Translation as Citation: Zhuangzi Inside Out

The book looks at translation from many different angles: it explores how translations change the languages in which they occur, how works introduced from other languages become part of the consciousness of native speakers, and what strategies translators must use to secure acceptance for foreign works. It is unusual in that it takes the history of translation in China, from around 150 CE to the modern period, as its source of case studies. Chinese literature is an extremely self-contained and complex tradition. Foreign works could break into it only by taking on the appearance of native works, and how to do this without denaturing their content was a constant challenge for translators-yet one at which they succeeded. Buddhism, Christianity, and poetic modernity all secured a public in China through the efforts of ingenious translators, who often did things to their source texts that couldn’t have been imagined by the original authors.