Translations and Transformations: China, Modernity and Cultural Transmission

Deadline for Registration: 29 April 2008

Convenor: Professor Mary Jacobus (University of Cambridge)

This event is part of the AHRC-funded Network, Translations and Transformations: China, Modernity and Cultural Transmission. Based at CRASSH the network focuses on the oppositions and relations through which Chinese modernity has been shaped and imagined. An age of globalisation makes it more than ever urgent to ask: what processes of transmission mediate literary and cultural exchanges between China and the West? China's complex interactions with its others are key to understanding its relation to modernity. Defining the modern, as Lydia Liu observes, is not only a question of periodisation but also of translatability: 'The problem of translation has become increasingly central to critical reflections on modernity... The fact that one can speak about a varied range of modernities suggests an extraordinary faith in the translatability of modernity and its universal ethos.' (Translingual Practice,1995).

Lydia Liu's 'translingual practice' refers to the translation from one culture into the practice of another: to cultural as well as linguistic translation. At the heart of the problem are specific acts, sites, and theories of translation; relationships between universal and particular; and the limits or possibilities of cultural commensurability. Whether literal translation or at the level of language and culture, or involving concepts, technologies and techniques, the status of translation is at stake in defining the field of Chinese modernism and modernity. The processes of transmission include literary and visual translation, as well as contextualisation and reception, but they also raise issues of translatability in the broadest sense. The Conference will involve scholars of literary and cultural studies in China and the West, including translation theorists, critical theorists, and theorists of visual culture and film.

Thursday 1 May
3.30-4.15	Registration with coffee/tea
4.15-4.30	Welcome from Sir Christopher Hum (Master of Gonville & Caius College, formerly HM Ambassador to China) Welcome from Professor Hans Van de Ven (Chairman of the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies)
4.30-5.30	Plenary Address Translation as Cultural Mediation Susan Bassnet (Pro-Vice Chancellor, Warwick University)
6.00-7.00	Reception and Finger Buffet
Friday 2 May
9.30-11.00	Translating Modernism Chair: Haun Saussy Eric Hayot (Penn State University) The Example-Effect Wang Ning (Tsinghua University) Modernity, Translated Literature and the Formation of Modern Chinese Literary Tradition Christopher Bush (Northwestern University) China, for example . . . : Talking about China outside of East Asia Studies
11.00-11.30	Break
11.30-13.00	Translating Modernism II Chair: Susan Daruvala Christopher Rosenmeier (University of Cambridge) Turning Against Realism: Tradition and Exoticism in the Popular Fiction of the 1940s Jing Tsu (Yale University) Bilingual Loyalty: Zhang Ailing, Ha Jin, and the Failure to Address Cao Li (Tsinghua University) Translating Literature: The Cambridge Critics and Their Significance in China
13.00-14.00	Lunch
14.00-15.30	Translating Theory Chair: Mary Jacobus Brett de Bary (Cornell University) Theorizing Translation in Post-Structuralist and Post-Colonial Contexts Stephanie Tsai (Tamkang University) Translating the Unthinkable - Blanchot in Chinese James St. André (University of Manchester) Travelling Translation Theory
15.30-16.00	Break
16.00-17.30	Translation and Change Chair: Cao Li Cosima Bruno (SOAS) Translating the Visual in Contemporary Chinese Poetry Chen Yongguo (Tsinghua University) The Politics of Minor Languages, Or, the Logic of Creation in the Age of Deterritorialization of Language Sun Yifeng (Lingnan University) Translation, Transculturality and Transformational China
8.30 - 9.45 (in Buckingham Lecture Theatre)	Illustrated Discussion Chris Berry (Goldsmiths, University of London)Real to Reel: China's New Documentary Movement as a Translingual Practice

Saturday 3 May
9.00-10.30	Translating Culture I Chair: Christopher Bush Yizhong Ning (Beijing Language and Culture) The Welcome Other: translation and cultural transplanting Steven Yao (Hamilton College) 'Cathay’ and the languages of modernism Timothy Billings (Middlebury College) Victor Segalen’s Sigillary Sinography: the Seal of Authority and the Spell of Alterity
10.30-11.00	Break
11.00-12.30	Translating the Western Canon Chair: Hans van de Ven Liu Dong (Peking University) The first Chinese translation of Mill’s On Liberty Wang Hui (Tsinghua University) Scientific World View, Cultural Debates and the Reclassification of Knowledge in Twentieth Century China Lu Jiande (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences): For Continuity: Lin Shu and the New Literature Movement
12.30-13.30	Lunch
13.30 - 15.30	Translating Modernity Chair: Brett de Bary Haun Saussy (Yale University) Translation and Transcription: Media Creoles and the Invention of the Delufeng Red Chan (University of Warwick) The Cult of the Amateur: Internet and Re-configuration of Cross-Cultural Transfer C.J. Wan-Ling Wee (Nanyang Technological University, Singapore) We Asians”?: Modernity, Visual-Art Exhibitions, and East Asia Julia Lovell (Birkbeck College) Modern Chinese Literature in the Global Canon – the Quest for Recognition
15.30-16.00	Break
16.00-16.45	Round Table Discussion: Directions for the Future Chair: Mary Jacobus Wang Ning, Haun Saussy, Hans van de Ven
17.30 Fitzwilliam Museum	Exhibition, short talk and closing reception at Fitzwilliam Museum

Translations and Transformations: China, Modernity and Cultural Transmission

1 May 2008 - 3 May 2008