-Zohar Itamar 2004 ldquoCulture planningrdquo Itamar Even-Zohar Papers in culture research

82ndash103 Available online httpwwwtauacil~itamarezFu Sinian 1984 (first published in 1919) ldquoYi shu gan yanrdquo [Reflections on the translating of

books] Translatorrsquos notes editorial Department ed Fanyi yanjiu lunwenji (1894ndash1948) [Se-lected papers in Translation Studies (1894ndash1948)] Beijing Waiyu jiaoxue yu yanjiu chu-banshe 1984 59ndash63

Gao Chang Fan 1989 ldquoCultural barriers in translationrdquo New comparison 8 3ndash12Jiang Shuxian ed 2002 Zhongguo xiandai wenxue shi [History of modern Chinese literature]

Beijing Kexue chubansheLao Long 1996 ldquoDiudiao huanxiang lianxi shiji mdash Jiepo fanyi (ke) xue de mimengrdquo [My view

on translatology] Chinese translators journal 2 38ndash41Li Dazhao 1959 Li Dazhao xuanji [Selected Works of Li Dazhao] Beijing Renmin chubansheLi Oufan (Leo Ou-fan Lee) tr Yin Hui 1991 Tie wu zhong de nahan [Voices from the iron

house] Hong Kong Joint PublishingLuo Xinzhang 1984 ldquoWoguo zicheng tixi de fanyi lilunrdquo [Chinese ranslation theory A system

of its own] Translatorrsquos notes editorial department ed Fanyi yanjiu lunwen ji (1949ndash1983) [Selected papers in Translation Studies (1949ndash1983)] Beijing Waiyu jiaoxue yu yanjiu chu-banshe 1984 588ndash604

Mao Zedong 1956 ldquoChairman Maorsquos talk to music workersrdquo Available online httpwwwmarxistsorgreferencearchivemaoselected-worksvolume-7mswv7_469htm

Minshi Xinwenwang 1983 ldquoLong de chuanren Hou Dejian jinru Beijingrdquo [Decendant of the Dragon Hou Dejian enters Beijing] 4 June Available online httpwwwftvncomtwTop-icCaringTWTWnotes0604htm

Nakamura Hajime 1957 ldquoThe influence of Confucian ethics on the Chinese translations of Buddhist Sutrasrdquo Kshitis Roy ed Liebenthal Festschrift Sino-Indian studies v Parts 3 amp 4 Santiniketan Visvabharati University 1957 156ndash170

Nanfangwang 2003 ldquoMao Zedong wenhua jiaoyu sixiang gu wei jin yong yang wei Zhong yongrdquo [Mao Zedongrsquos thought on culture and education Make the past serve the present and make foreign things serve China] 22 December Available online httpbig5southcncomgatebig5wwwsouthcncomnewscommunityshztmzdthought200312220715htm

Norwegian book clubs association The 2001 ldquoThe 100 greatest literary worksrdquo Available on-line httpstation05qccacsrsbouscolanglaisbook_reportlinks8html

Siu Wingyip 2001 ldquoMakesizhuyi gainian fanyi zai Zhongguordquo [Translation of Marxist concepts in China] M Phil thesis Lingnan University Hong Kong

Ta Kung Pao 2004 ldquoZhongyang gaodu guanzhu Gang zhengzhi fazhan Tang Jiaxuan chi Li Zhuming lsquobai yang miaorsquordquo [Central government deeply concerned about HKrsquos constitution-

142 Nam Fung Chang

rule the collective entity is maintained in the same way albeit with a new name As Gao Chang Fan observes

Marxrsquos idea of personal fulfilment has been completely ignored by the Chinese Communist establishment so much so that everybody from childhood is urged to suppress onersquos personal desire and to contribute to the good of the whole com-munity The denial of self-interest is interpreted as ldquocommunist virtuerdquo and any satisfaction of personal desire is considered to be bourgeois and capitalist (Gao 1989 6)

Another point worth noting is that Marxism being a product of an industrial society cannot be applied to an agricultural society without adaptation Thus the landlord and the peasant have become the Chinese equivalents to the capitalist and the proletarian respectively in spite of the fact that in Marxrsquos theory they are not referred to as classes and the relations of production they represent are seen as a hindrance to the development of productivity (Siu 2001 73 79 84 95)

Besides there have been manoeuvres to build an indigenous image such as the substitution of Marxism-Leninism by Mao Zedong Thought as the ideological buttress since the 1960s the invention of ldquosocialism with Chinese characteristicsrdquo in the 1980s and the quiet removal of the portraits of Marx Engels Lenin and Stalin from Tiananmen Square in Beijing In other words to a certain extent the agents of transfer of a foreign repertoire have been re-presented as inventors of a domestic one

4 Even-Zoharrsquos two hypotheses again

Now we are ready to go back to Even-Zoharrsquos first hypothesis that the position assumed by translated literature in the literary polysystem tends to be a peripheral one under normal circumstances To explain this hypothesis we first need to see how the authorship of translation in general and of literary translation in particu-lar is conceived in the world of our experience According to Bassnett and Trivedi (1999 2) the idea of an author as ldquoownerrdquo of his or her text and the concept of the translation being a mere copy of the high-status original emerged only after the Middle Ages coinciding with the period of early colonial expansion It may be very interesting to research into the social conditions for the changes in these norms such as the degree of cohesion in the entity concerned its state of contact with other entities and the concept of copyright and intellectual properties but that will go beyond the scope of this paper Suffice it to say for the moment that in modern Europe social norms and laws dictate that the writer of the source text is regarded as the author of the target text too the translator being just the translator

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 143

The situation in China has been very much the same at least since the turn of the twentieth century when the first wave of massive translation of Western social sciences and literature began In 1919 a critic lambasted Yan Fu the most famous translator of the time for his use of strategies such as deletion expansion and paraphrase in translating Thomas H Huxleyrsquos Evolution and ethics saying that Huxley would have sued Yan if he had learned what Yan had done to his work be-cause Yan had sacrificed the author in pursuit of his own fame (Fu 1984 60)

In recent years there have been protests against the marginalization of transla-tors and translations especially from post-colonial theorists such as Venuti (1995) and Bassnett and Trivedi (1999) And in China there has been a call for the rec-ognition of the literary translator instead of the source text author as the author of the translated work and for the classification of translated literature as national rather than foreign literature on the ground that literary translation is a process of re-creation resulting in a product with a relatively independent artistic value (Xie 1999 208ndash237) As a literary translator I applaud their efforts However polysys-temists believe that it is no concern of a scientific discipline to effect changes in the world of our experience (Toury 1995 17) or to pass value judgement on the object of its study So we should simply state the fact that these efforts seem to have made hardly any impact on the prevailing social norms so far

Being regarded as originating from a foreign entity under normal conditions translated literature is naturally resisted by the institution of the literary polysys-tem due to the perceived threat to the collective identity That is to say it is not allowed to be converted into a cultural tool that exerts ldquoinfluence on major pro-cessesrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 48)

On the other hand when a literary polysystem is young peripheral or in a crisis the collective identity may be very weak or even thrown into confusion Then foreign items may be brought in to quickly fill the vacuum before similar items can be locally produced In such situations translated literature may indeed assume a central position taking part ldquoin the process of creating new primary modelsrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 50) mdash models not only for literary production but also for the ldquopersons-in-the-culturerdquo to make sense of the world and to take action in it (cf Even-Zohar 2000 392ndash393) In other words it may be converted into a cultural tool at a relatively high level

At this point I would like to add an observation although translated literature may become a powerful tool and translators may gain literary fame sometimes literary translations and translators have an even slimmer chance than other for-eign items and their agents of transfer to become part of the cultural heritage and subsequently to function as cultural tools at the highest level The reason may be that processes of naturalization and canonization take time whereas translated literature may assume a central position only for a relatively short while This is

144 Nam Fung Chang

because ldquono system can remain in a constant state of weakness lsquoturning pointrsquo or crisisrdquo as Even-Zohar (1990a 50) points out In fact one may see that compared with items in ideological and religious polysystems literary works may be more quickly replaceable especially as cultural tools So an entity may say ldquowe have Shakespearerdquo or ldquowe have Mozartrdquo but no entity seems to have taken as much pride in having a certain ldquoeminentrdquo translator

In the preceding paragraphs the term ldquotranslated literaturerdquo is used for con-ciseness It may be more accurate to say ldquotarget texts presented andor regarded as literary translationsrdquo (cf Toury 1995 38) because texts that are not presented as translations or no longer regarded as such for some reason may become canonized even though a source text may still be traceable Take for example A madmanrsquos dia-ry (kuangren riji) a short story by the Chinese writer Lu Xun It is largely modelled on the Russian writer Nikolai Gogolrsquos work of the same title (Cai 2001 55ndash56) and has been regarded as an ldquoimitationrdquo (fangzuo) by some (Li Oufan 1991 54 Zhongguo Qingnian Bao 2001) We can therefore say that it has the features of a semi- or quasi-translation (see Even-Zohar 1990a 50) although it was presented by its author not as a translation but as an original work However a number of works entitled History of modern Chinese literature published after the founding of the Peoplersquos Republic of China laud it as ldquothe first modern Chinese novelrdquo (Zhu 1996 20) or ldquothe first successful novel written in the vernacular in the history of modern Chinese literaturerdquo (Cheng et al 2000 59) They put emphasis on its originality saying for example that it ldquobreaks away from the traditional structure of story-telling and combines realism with symbolism in a daring manner so that a unique artistic effect is producedrdquo (Jiang 2002 26) They either avoid mentioning the source of the work (such as Zhu 1996 9) as if everything mdash including symbol-ism mdash was invented by Lu Xun or just mention in passing that Gogol has a work of the same title (Cheng et al 2000 59) as if it was a mere coincidence Interest-ingly enough Lursquos work is included in ldquoThe Norwegian book clubs association listrdquo of ldquoThe 100 greatest literary worksrdquo (Norwegian Book Clubs Association 2001) whereas its source text is not

Even-Zoharrsquos culture theory may also shed light on his second hypothesis that translation tends towards acceptability when it is at the periphery and towards adequacy when it is at the centre

Translation is usually undertaken for the purpose of bringing in new items so as to change replace or add to the existing repertoire But when a culture is stable and self-sufficient that is when translated literature is in a peripheral position imported items may have to be presented as or at least made compatible with in-digenous ones so as not to be seen as threats to the collective identity of the target culture otherwise they may not be accepted or tolerated due to strong resistance That is why acceptability-oriented translation strategies are most likely to be used

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 145

Thus Even-Zohar sees a paradox in this case what could have been an innovatory force has actually become a ldquomajor factor of conservatismrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 48ndash49) On the other hand when a culture is in one of the three situations that Even-Zohar mentions foreign items are needed and welcomed and their foreign-ness may be exactly what makes them fashionable

5 Concluding remarks

It is my opinion that Even-Zoharrsquos concepts of cohesion repertoire resistance cul-ture as goods vs culture as tools etc may provide researchers with tools to probe deeper and wider into the context of the total culture searching for more compre-hensive and detailed explanations for translational phenomena These concepts have helped polysystem theory maintain its vitality as a translation theory

Note

1 Ironically the song was written by a Taiwanese song-writer in the 1970s in protest against the United Statesrsquos change of policy in recognizing Beijing instead of Taipei as the only legitimate government of China The song can thus be regarded as originally a hijacking of the Chinese national identity for an anti-communist cause with the blessing of the authorities in Taipei but later it was accepted mdash and thus hijacked mdash by people all over China as their patriotic song this time with the blessing of the Beijing government (Minshi Xinwenwang 1983) and then in 1989 it was hijacked again by people in Hong Kong to be sung in rallies and demonstrations in support of the students in Tiananmen Square

References

Bassnett Susan and Harish Trivedi 1999 ldquoIntroduction Of colonies cannibals and vernacu-larsrdquo Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi eds Post-colonial translation Theory and practice London and New York Routledge 1999 1ndash18

Cai Huizhen 2001 Lu Xun xiaoshuo yanjiu [A study of Lu Xunrsquos fiction] Gaoxiong Gaoxiong tushu chubanshe

Chang Nam Fung 2004 Criticism of Chinese and Western translation theories [in Chinese] Bei-jing Tsinghua University Press

Cheng guangwei Wu Xiaodong Kong Qingdong Gao Yuanbaoand Liu Yong eds 2000 Zhong-guo xiandai wenxue shi [History of modern Chinese literature] Beijing Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe

Even-Zohar Itamar 1990 ldquoPolysystem theoryrdquo Polysystem studies [= Poetics today 111] 9ndash26Even-Zohar Itamar 1990a ldquoThe position of translated literature within the literary polysystemrdquo

Polysystem studies [= Poetics today 111] 45ndash51

146 Nam Fung Chang

Even-Zohar Itamar 1997 ldquoThe making of culture repertoire and the role of transferrdquo Target 92 355ndash363

Even-Zohar Itamar 1997a ldquoFactors and dependencies in culture A revised outline for polysys-tem researchrdquo Canadian review of comparative literature 3 15ndash34

Even-Zohar Itamar 2000 ldquoCulture repertoire and the wealth of collective entitiesrdquo Dirk De Geest et al eds Under construction Links for the site of literary theory Essays in honour of Hendrik Van Gorp Leuven Leuven University Press 2000 389ndash403

Even-Zohar Itamar 2002 ldquoCulture planning and cultural resistance in the making and main-taining of entitiesrdquo Sun Yat-Sen journal of humanities 14 45ndash52

Even-Zohar Itamar 2002a ldquoLiterature as goods literature as toolsrdquo Neohelicon XXIX1 75ndash83Even-Zohar Itamar 2004 ldquoCulture planningrdquo Itamar Even-Zohar Papers in culture research

82ndash103 Available online httpwwwtauacil~itamarezFu Sinian 1984 (first published in 1919) ldquoYi shu gan yanrdquo [Reflections on the translating of

books] Translatorrsquos notes editorial Department ed Fanyi yanjiu lunwenji (1894ndash1948) [Se-lected papers in Translation Studies (1894ndash1948)] Beijing Waiyu jiaoxue yu yanjiu chu-banshe 1984 59ndash63

Gao Chang Fan 1989 ldquoCultural barriers in translationrdquo New comparison 8 3ndash12Jiang Shuxian ed 2002 Zhongguo xiandai wenxue shi [History of modern Chinese literature]

Beijing Kexue chubansheLao Long 1996 ldquoDiudiao huanxiang lianxi shiji mdash Jiepo fanyi (ke) xue de mimengrdquo [My view

on translatology] Chinese translators journal 2 38ndash41Li Dazhao 1959 Li Dazhao xuanji [Selected Works of Li Dazhao] Beijing Renmin chubansheLi Oufan (Leo Ou-fan Lee) tr Yin Hui 1991 Tie wu zhong de nahan [Voices from the iron

house] Hong Kong Joint PublishingLuo Xinzhang 1984 ldquoWoguo zicheng tixi de fanyi lilunrdquo [Chinese ranslation theory A system

of its own] Translatorrsquos notes editorial department ed Fanyi yanjiu lunwen ji (1949ndash1983) [Selected papers in Translation Studies (1949ndash1983)] Beijing Waiyu jiaoxue yu yanjiu chu-banshe 1984 588ndash604

Mao Zedong 1956 ldquoChairman Maorsquos talk to music workersrdquo Available online httpwwwmarxistsorgreferencearchivemaoselected-worksvolume-7mswv7_469htm

Minshi Xinwenwang 1983 ldquoLong de chuanren Hou Dejian jinru Beijingrdquo [Decendant of the Dragon Hou Dejian enters Beijing] 4 June Available online httpwwwftvncomtwTop-icCaringTWTWnotes0604htm

Nakamura Hajime 1957 ldquoThe influence of Confucian ethics on the Chinese translations of Buddhist Sutrasrdquo Kshitis Roy ed Liebenthal Festschrift Sino-Indian studies v Parts 3 amp 4 Santiniketan Visvabharati University 1957 156ndash170

Nanfangwang 2003 ldquoMao Zedong wenhua jiaoyu sixiang gu wei jin yong yang wei Zhong yongrdquo [Mao Zedongrsquos thought on culture and education Make the past serve the present and make foreign things serve China] 22 December Available online httpbig5southcncomgatebig5wwwsouthcncomnewscommunityshztmzdthought200312220715htm

Norwegian book clubs association The 2001 ldquoThe 100 greatest literary worksrdquo Available on-line httpstation05qccacsrsbouscolanglaisbook_reportlinks8html

Siu Wingyip 2001 ldquoMakesizhuyi gainian fanyi zai Zhongguordquo [Translation of Marxist concepts in China] M Phil thesis Lingnan University Hong Kong

Ta Kung Pao 2004 ldquoZhongyang gaodu guanzhu Gang zhengzhi fazhan Tang Jiaxuan chi Li Zhuming lsquobai yang miaorsquordquo [Central government deeply concerned about HKrsquos constitution-

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 143

The situation in China has been very much the same at least since the turn of the twentieth century when the first wave of massive translation of Western social sciences and literature began In 1919 a critic lambasted Yan Fu the most famous translator of the time for his use of strategies such as deletion expansion and paraphrase in translating Thomas H Huxleyrsquos Evolution and ethics saying that Huxley would have sued Yan if he had learned what Yan had done to his work be-cause Yan had sacrificed the author in pursuit of his own fame (Fu 1984 60)

In recent years there have been protests against the marginalization of transla-tors and translations especially from post-colonial theorists such as Venuti (1995) and Bassnett and Trivedi (1999) And in China there has been a call for the rec-ognition of the literary translator instead of the source text author as the author of the translated work and for the classification of translated literature as national rather than foreign literature on the ground that literary translation is a process of re-creation resulting in a product with a relatively independent artistic value (Xie 1999 208ndash237) As a literary translator I applaud their efforts However polysys-temists believe that it is no concern of a scientific discipline to effect changes in the world of our experience (Toury 1995 17) or to pass value judgement on the object of its study So we should simply state the fact that these efforts seem to have made hardly any impact on the prevailing social norms so far

Being regarded as originating from a foreign entity under normal conditions translated literature is naturally resisted by the institution of the literary polysys-tem due to the perceived threat to the collective identity That is to say it is not allowed to be converted into a cultural tool that exerts ldquoinfluence on major pro-cessesrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 48)

On the other hand when a literary polysystem is young peripheral or in a crisis the collective identity may be very weak or even thrown into confusion Then foreign items may be brought in to quickly fill the vacuum before similar items can be locally produced In such situations translated literature may indeed assume a central position taking part ldquoin the process of creating new primary modelsrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 50) mdash models not only for literary production but also for the ldquopersons-in-the-culturerdquo to make sense of the world and to take action in it (cf Even-Zohar 2000 392ndash393) In other words it may be converted into a cultural tool at a relatively high level

At this point I would like to add an observation although translated literature may become a powerful tool and translators may gain literary fame sometimes literary translations and translators have an even slimmer chance than other for-eign items and their agents of transfer to become part of the cultural heritage and subsequently to function as cultural tools at the highest level The reason may be that processes of naturalization and canonization take time whereas translated literature may assume a central position only for a relatively short while This is

144 Nam Fung Chang

because ldquono system can remain in a constant state of weakness lsquoturning pointrsquo or crisisrdquo as Even-Zohar (1990a 50) points out In fact one may see that compared with items in ideological and religious polysystems literary works may be more quickly replaceable especially as cultural tools So an entity may say ldquowe have Shakespearerdquo or ldquowe have Mozartrdquo but no entity seems to have taken as much pride in having a certain ldquoeminentrdquo translator

In the preceding paragraphs the term ldquotranslated literaturerdquo is used for con-ciseness It may be more accurate to say ldquotarget texts presented andor regarded as literary translationsrdquo (cf Toury 1995 38) because texts that are not presented as translations or no longer regarded as such for some reason may become canonized even though a source text may still be traceable Take for example A madmanrsquos dia-ry (kuangren riji) a short story by the Chinese writer Lu Xun It is largely modelled on the Russian writer Nikolai Gogolrsquos work of the same title (Cai 2001 55ndash56) and has been regarded as an ldquoimitationrdquo (fangzuo) by some (Li Oufan 1991 54 Zhongguo Qingnian Bao 2001) We can therefore say that it has the features of a semi- or quasi-translation (see Even-Zohar 1990a 50) although it was presented by its author not as a translation but as an original work However a number of works entitled History of modern Chinese literature published after the founding of the Peoplersquos Republic of China laud it as ldquothe first modern Chinese novelrdquo (Zhu 1996 20) or ldquothe first successful novel written in the vernacular in the history of modern Chinese literaturerdquo (Cheng et al 2000 59) They put emphasis on its originality saying for example that it ldquobreaks away from the traditional structure of story-telling and combines realism with symbolism in a daring manner so that a unique artistic effect is producedrdquo (Jiang 2002 26) They either avoid mentioning the source of the work (such as Zhu 1996 9) as if everything mdash including symbol-ism mdash was invented by Lu Xun or just mention in passing that Gogol has a work of the same title (Cheng et al 2000 59) as if it was a mere coincidence Interest-ingly enough Lursquos work is included in ldquoThe Norwegian book clubs association listrdquo of ldquoThe 100 greatest literary worksrdquo (Norwegian Book Clubs Association 2001) whereas its source text is not

Even-Zoharrsquos culture theory may also shed light on his second hypothesis that translation tends towards acceptability when it is at the periphery and towards adequacy when it is at the centre

Translation is usually undertaken for the purpose of bringing in new items so as to change replace or add to the existing repertoire But when a culture is stable and self-sufficient that is when translated literature is in a peripheral position imported items may have to be presented as or at least made compatible with in-digenous ones so as not to be seen as threats to the collective identity of the target culture otherwise they may not be accepted or tolerated due to strong resistance That is why acceptability-oriented translation strategies are most likely to be used

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 145

Thus Even-Zohar sees a paradox in this case what could have been an innovatory force has actually become a ldquomajor factor of conservatismrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 48ndash49) On the other hand when a culture is in one of the three situations that Even-Zohar mentions foreign items are needed and welcomed and their foreign-ness may be exactly what makes them fashionable

5 Concluding remarks

It is my opinion that Even-Zoharrsquos concepts of cohesion repertoire resistance cul-ture as goods vs culture as tools etc may provide researchers with tools to probe deeper and wider into the context of the total culture searching for more compre-hensive and detailed explanations for translational phenomena These concepts have helped polysystem theory maintain its vitality as a translation theory

Note

1 Ironically the song was written by a Taiwanese song-writer in the 1970s in protest against the United Statesrsquos change of policy in recognizing Beijing instead of Taipei as the only legitimate government of China The song can thus be regarded as originally a hijacking of the Chinese national identity for an anti-communist cause with the blessing of the authorities in Taipei but later it was accepted mdash and thus hijacked mdash by people all over China as their patriotic song this time with the blessing of the Beijing government (Minshi Xinwenwang 1983) and then in 1989 it was hijacked again by people in Hong Kong to be sung in rallies and demonstrations in support of the students in Tiananmen Square

References

Bassnett Susan and Harish Trivedi 1999 ldquoIntroduction Of colonies cannibals and vernacu-larsrdquo Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi eds Post-colonial translation Theory and practice London and New York Routledge 1999 1ndash18

Cai Huizhen 2001 Lu Xun xiaoshuo yanjiu [A study of Lu Xunrsquos fiction] Gaoxiong Gaoxiong tushu chubanshe

Chang Nam Fung 2004 Criticism of Chinese and Western translation theories [in Chinese] Bei-jing Tsinghua University Press

Cheng guangwei Wu Xiaodong Kong Qingdong Gao Yuanbaoand Liu Yong eds 2000 Zhong-guo xiandai wenxue shi [History of modern Chinese literature] Beijing Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe

Even-Zohar Itamar 1990 ldquoPolysystem theoryrdquo Polysystem studies [= Poetics today 111] 9ndash26Even-Zohar Itamar 1990a ldquoThe position of translated literature within the literary polysystemrdquo

Polysystem studies [= Poetics today 111] 45ndash51

146 Nam Fung Chang

Even-Zohar Itamar 1997 ldquoThe making of culture repertoire and the role of transferrdquo Target 92 355ndash363

Even-Zohar Itamar 1997a ldquoFactors and dependencies in culture A revised outline for polysys-tem researchrdquo Canadian review of comparative literature 3 15ndash34

Even-Zohar Itamar 2000 ldquoCulture repertoire and the wealth of collective entitiesrdquo Dirk De Geest et al eds Under construction Links for the site of literary theory Essays in honour of Hendrik Van Gorp Leuven Leuven University Press 2000 389ndash403

Even-Zohar Itamar 2002 ldquoCulture planning and cultural resistance in the making and main-taining of entitiesrdquo Sun Yat-Sen journal of humanities 14 45ndash52

Even-Zohar Itamar 2002a ldquoLiterature as goods literature as toolsrdquo Neohelicon XXIX1 75ndash83Even-Zohar Itamar 2004 ldquoCulture planningrdquo Itamar Even-Zohar Papers in culture research

82ndash103 Available online httpwwwtauacil~itamarezFu Sinian 1984 (first published in 1919) ldquoYi shu gan yanrdquo [Reflections on the translating of

books] Translatorrsquos notes editorial Department ed Fanyi yanjiu lunwenji (1894ndash1948) [Se-lected papers in Translation Studies (1894ndash1948)] Beijing Waiyu jiaoxue yu yanjiu chu-banshe 1984 59ndash63

Gao Chang Fan 1989 ldquoCultural barriers in translationrdquo New comparison 8 3ndash12Jiang Shuxian ed 2002 Zhongguo xiandai wenxue shi [History of modern Chinese literature]

Beijing Kexue chubansheLao Long 1996 ldquoDiudiao huanxiang lianxi shiji mdash Jiepo fanyi (ke) xue de mimengrdquo [My view

on translatology] Chinese translators journal 2 38ndash41Li Dazhao 1959 Li Dazhao xuanji [Selected Works of Li Dazhao] Beijing Renmin chubansheLi Oufan (Leo Ou-fan Lee) tr Yin Hui 1991 Tie wu zhong de nahan [Voices from the iron

house] Hong Kong Joint PublishingLuo Xinzhang 1984 ldquoWoguo zicheng tixi de fanyi lilunrdquo [Chinese ranslation theory A system

of its own] Translatorrsquos notes editorial department ed Fanyi yanjiu lunwen ji (1949ndash1983) [Selected papers in Translation Studies (1949ndash1983)] Beijing Waiyu jiaoxue yu yanjiu chu-banshe 1984 588ndash604

Mao Zedong 1956 ldquoChairman Maorsquos talk to music workersrdquo Available online httpwwwmarxistsorgreferencearchivemaoselected-worksvolume-7mswv7_469htm

Minshi Xinwenwang 1983 ldquoLong de chuanren Hou Dejian jinru Beijingrdquo [Decendant of the Dragon Hou Dejian enters Beijing] 4 June Available online httpwwwftvncomtwTop-icCaringTWTWnotes0604htm

Nakamura Hajime 1957 ldquoThe influence of Confucian ethics on the Chinese translations of Buddhist Sutrasrdquo Kshitis Roy ed Liebenthal Festschrift Sino-Indian studies v Parts 3 amp 4 Santiniketan Visvabharati University 1957 156ndash170

Nanfangwang 2003 ldquoMao Zedong wenhua jiaoyu sixiang gu wei jin yong yang wei Zhong yongrdquo [Mao Zedongrsquos thought on culture and education Make the past serve the present and make foreign things serve China] 22 December Available online httpbig5southcncomgatebig5wwwsouthcncomnewscommunityshztmzdthought200312220715htm

Norwegian book clubs association The 2001 ldquoThe 100 greatest literary worksrdquo Available on-line httpstation05qccacsrsbouscolanglaisbook_reportlinks8html

Siu Wingyip 2001 ldquoMakesizhuyi gainian fanyi zai Zhongguordquo [Translation of Marxist concepts in China] M Phil thesis Lingnan University Hong Kong

Ta Kung Pao 2004 ldquoZhongyang gaodu guanzhu Gang zhengzhi fazhan Tang Jiaxuan chi Li Zhuming lsquobai yang miaorsquordquo [Central government deeply concerned about HKrsquos constitution-

144 Nam Fung Chang

because ldquono system can remain in a constant state of weakness lsquoturning pointrsquo or crisisrdquo as Even-Zohar (1990a 50) points out In fact one may see that compared with items in ideological and religious polysystems literary works may be more quickly replaceable especially as cultural tools So an entity may say ldquowe have Shakespearerdquo or ldquowe have Mozartrdquo but no entity seems to have taken as much pride in having a certain ldquoeminentrdquo translator

In the preceding paragraphs the term ldquotranslated literaturerdquo is used for con-ciseness It may be more accurate to say ldquotarget texts presented andor regarded as literary translationsrdquo (cf Toury 1995 38) because texts that are not presented as translations or no longer regarded as such for some reason may become canonized even though a source text may still be traceable Take for example A madmanrsquos dia-ry (kuangren riji) a short story by the Chinese writer Lu Xun It is largely modelled on the Russian writer Nikolai Gogolrsquos work of the same title (Cai 2001 55ndash56) and has been regarded as an ldquoimitationrdquo (fangzuo) by some (Li Oufan 1991 54 Zhongguo Qingnian Bao 2001) We can therefore say that it has the features of a semi- or quasi-translation (see Even-Zohar 1990a 50) although it was presented by its author not as a translation but as an original work However a number of works entitled History of modern Chinese literature published after the founding of the Peoplersquos Republic of China laud it as ldquothe first modern Chinese novelrdquo (Zhu 1996 20) or ldquothe first successful novel written in the vernacular in the history of modern Chinese literaturerdquo (Cheng et al 2000 59) They put emphasis on its originality saying for example that it ldquobreaks away from the traditional structure of story-telling and combines realism with symbolism in a daring manner so that a unique artistic effect is producedrdquo (Jiang 2002 26) They either avoid mentioning the source of the work (such as Zhu 1996 9) as if everything mdash including symbol-ism mdash was invented by Lu Xun or just mention in passing that Gogol has a work of the same title (Cheng et al 2000 59) as if it was a mere coincidence Interest-ingly enough Lursquos work is included in ldquoThe Norwegian book clubs association listrdquo of ldquoThe 100 greatest literary worksrdquo (Norwegian Book Clubs Association 2001) whereas its source text is not

Even-Zoharrsquos culture theory may also shed light on his second hypothesis that translation tends towards acceptability when it is at the periphery and towards adequacy when it is at the centre

Translation is usually undertaken for the purpose of bringing in new items so as to change replace or add to the existing repertoire But when a culture is stable and self-sufficient that is when translated literature is in a peripheral position imported items may have to be presented as or at least made compatible with in-digenous ones so as not to be seen as threats to the collective identity of the target culture otherwise they may not be accepted or tolerated due to strong resistance That is why acceptability-oriented translation strategies are most likely to be used

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 145

Thus Even-Zohar sees a paradox in this case what could have been an innovatory force has actually become a ldquomajor factor of conservatismrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 48ndash49) On the other hand when a culture is in one of the three situations that Even-Zohar mentions foreign items are needed and welcomed and their foreign-ness may be exactly what makes them fashionable

5 Concluding remarks

It is my opinion that Even-Zoharrsquos concepts of cohesion repertoire resistance cul-ture as goods vs culture as tools etc may provide researchers with tools to probe deeper and wider into the context of the total culture searching for more compre-hensive and detailed explanations for translational phenomena These concepts have helped polysystem theory maintain its vitality as a translation theory

Note

1 Ironically the song was written by a Taiwanese song-writer in the 1970s in protest against the United Statesrsquos change of policy in recognizing Beijing instead of Taipei as the only legitimate government of China The song can thus be regarded as originally a hijacking of the Chinese national identity for an anti-communist cause with the blessing of the authorities in Taipei but later it was accepted mdash and thus hijacked mdash by people all over China as their patriotic song this time with the blessing of the Beijing government (Minshi Xinwenwang 1983) and then in 1989 it was hijacked again by people in Hong Kong to be sung in rallies and demonstrations in support of the students in Tiananmen Square

References

Bassnett Susan and Harish Trivedi 1999 ldquoIntroduction Of colonies cannibals and vernacu-larsrdquo Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi eds Post-colonial translation Theory and practice London and New York Routledge 1999 1ndash18

Cai Huizhen 2001 Lu Xun xiaoshuo yanjiu [A study of Lu Xunrsquos fiction] Gaoxiong Gaoxiong tushu chubanshe

Chang Nam Fung 2004 Criticism of Chinese and Western translation theories [in Chinese] Bei-jing Tsinghua University Press

Cheng guangwei Wu Xiaodong Kong Qingdong Gao Yuanbaoand Liu Yong eds 2000 Zhong-guo xiandai wenxue shi [History of modern Chinese literature] Beijing Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe

Even-Zohar Itamar 1990 ldquoPolysystem theoryrdquo Polysystem studies [= Poetics today 111] 9ndash26Even-Zohar Itamar 1990a ldquoThe position of translated literature within the literary polysystemrdquo

Polysystem studies [= Poetics today 111] 45ndash51

146 Nam Fung Chang

Even-Zohar Itamar 1997 ldquoThe making of culture repertoire and the role of transferrdquo Target 92 355ndash363

Even-Zohar Itamar 1997a ldquoFactors and dependencies in culture A revised outline for polysys-tem researchrdquo Canadian review of comparative literature 3 15ndash34

Even-Zohar Itamar 2000 ldquoCulture repertoire and the wealth of collective entitiesrdquo Dirk De Geest et al eds Under construction Links for the site of literary theory Essays in honour of Hendrik Van Gorp Leuven Leuven University Press 2000 389ndash403

Even-Zohar Itamar 2002 ldquoCulture planning and cultural resistance in the making and main-taining of entitiesrdquo Sun Yat-Sen journal of humanities 14 45ndash52

Even-Zohar Itamar 2002a ldquoLiterature as goods literature as toolsrdquo Neohelicon XXIX1 75ndash83Even-Zohar Itamar 2004 ldquoCulture planningrdquo Itamar Even-Zohar Papers in culture research

82ndash103 Available online httpwwwtauacil~itamarezFu Sinian 1984 (first published in 1919) ldquoYi shu gan yanrdquo [Reflections on the translating of

books] Translatorrsquos notes editorial Department ed Fanyi yanjiu lunwenji (1894ndash1948) [Se-lected papers in Translation Studies (1894ndash1948)] Beijing Waiyu jiaoxue yu yanjiu chu-banshe 1984 59ndash63

Gao Chang Fan 1989 ldquoCultural barriers in translationrdquo New comparison 8 3ndash12Jiang Shuxian ed 2002 Zhongguo xiandai wenxue shi [History of modern Chinese literature]

Beijing Kexue chubansheLao Long 1996 ldquoDiudiao huanxiang lianxi shiji mdash Jiepo fanyi (ke) xue de mimengrdquo [My view

on translatology] Chinese translators journal 2 38ndash41Li Dazhao 1959 Li Dazhao xuanji [Selected Works of Li Dazhao] Beijing Renmin chubansheLi Oufan (Leo Ou-fan Lee) tr Yin Hui 1991 Tie wu zhong de nahan [Voices from the iron

house] Hong Kong Joint PublishingLuo Xinzhang 1984 ldquoWoguo zicheng tixi de fanyi lilunrdquo [Chinese ranslation theory A system

of its own] Translatorrsquos notes editorial department ed Fanyi yanjiu lunwen ji (1949ndash1983) [Selected papers in Translation Studies (1949ndash1983)] Beijing Waiyu jiaoxue yu yanjiu chu-banshe 1984 588ndash604

Mao Zedong 1956 ldquoChairman Maorsquos talk to music workersrdquo Available online httpwwwmarxistsorgreferencearchivemaoselected-worksvolume-7mswv7_469htm

Minshi Xinwenwang 1983 ldquoLong de chuanren Hou Dejian jinru Beijingrdquo [Decendant of the Dragon Hou Dejian enters Beijing] 4 June Available online httpwwwftvncomtwTop-icCaringTWTWnotes0604htm

Nakamura Hajime 1957 ldquoThe influence of Confucian ethics on the Chinese translations of Buddhist Sutrasrdquo Kshitis Roy ed Liebenthal Festschrift Sino-Indian studies v Parts 3 amp 4 Santiniketan Visvabharati University 1957 156ndash170

Nanfangwang 2003 ldquoMao Zedong wenhua jiaoyu sixiang gu wei jin yong yang wei Zhong yongrdquo [Mao Zedongrsquos thought on culture and education Make the past serve the present and make foreign things serve China] 22 December Available online httpbig5southcncomgatebig5wwwsouthcncomnewscommunityshztmzdthought200312220715htm

Norwegian book clubs association The 2001 ldquoThe 100 greatest literary worksrdquo Available on-line httpstation05qccacsrsbouscolanglaisbook_reportlinks8html

Siu Wingyip 2001 ldquoMakesizhuyi gainian fanyi zai Zhongguordquo [Translation of Marxist concepts in China] M Phil thesis Lingnan University Hong Kong

Ta Kung Pao 2004 ldquoZhongyang gaodu guanzhu Gang zhengzhi fazhan Tang Jiaxuan chi Li Zhuming lsquobai yang miaorsquordquo [Central government deeply concerned about HKrsquos constitution-

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 145

Thus Even-Zohar sees a paradox in this case what could have been an innovatory force has actually become a ldquomajor factor of conservatismrdquo (Even-Zohar 1990a 48ndash49) On the other hand when a culture is in one of the three situations that Even-Zohar mentions foreign items are needed and welcomed and their foreign-ness may be exactly what makes them fashionable

5 Concluding remarks

It is my opinion that Even-Zoharrsquos concepts of cohesion repertoire resistance cul-ture as goods vs culture as tools etc may provide researchers with tools to probe deeper and wider into the context of the total culture searching for more compre-hensive and detailed explanations for translational phenomena These concepts have helped polysystem theory maintain its vitality as a translation theory

Note

1 Ironically the song was written by a Taiwanese song-writer in the 1970s in protest against the United Statesrsquos change of policy in recognizing Beijing instead of Taipei as the only legitimate government of China The song can thus be regarded as originally a hijacking of the Chinese national identity for an anti-communist cause with the blessing of the authorities in Taipei but later it was accepted mdash and thus hijacked mdash by people all over China as their patriotic song this time with the blessing of the Beijing government (Minshi Xinwenwang 1983) and then in 1989 it was hijacked again by people in Hong Kong to be sung in rallies and demonstrations in support of the students in Tiananmen Square

References

Bassnett Susan and Harish Trivedi 1999 ldquoIntroduction Of colonies cannibals and vernacu-larsrdquo Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi eds Post-colonial translation Theory and practice London and New York Routledge 1999 1ndash18

Cai Huizhen 2001 Lu Xun xiaoshuo yanjiu [A study of Lu Xunrsquos fiction] Gaoxiong Gaoxiong tushu chubanshe

Chang Nam Fung 2004 Criticism of Chinese and Western translation theories [in Chinese] Bei-jing Tsinghua University Press

Cheng guangwei Wu Xiaodong Kong Qingdong Gao Yuanbaoand Liu Yong eds 2000 Zhong-guo xiandai wenxue shi [History of modern Chinese literature] Beijing Zhongguo renmin daxue chubanshe

Even-Zohar Itamar 1990 ldquoPolysystem theoryrdquo Polysystem studies [= Poetics today 111] 9ndash26Even-Zohar Itamar 1990a ldquoThe position of translated literature within the literary polysystemrdquo

Polysystem studies [= Poetics today 111] 45ndash51

146 Nam Fung Chang

Even-Zohar Itamar 1997 ldquoThe making of culture repertoire and the role of transferrdquo Target 92 355ndash363

Even-Zohar Itamar 1997a ldquoFactors and dependencies in culture A revised outline for polysys-tem researchrdquo Canadian review of comparative literature 3 15ndash34

Even-Zohar Itamar 2000 ldquoCulture repertoire and the wealth of collective entitiesrdquo Dirk De Geest et al eds Under construction Links for the site of literary theory Essays in honour of Hendrik Van Gorp Leuven Leuven University Press 2000 389ndash403

Even-Zohar Itamar 2002 ldquoCulture planning and cultural resistance in the making and main-taining of entitiesrdquo Sun Yat-Sen journal of humanities 14 45ndash52

Even-Zohar Itamar 2002a ldquoLiterature as goods literature as toolsrdquo Neohelicon XXIX1 75ndash83Even-Zohar Itamar 2004 ldquoCulture planningrdquo Itamar Even-Zohar Papers in culture research

82ndash103 Available online httpwwwtauacil~itamarezFu Sinian 1984 (first published in 1919) ldquoYi shu gan yanrdquo [Reflections on the translating of

books] Translatorrsquos notes editorial Department ed Fanyi yanjiu lunwenji (1894ndash1948) [Se-lected papers in Translation Studies (1894ndash1948)] Beijing Waiyu jiaoxue yu yanjiu chu-banshe 1984 59ndash63

Gao Chang Fan 1989 ldquoCultural barriers in translationrdquo New comparison 8 3ndash12Jiang Shuxian ed 2002 Zhongguo xiandai wenxue shi [History of modern Chinese literature]

Beijing Kexue chubansheLao Long 1996 ldquoDiudiao huanxiang lianxi shiji mdash Jiepo fanyi (ke) xue de mimengrdquo [My view

on translatology] Chinese translators journal 2 38ndash41Li Dazhao 1959 Li Dazhao xuanji [Selected Works of Li Dazhao] Beijing Renmin chubansheLi Oufan (Leo Ou-fan Lee) tr Yin Hui 1991 Tie wu zhong de nahan [Voices from the iron

house] Hong Kong Joint PublishingLuo Xinzhang 1984 ldquoWoguo zicheng tixi de fanyi lilunrdquo [Chinese ranslation theory A system

of its own] Translatorrsquos notes editorial department ed Fanyi yanjiu lunwen ji (1949ndash1983) [Selected papers in Translation Studies (1949ndash1983)] Beijing Waiyu jiaoxue yu yanjiu chu-banshe 1984 588ndash604

Mao Zedong 1956 ldquoChairman Maorsquos talk to music workersrdquo Available online httpwwwmarxistsorgreferencearchivemaoselected-worksvolume-7mswv7_469htm

Minshi Xinwenwang 1983 ldquoLong de chuanren Hou Dejian jinru Beijingrdquo [Decendant of the Dragon Hou Dejian enters Beijing] 4 June Available online httpwwwftvncomtwTop-icCaringTWTWnotes0604htm

Nakamura Hajime 1957 ldquoThe influence of Confucian ethics on the Chinese translations of Buddhist Sutrasrdquo Kshitis Roy ed Liebenthal Festschrift Sino-Indian studies v Parts 3 amp 4 Santiniketan Visvabharati University 1957 156ndash170

Nanfangwang 2003 ldquoMao Zedong wenhua jiaoyu sixiang gu wei jin yong yang wei Zhong yongrdquo [Mao Zedongrsquos thought on culture and education Make the past serve the present and make foreign things serve China] 22 December Available online httpbig5southcncomgatebig5wwwsouthcncomnewscommunityshztmzdthought200312220715htm

Norwegian book clubs association The 2001 ldquoThe 100 greatest literary worksrdquo Available on-line httpstation05qccacsrsbouscolanglaisbook_reportlinks8html

Siu Wingyip 2001 ldquoMakesizhuyi gainian fanyi zai Zhongguordquo [Translation of Marxist concepts in China] M Phil thesis Lingnan University Hong Kong

Ta Kung Pao 2004 ldquoZhongyang gaodu guanzhu Gang zhengzhi fazhan Tang Jiaxuan chi Li Zhuming lsquobai yang miaorsquordquo [Central government deeply concerned about HKrsquos constitution-

146 Nam Fung Chang

Even-Zohar Itamar 1997 ldquoThe making of culture repertoire and the role of transferrdquo Target 92 355ndash363

Even-Zohar Itamar 1997a ldquoFactors and dependencies in culture A revised outline for polysys-tem researchrdquo Canadian review of comparative literature 3 15ndash34

Even-Zohar Itamar 2000 ldquoCulture repertoire and the wealth of collective entitiesrdquo Dirk De Geest et al eds Under construction Links for the site of literary theory Essays in honour of Hendrik Van Gorp Leuven Leuven University Press 2000 389ndash403

Even-Zohar Itamar 2002 ldquoCulture planning and cultural resistance in the making and main-taining of entitiesrdquo Sun Yat-Sen journal of humanities 14 45ndash52

Even-Zohar Itamar 2002a ldquoLiterature as goods literature as toolsrdquo Neohelicon XXIX1 75ndash83Even-Zohar Itamar 2004 ldquoCulture planningrdquo Itamar Even-Zohar Papers in culture research

82ndash103 Available online httpwwwtauacil~itamarezFu Sinian 1984 (first published in 1919) ldquoYi shu gan yanrdquo [Reflections on the translating of

books] Translatorrsquos notes editorial Department ed Fanyi yanjiu lunwenji (1894ndash1948) [Se-lected papers in Translation Studies (1894ndash1948)] Beijing Waiyu jiaoxue yu yanjiu chu-banshe 1984 59ndash63

Gao Chang Fan 1989 ldquoCultural barriers in translationrdquo New comparison 8 3ndash12Jiang Shuxian ed 2002 Zhongguo xiandai wenxue shi [History of modern Chinese literature]

Beijing Kexue chubansheLao Long 1996 ldquoDiudiao huanxiang lianxi shiji mdash Jiepo fanyi (ke) xue de mimengrdquo [My view

on translatology] Chinese translators journal 2 38ndash41Li Dazhao 1959 Li Dazhao xuanji [Selected Works of Li Dazhao] Beijing Renmin chubansheLi Oufan (Leo Ou-fan Lee) tr Yin Hui 1991 Tie wu zhong de nahan [Voices from the iron

house] Hong Kong Joint PublishingLuo Xinzhang 1984 ldquoWoguo zicheng tixi de fanyi lilunrdquo [Chinese ranslation theory A system

of its own] Translatorrsquos notes editorial department ed Fanyi yanjiu lunwen ji (1949ndash1983) [Selected papers in Translation Studies (1949ndash1983)] Beijing Waiyu jiaoxue yu yanjiu chu-banshe 1984 588ndash604

Mao Zedong 1956 ldquoChairman Maorsquos talk to music workersrdquo Available online httpwwwmarxistsorgreferencearchivemaoselected-worksvolume-7mswv7_469htm

Minshi Xinwenwang 1983 ldquoLong de chuanren Hou Dejian jinru Beijingrdquo [Decendant of the Dragon Hou Dejian enters Beijing] 4 June Available online httpwwwftvncomtwTop-icCaringTWTWnotes0604htm

Nakamura Hajime 1957 ldquoThe influence of Confucian ethics on the Chinese translations of Buddhist Sutrasrdquo Kshitis Roy ed Liebenthal Festschrift Sino-Indian studies v Parts 3 amp 4 Santiniketan Visvabharati University 1957 156ndash170

Nanfangwang 2003 ldquoMao Zedong wenhua jiaoyu sixiang gu wei jin yong yang wei Zhong yongrdquo [Mao Zedongrsquos thought on culture and education Make the past serve the present and make foreign things serve China] 22 December Available online httpbig5southcncomgatebig5wwwsouthcncomnewscommunityshztmzdthought200312220715htm

Norwegian book clubs association The 2001 ldquoThe 100 greatest literary worksrdquo Available on-line httpstation05qccacsrsbouscolanglaisbook_reportlinks8html

Siu Wingyip 2001 ldquoMakesizhuyi gainian fanyi zai Zhongguordquo [Translation of Marxist concepts in China] M Phil thesis Lingnan University Hong Kong

Ta Kung Pao 2004 ldquoZhongyang gaodu guanzhu Gang zhengzhi fazhan Tang Jiaxuan chi Li Zhuming lsquobai yang miaorsquordquo [Central government deeply concerned about HKrsquos constitution-

A missing link in Itamar Even-Zoharrsquos theoretical thinking 147

al reform Tang Jiaxuan Blasts Martin Lee for ldquoWorshipping at a foreign templerdquo] March 5 A08

Toury Gideon 1995 Descriptive Translation Studies and beyond AmsterdamPhiladelphia John Benjamins

Venuti Lawrence 1995 The translatorrsquos invisibility A history of translation London RoutledgeWallerstein Immanuel 1991 ldquoThe national and the universal Can there be such a thing as

world culturerdquo Antony D King ed Culture globalization and the world-system Contem-porary conditions for the representation of identity Basingstoke Macmillan 1991 91ndash105

Wang Xiaoyuan 2006 ldquoTranslation ideology and discourse Literary translation in China 1895ndash1911rdquo [in Chinese] Lingnan University Hong Kong [PhD thesis]

Wang Yan 1998 ldquoWan Qing Xianzheng de xianqu mdash Zhang Zhidong yu Zhong ti xi yongrdquo [Pioneer of constitutional reform in the Late Qing Zhang Zhidong and Chinese learning as the body Western learning for practical application] October Available online httpwwwchinalaweducomnews2004_45C85C1732531137htm

Wen Wei Po 2004 ldquolsquoXiandai Wu Sanguirsquo fu Mei lingjiangrdquo [ldquoModern Wu Sanguirdquo to receive award in the US] October 21 A14

Wright Arthur F 1959 Buddhism in Chinese history Stanford Stanford University PressXiaolin Sunren 2006 ldquoQing mo jian bian shirdquo [History of pigtail cutting in the late Qing] July

19 Available online httpwwwcrossmediacomhkfindexphpshowtopic=26464amphlXie Tianzhen 1999 Medio-translatology [in Chinese] Shanghai Shanghai waiyu jiaoyu chu-

bansheXu Yuanchong 2003 ldquoTan Zhongguo xuepai de fanyi lilun mdash Zhongguo fanyixue luohou yu

xifang mardquo [On the translation theory of the Chinese school mdash Is Chinese translatology behind West translatology] Foreign languages and their teaching 1 52ndash54

Zhang Jinghao 1999 ldquoFanyixue yige wei yuan qie nan yuan de mengrdquo [Translatology A dream that has not and will hardly ever come true] Foreign languages and their teaching 10 44ndash48

Zhongguo Qingnian Bao [China youth daily] 2001 ldquoYuwen kaoshi zuowen yao ganqing zhen-zhirdquo [Chinese language examination There must be sincerity in composition] March 28 Available online httpwwwpeoplecomcnBIG5kejiao4120010328427748html

Zhu Jinshun ed 1996 Zhongguo xiandai wenxue shi [History of modern Chinese literature] Beijing Beijing shifan daxue chubanshe

Reacutesumeacute

Selon Itamar Even-Zohar le maintien drsquoune large entiteacute sociale reacuteclame lrsquoinvention drsquoun reacuteper-toire culturel apte agrave creacuteer de la coheacutesion interne et de la diffeacuterenciation externe dans ce reacuteper-toire certaines composantes seraient choisies en vue de la construction drsquoune identiteacute collective Par contraste des composantes importeacutees particuliegraveres pourraient se heurter agrave des reacutesistances lorsqursquoelles sont perccedilues comme une menace pour cette identiteacute Une telle theacuteorie pourrait eacuteclai-rer lrsquohypothegravese selon laquelle la position ldquonormalerdquo de la litteacuterature traduite dans le polysystegraveme litteacuteraire tend agrave peacuteripheacuterique ainsi que lrsquohypothegravese selon laquelle la traduction en position peacute-ripheacuterique se rapproche du pocircle de lrsquoacceptabiliteacute

148 Nam Fung Chang

Authorrsquos address

Nam Fung CHANGDepartment of TranslationLingnan UniversityTuen Mun HONG KONG

e-mail changnflneduhk

148 Nam Fung Chang

Authorrsquos address

Nam Fung CHANGDepartment of TranslationLingnan UniversityTuen Mun HONG KONG

e-mail changnflneduhk