Reine Meylaerts

China’s minority language translation policies (1949–present)

ABSTRACT Current studies on translation policy towards minority languages are largely confined to the Western context. This paper aims to investigate translation policy in modern China (1949–present) to cast a critical eye on its experiences in policy making, using examples from official regulations, existing studies, and personal networks. It is found that modern China’s translation policy during the Hanyu monolingual period (1957–1977) is characterized by monolingualism and assimilationism, whereas translation policies during the first and second multilingual phases (1949–1957 and 1978–present) are featured by multilingualism both nationally and regionally. However, China’s multilingualism emphasizes the promotion of Mandarin Chinese. It also reveals that discrepancies exist between translation management and practices. This descriptive study from a Chinese perspective will provide examples of translation policies in a cultural and linguistic context that is different from most Eurocentric studies, which helps to identify the regularities of translation policy in different contexts and contributes to the formulation of guidelines on a fair and sustainable translation policy. It is suggested that future translation policy studies should be conducted on an interdisciplinary basis, drawing upon both familiar subfields, such as translation theory and audiovisual translation studies, and other fields, such as political science, sociolinguistics, and anthropology.

General Introduction. Literary Translation and Cultural Mediators. Toward an Agent and Process-Oriented Approach

This chapter gives a frame for this book and aims to propose an agent and process-oriented approach to the analysis of literary translation and cultural mediators. It builds on cross-border studies and their criticism of a nation-centred research lens and deals with so-called mediations and mediators. Specifically, we analyse the role of cultural mediators as customs officers or smugglers (or both in different proportions) in so-called peripheral cultures. The chapter presents the focus of this collective volume, which lies not only in a variety of agents, spaces and translation flows in less studied settings, but also in asking questions about intra- and international networks and less typical patterns in the migration of people and texts, as well as atypical channels of transfer. The chapter advances some insights into an under-analysed body of actors and institutions promoting intercultural transfer in often multilingual and less studied venues such as Trieste, Tel Aviv, Buenos Aires, Shanghai, Lahore, and Cape Town.

Edmond Vandercammen et le réseau du Journal des Poètes: la médiation culturelle du monde hispanique (1930-1970)

Cet article se propose d’etudier le role que le poete, critique, peintre et traducteur belge Edmond Vandercammen (Ohain, 1901 - Uccle, 1980) a endosse en tant que mediateur de la litterature hispanophone en Belgique entre 1930 et 1970. Concretement, nous nous sommes concentrees sur les elements suivants : (1) l’analyse de la sociobiographie du mediateur, c’est-a-dire, sa trajectoire sociale et biographique afin de reconstruire ses comportements, perceptions et croyances interculturels ; et (2) l’analyse de reseaux (envisages ici comme des circuits, tantot informels, tantot institutionnalises, d’echanges ecrits ou oraux entre agents) qui devrait permettre d’apprehender le role du mediateur au sein de ces reseaux ainsi que l’effet (positif ou negatif) des reseaux dans les activites de transfert du mediateur.