Derrida and Translation in China

Abstract

Derrida has provided food for thought for translation scholars to further explore some of the fundamental questions about translation. He emphasizes the crucial role of context and the movement of recontextualization in relation to translation. Multiple contexts are involved in translation, resulting in multiple recontextualizations. In this process, the connections between signifiers and signifieds are constantly re-established. As contexts change, meaning becomes more fluid and the possibilities offered by meaning, in general, are expanded as new contexts are created through the act of translation. Deconstructing conceptualizations of multiple contexts with particular reference to issues of textual interpretation prompts further investigation of the underlying contradictions and paradoxes in theorizing translation. One of the most common outcomes of translation is a tendency toward explicitness. The fundamental and inescapable dilemma between necessity and impossibility in which translation finds itself points to its thankless and frustrating nature. Translation requires at least a temporary separation of signifier and signified. If the former is replaced in the target text, the question inevitably arises as to how the latter can remain largely unchanged, as is the case in the traditional view of translation. Deconstruction in relation to translation is still contentious in China. Its usefulness is less questionable and less often dismissed as bunkum, and its obscurity still troubles translation scholars. However, deconstruction will once again be relevant to Translation Studies thanks to the renewed interest in world literature in China, which foregrounds aesthetic and cultural untranslatability. Many of Derrida’s insights will continue to shed light on the complexity of understanding translation and its central role in promoting intercultural dialogue.

Keywords:

• Jacques Derrida
• Deconstruction
• translation theory
• multiple context
• irreducibility and explicitness
• transformation

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Yifeng Sun

Yifeng Sun is Chair Professor of Translation Studies at the University of Macau. He is Editor-in-Chief of Babel: International Journal of Translation. His books include Transcultural Poetics (2023), Translational Spaces (2021), Translating Chinese Art and Modern Literature (2019, Translating Foreign Otherness (2018), Cultural Translation (2016), Translation and Academic Journals (2015), Cultural Exile and Homeward Journey (2005), and Fragmentation and Dramatic Moments (2002).