Displacement, transformation, hybridization: Translation and Chinese modernity

Defining translation as transformation and resignification, the article argues, through the lens of the Chinese translations of Western “humanism” and “postmodernism,” that translation alters, expands, and hybridizes self and Other at the same time, for at the other end of the translation process neither remains the same that has been known and both become displaced, enriched, and revised. At its every phase, Chinese modernity derives its criteria or parameters from translating Western theories of modernity. However, no Western idea or theory comes to China unmodified, untransformed or unhybridized. This is the way Chinese modernity takes its shape. The article concludes that to translate modernity in China is to translate China in a double sense. For what emerges from the processes of appropriative translation in modern China is a form of modernity different from and alternative to the hegemonic modernity of the West, and, therefore, in performatively translating Western ideas and values, the Chinese constantly engage in self-transformation and self-reinvention, eventually returning to the world a Chinese version of modernity for translation.