翻译学院系列学术讲座之二 Sociological formation and reception of translation – With Kinkley’s translation of Biancheng as a case

主讲专家：徐敏慧教授 （中国海洋大学/澳门大学）

时间：2019.6.5（星期三）上午9：00-10:30

地点：JC801

提要：This study examines the sociological formation process of a translation and its reception, drawing on Bourdieu’s conceptualization of the international circulation of ideas. It investigates the three phases of the formation process of a translation: the selection, the labeling and classification, and the reading and reception, with Kinkley’s translation of Biancheng (Border Town) as a case in point. It discovers that the first two phases, namely, phases of the selection and of the labeling and classification, have created favorable conditions for the translated text to enter the target field, but the reception of the translation is not very optimistic. This study points out that the unoptimistic reception condition is due to the fact that the milieu of a cultivated public, the target readership, has not maturely developed yet. It argues that the reception of translation depends on the success of each phase of the sociological formation process. Any deficiency in any phase might spoil the reception. The reception of a translation is to be constructed and consecrated through joint efforts of different agents in each phase. A sociological consideration of the encompassing dynamics of the holistic formation process can shed new light on a real understanding of the reception of a translated work.

专家简介：Minhui Xu is Associate Professor of University of Macau/Professor of Ocean University of China, PhD supervisor. She holds a PhD degree in Translation Studies obtained from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, where she also did her post doctoral research. She was visiting scholar at Simon Fraser University, Canada (2003-2004) and at California State University Fresno, the US (2016-2017). She is author of English Translations of Shen Congwen’s Stories – A Narrative Perspective (2013), and has published in refereed journals including Target, Perspectives, Translation and Interpreting Studies, Foreign Languages Teaching and Research, and Chinese Translators Journal. She is the principal investigator of different projects, and is currently working on a project entitled “A sociological study of the English translations of Shen Congwen’s stories”, sponsored by the Social Science Fund of China. Her main research interests include translation theory, literary translation, sociology of translation, and translation and intercultural studies.