Retold By Lin Yutang

The Works of Lin Yutang is the first book to provide a comprehensive study of Lin Yutang’s translation theory and translated (and written) works in English as a whole, examined from the perspective of his pursuit of recognition of cultural equity between China and the English-speaking world. The arc of the book is Lin’s new method of translating China to the Anglophone world, which is crucial to rendering Chinese culture as an equal member of the modern world. This book identifies Lin’s legacy of translation and recognition as his acknowledgement of source and target cultural territories in translation, and at the same time, his questioning of perspectives that privilege the authority of either. This book will appeal to scholars and students in Translation Studies, World and Comparative Literature, Literary and Cultural Studies, and Chinese Studies. It can also be used as a reference work for practitioners in translation and creative writing.

This book provides a comprehensive examination of the socio-cultural and political context of modern China in terms of its interaction with America and the West, focusing on the influence of the well-known Chinese writer and intellectual Lin Yutang (1895-1976). Offering a unique study of the life and works of Lin Yutang, it highlights his intellectual legacy in modern China and considers how his cross-cultural life and ideas embodied the modern Chinese cultural experience. It notably focuses on Lin’s reputation as an outspoken critic of the infringement of human rights during the rise of the Communist regime in China, but also on his rediscovery of Chinese cultural resources. At a time when China’s cultural contributions are increasingly relevant worldwide, this book contributes to ongoing critical reflections of Chinese modernity, particularly in terms of its intellectual legacies, but also to a renewed understanding of the cross-cultural interactions between China and America and a re-opening the dialogue and search for a new cultural understanding.

Offering the first systematic overview of modern and contemporary Chinese literature from a translation studies perspective, this handbook provides students, researchers and teachers with a context in which to read and appreciate the effects of linguistic and cultural transfer in Chinese literary works. Translation matters. It always has, of course, but more so when we want to reap the benefits of intercultural communication. In many universities Chinese literature in English translation is taught as if it had been written in English. As a result, students submit what they read to their own cultural expectations; they do not read in translation and do not attend to the protocols of knowing, engagements and contestations that bind literature and society to each other. The Bloomsbury Handbook of Modern Chinese Literature in Translation squarely addresses this pedagogical lack. Organised in a tripartite structure around considerations of textual, social, and large-scale spatial and historical circumstances, its thirty plus essays each deal with a theme of translation studies, as emerged from the translation of one or more Chinese literary works. In doing so, it offers new tools for reading and appreciating modern and contemporary Chinese literature in the global context of its translation, offering in-depth studies about eminent Chinese authors and their literary masterpieces in translation. The first of its kind, this book is essential reading for anyone studying or researching Chinese literature in translation.