The Ideological and Cultural Underpinnings of the Disputes over Translated Terminology during the Late Qing and Early Republican Period
A series of translation-related controversies broke out during the Late Qing and Early Republican period in China's modern history.The initial debate on transliteration vs.semantic translation of imported Western terms quickly set off a whole series of large-scale disputes over translated terminology.Even though on the surface,these heated debates seem to have been provoked by academic or technical issues only,underneath one detects an ideological confrontation rooted in a still deeper-lying Sino-Western cultural conflict.What was at issue in the controverses over terminology translation,just as what was at issue over the reform of the Chinese language,the way to popularize education,the determination of ethnic identities,and the modernization of China's academy,can all have their root cause traced to a cultural conflict between China and the West.These early 20th-century debates were eventually settled when semantic translation was established as the preferred method while transliteration was assigned the role as an auxiliary strategy.In reaching a consensus on this solution,Chinese scholars at that time were able to evade the discourse trap of Western phonocentrism.The way they confronted and coped with the issue then still offers a useful lesson now to Chinese scholars who are committed to cultural self-confidence and intellectual independence.
the Late Qing and Early Republican PeriodSino-Western cultural conflicttranslated terminologyphonocentrism
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